How Much Time Will This Quilt Take?
Have you ever looked at a quilt in progress and asked yourself, how much time will this quilt take to make? Time and quilt creation and completion are the topic of today’s podcast of Hello My Quilting Friends:
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How Much Time Will This Quilt Take to Create?
Here’s a list of what makes your quilt take longer to create. Remember, a longer project isn’t a bad thing. I really love having a big, time consuming project serve as the touchstone of that year or time of my life. Every time I look at that project, I can remember that particular time of my life.
But it’s good to know what you’re getting into. If you want a project that will take a week, you only want it to take a week!
Listed in order of speed:
The fastest quilts will be: traditionally pieced with straight seams, cut from precut fabric, include no techniques that you haven’t learned before, smaller and quilted minimally so it’s soft and cuddly on a longarm with straight lines or an all-over design.
Quilts will take more time if they include / require:
- Curved seam piecing
- Cutting from yardage (more time to prep and cut)
- Techniques you need to master first
- Larger – King is way slower than a baby quilt!
- Quilted on a home machine
- Quilted with more than one design / more than one thread color
The slowest quilts to create are: appliqued, cut from yardage, include lots of new techniques that are challenging to you, huge in size and scale, and custom quilted on a home machine with lots of designs and thread colors on a dense scale.
How to Estimate the Amount of Time a Quilt will Take
To estimate your time, you will need some experience with the pattern. Time yourself piecing one block. Determine if this is a decent time estimation. Was anything weird going on at the time? Were you unusually less busy or more busy that week?
If this block was created during your usual schedule and with the normal amount of time you usually have, then you can assume all blocks will take this much time or longer to create.
So if it takes 1 hour to piece a quilt block and the quilt needs 12 blocks, you will be piecing the blocks for 12 hours.
But What About Quilting Time?
This exact same calculation can be used for quilting. If you time yourself stitching a straight line across your quilt and it takes 30 minutes to complete, then it will take 15 hours to quilt 30 lines across your quilt.
Use a timer so you understand how much time it takes, then you can begin fitting in your project into all those hidden moments in the day. Instead of twiddling your fingers when you’re waiting for someone, you can pop onto that quilt and stitch one more line.
The more you time yourself, the more aware you will be about your limited time. Then hopefully you can avoid adding more pressure to your plate by buying more fabric and craft supplies. Our ability to create is limited, always, by the amount of time we have to do work.
I hope this time management discussion has helped you to tackle your unfinished quilts!
Today I am receiving my first galley of my book Leah Day’s Goddess Quilts. I’m so excited! If you’d like to be notified for a preorder, you can sign up to be emailed immediately when preorders begin. Click Here to join our preorder list.
More Hello My Quilting Friends Podcast Episodes:
- #115 – Ten Steps to Finishing Your UFOs
- #114 – Priority is Singular!
- #113 – Celebrating Ten Years in Business!
- #112 – Back from July Vacation
- #111 – Unpacking from Quilt Fantastic
- #110 – The Game of Perfection
- #109 – A Short Story from Quilst
- #108 – Organize and Decorate Your Sewing Space with Stephanie Socha
- #107 – 7 Reasons Why I DO Want and Need a Longarm
- #106 – Can I Become a 1 Project Person?
- #105 – Time Lapse Quilting with Todd DuBay
