Call Me Crazy – Fracturing a Quilt
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This tutorial was part of a blog hop called Call Me Crazy. Last time the theme was “Crazy”, I did a Stack N Slash quilt. This time around I thought I would show a quilt that made ME crazy.
The pattern is available for free to subscribers at the bottom of the page. If you’d rather just print, click the green Print Friendly button under the designer list. If that doesn’t work, try Ctrl + P (or Flower + P) to bring up the printer dialog box.
The Inspiration
Every year my friend Laurie and I make a raffle quilt to benefit Foreverly House. That is a two family home being built to provide stable, safe, supportive housing for homeless Veteran moms and their children.
Here is one we made a few years ago, inspired by the Fantasia pattern by Broome Street Patterns. We kinda made it up as we went along, using two panels to make it wider and adding rows to make it taller.
Laurie Brings Me a Challenge
She found a 35″ x 44″ quilt panel of a motorcycle, called Live to Ride.
Her request was that we fracture this quilt to make larger so she could raffle it at some upcoming car shows. Challenge accepted!
First I had to cut off the words on the top and bottom because those wouldn’t fracture well. Then I had to divide the top and add spacers to make the quilt wider. We decided on black spacers with a gold border to bring out the colors in the panel. Then she found some flame fabric and that became our border. Here is my EQ design.
After a lot of measuring, this was the result. Neither of us realized that the black bars would make the Harley look like it was behind bars. That’s how it got the name…
The Outlaw Biker!
I decided to do a tutorial on How to Fracture a quilt for the Quiltweb website. You can find that tutorial here.
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Your quilt is crazy-cool…and the name fits!
So cool. Thanks for showing us.
I love the Harley behind bars. What a fun way to “fracture” a quilt. Figuring out the design definitely would be the crazy part for me, but you made it look so easy! Can’t wait to see your tutorial!
oh what a fun and yes, crazy work of art. Love the unexpected jailed effect.
That’s a neat way to use panels. Someone will love winning that “outlaw” quilt!
The Outlaw Biker is such a fun outcome of fracturing your panel…love it! The Statue of Liberty turned out amazing and was a winner at the raffle, I’m sure. I’ve never fractured a quilt before, but after seeing your beauties I think I may try it. Thank you for sharing your craziness with us, Kris!
Great idea for a panel, thanks for showing your process!
The Harley quilt is pretty. I love the geometric fabric shapes.
I love the Outlaw Biker! What a great quilt this method makes. Thank you for sharing.
What a fun way to use panels! Both quilts are awesome!
Cool technique! Thanks for sharing your crazy projects.
You are a bit crazy but the quilt is wonderful!
Wow that is amazing!! I’m inspired to try one… hope it doesn’t drive me crazy! xx
I’ve only in recent times discovered fractured panel quilts and they are such a great idea. Both the ones you show here are amazing.
Fracture quilts are so fun to play with and you have some lovely ones.
Your fractured quilt looks fantastic!!
That’s something I may have to try one day!