I’m a sucker for polka dots. I just love them. When I saw this jelly roll of polka dots somehow it just wound up coming home with me.
![](http://www.brownpaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Dots-quilt-1024x907.jpg)
I’ve had that jelly roll for awhile now, trying to figure out what to do with it. Last year when I took a class from Bill Kerr of Modern Quilt Studio I saw this book and snatched it up, thinking it was the perfect solution to my jelly roll problem.
![](http://www.brownpaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Book-880x1024.jpg)
However once I bought the book and looked at the pattern more closely I figured out that this quilt was made with 3.5″ cut squares and not the 2.5″ squares I’d get from using my jelly roll. That’s ok, I thought, I’ll just figure out how to do it with smaller squares. How hard can it be??
Well kind of a project, as it turns out. I had to change both the polka dot parts from 3.5″ cut to 2.5″, as well as change the white part from 2″ cut to 1.5″ to keep a nice difference between the two sections. The construction method on this quilt is interesting too – it’s done on a diagonal rather than horizontally/vertically, so it is not easy to just draw up.
My first attempt was using graph paper. I wound up having to tape a bunch of pieces together to make it big enough. If you look closely you might note the use of the Pythagorean Theorem on this page – I was trying to figure out how large this thing was going to be. Math in the wild!
![](http://www.brownpaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/large-paper-pattern-763x1024.jpg)
Once I got it all drawn up I figured out – very manually I might add – that this design would use only about 2/3s of the polka dot squares I had already cut up from the jelly roll. That seemed like a waste, so I wanted to resize the design. Redrawing this thing seemed like a really large task, so I started looking for computerized options. I tried EQ8, but it will only let you do a maximum 24×24 square grid which was WAY too small. I use Excel a lot in my day job, so as I thought about ways of making a grid on a computer Excel came to mind. I resized the rows and columns to equal pixel sizes to make my grid and started drawing.
![](http://www.brownpaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Pattern-from-Excel-868x1024.jpg)
I wound up making several versions, working out different sizes. It was still pretty labor intensive but much easier than drawing it by hand. This technique was a good discovery and I’ll be using it again in the future.
From there it was a lot of piecing. The piecing wasn’t hard and there aren’t many seams to line up, but the smaller squares and strips made for more sections.
![](http://www.brownpaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Piecing-squares-1024x914.jpg)
Here it is partially pieced. This was two of the four sections. As I said, the construction technique is interesting – it is kind of like a two sided log cabin. Also, as my polka dot fabrics had white in them I used a grey (actually RJR Silver) rather than white to make sure I kept a good definition between the strip sections.
![](http://www.brownpaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/partially-pieced-top-1024x1001.jpg)
And then the final top assembled:
![](http://www.brownpaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Finished-top-1024x1024.jpg)
It was a lot of work, but it came out great and I learned some useful new techniques that I will use again.
Now on to quilting! This guy is on my Q2’19 FAL list, so I better get quilting if I’m going to finish it this month.
Wow! Those dots have a lot of impact! Thanks for walking through your process–very interesting and I’m completely impressed! I really like the gray/silver sashing.