How it began

We’ve all been there – browsing quilting posts on Facebook or the web and suddenly we see a quilt that we love and want to make, but frustratingly there isn't a pattern or instructions!  Sometimes we can recreate the pattern based on our experience and sometimes the quilt falls into the “too hard to do” category and ends up on our Pinterest page along with the dozens of other quilts we’ll never make.

Recently I was browsing the posts at my favorite Facebook quilt group “Quilt Along with Pat Sloan” when I ran across a post by Jeanette Silvey that included this picture of an elephant quilt and asking if anyone knew where she could find the pattern.  Group members suggested several possibilities, but none were the exact same elephant.  Finally Jeanette traced a line drawing of the elephant and used an online site to blow it up to poster size.  

My in-laws lived in India for several years when my father-in-law worked for a U.N. agency.  Their home has several elephant themed decorations. I really wanted to make this quilt for my mother in law and Jeanette’s plan sounded doable to me.

The first thing I did was clean up the line drawing a little so I had a crisp black and white image for blowing up.  Once the image was ready, I went to BlockPosters.com to turn the image into a multi-page poster.   Posters up to 5 by 5 pages are free and you download your poster as a PDF file.  I choose a 4x4 poster which produced 16 pages that measure 34 inches wide and 47 inches high once taped together, which I will later trim down to 34 inches by 40 inches.  

You have to set a few options before you print your poster. This is what I choose:

Here is the picture you need to upload at BlockPosters.com to make your poster.  Right Click on the picture and save it to your computer.

When you print the poster on your home printer, you need to adjust the printer settings to borderless printing (usually found under Properties) and print actual size.  My system for making the quilt requires that you print and tape together two copies of the poster.

I lightly color one of the posters using colored pencils (or crayons) using about 8-10 colors. It helped me to choose my fabric and not have too much of one color  in any area. This step is definitely optional but I'm glad I took the time.