Archive for May, 2008

I’ll be the first to admit that my morse-code quilt was quite an undertaking, and there are certainly aspects of it that could have turned out better. That being said, it’s not nearly as complicated as it looks– it just takes a bit of planning and a lot of strip-piecing!

For a roughly twin-sized quilt, you’ll need:
* ~6 yards background color and binding
* 4 x 1/2 yd pieces in different colors for the “letters”
* ~6 yards for the backing
* batting of your choice
* plenty of graph paper (you can print some out here
* several colored pens/pencils/crayons/etc.
* a Morse code chart

Step 1: figure out your quilt size and message length
- decide on a finished size for your quilt
- subtract the width of your borders all around; for a 4″ border, subtract 8″ from the width and length
- divide the length by 2 (for 2″ blocks) and the width by 3 (for 2″ blocks plus 1″ sashing)
- multiply those numbers to determine the number of squares in your “grid”

So for a twin quilt with 4″ borders:
63 x 87 – (8 x = 55 x 71
divide length by 2 = 36 (rounding up)
divide width by 3 = 24 (ditto)
36 x 24 2″ blocks with 1″ lengthwise sashing = 864 squares

To figure out how many letters you’ll have, we’re going to assume that one letter takes up about 6 spaces, using one square for a dot, three for a dash, and one square space between them. Divide your total grid size by 6 to get a rough estimate of how many letters you can use– in my example, you might get around 144 characters.

Step 2: compose your message
- start scratching out your secret message and counting the characters, including spaces. You might want to try a few versions of differing lengths, just in case.
- convert the text into code, either by hand or with an online translator

Step3: get the message to fit
Prepare for some trial and error here! This part took the longest of any of the planning steps.
- grab your graph paper and mark out an area that matches what your quilt top will contain.
- start marking out your message on the graph paper, using the morse code chart as a reference. Use one space between characters, and three between words (if you like).
- rather than just shading in squares, start by writing the letter inside each square.
- mark each letter with a different color. Not only does it make things more colorful, but it helps to distinguish characters when they “break” to a new line in the quilt.

You should end up with something like this– keep rearranging things until you have the entire grid filled, which may take a while!

This will be your piecing reference, so you may want to enlarge it. I found white tagboard with an “invisible” 1″ grid at the $1 store, and transferred my final layout in magic marker.