Sunday, April 21, 2013

Charity Quilt Size Chart

I enjoy making quilts to give away.  Mostly the quilts are crib sized, or for people's laps on wheelchairs.  Some places that accept quilts set requirements for size, and most of them are roughly 3 feet by 4 feet, or 36 in. x 48 in..  Because I don't always make the same size blocks, I have developed this chart to help me plan.  I'm passing it along, hoping it might help you or your group.
I'm putting in some examples of the sizes.  These are quilts that have been on the blog before.  Hope you don't mind.
 The pinwheels are 4 in. blocks.  There are 63 blocks in the quilt (really!), but only 32 are pinwheels.  The 31 others are just squares of dinosaur fabric, or what's often called alternate squares.
 This quilt has 6 in. squares.  Again, not all are pieced.  In this case, half are four patches and half are alternate squares.

Although this looks like a checkerboard, these are really 8 in. 4 patches, set side by side.  The size block I use most often is 8 in.  The math is easy, the novelty fabrics show up well, and it doesn't take long to piece them.  This one has a 1 in. finished inner border, which adds 2 in. in each direction.  I didn't include measurements for more than one border in the chart.
 The blocks in this nine patch are actually 10.5 in. square, but the set is the same as if they were 10 in.  These are some of those squares I bought at a quilt show.
I don't have any photos of charity quilts with either 9 in. or 12 in. blocks, although I have done a few.  The 12 in. size tends to look large and clunky in this size quilt, so they're not my favorites.

Here's the actual chart.  It's probably found in a book somewhere, but I reinvented it to help me.  Maybe it can help you too.  All the measurements are in inches.

Block Size
# of Blocks
Set
Before Borders
3 in. borders
4 in. borders
4 in.
63
7 x 9
28 x 36
34 x 42
36 x 44
6 in.
30
5 x 6
30 x 36
36 x 42
38 x 44
8 in.
20
4 x 5
32 x 40
38 x 46
40 x 48
9 in.
12
3 x 4
27 x 36
33 x 42
35 x 44
10 in.
12
3 x 4
30 x 40
36 x 46
38 x 48
12 in.
9
3 x 3
36 x 36
42 x 42
44 x 44

 Happy quilting!

2 comments:

  1. Thank you! I'm terrible with doing the math on quilts and we have a prayer quilt ministry at church, so this is perfect!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad to be of help. Missy, did your manual ever arrive? I finally sent it out last week. Hope it was the right one!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading! Post a comment--I want to know what you think!