Princess Zelda Quilt Template

I have finished the design and purchased the fabric for Emilie's princess quilt.  I am stepping out of my comfort zone a little bit by adding some flower blocks to the front of the quilt.  The directions for constructing the flower blocks can be found here.  Otherwise, it is the standard square procedure I have used many times in the past.

For Zelda, I am using her likeness from the "Oracle of Ages" and "Oracle of Seasons" video games.  I did not stay true to her original colors as I wanted to have a bit of variation.  Overall, I really like the way the design turned out and I can't wait to see it come together in fabric.

As for the template itself, I want to show how I go about designing my quilts.  I use Microsoft Excel and just fill in the cells with the colors I want them to be.  Once the design is complete, I divide the size of the quilt by the number of squares in the row to see how big the squares need to be.  For this quilt, I want it to be 4 1/2 feet wide, or 54 inches.  So, I divide 54 by 24 and I get 2.25.  I add a half inch to account for the overlap from sewing the fabric together, and I know I need to cut 2.75 inch squares.  The length of the quilt will be 6 ft.

To determine the amount of each color of fabric, I first add up how many squares of each color I will need.  I then determine how many 2.75 inch squares I can expect to get out of a yard of fabric.  36 divided by 2.75 is 13.09, which I rounded down to 12 to account for cutting errors.  Most fabric widths are in the 40 to 44 inch range, so I then divide 40 by 2.75 just to be safe, and I get 14.  12 x 14 is 168, so I can expect to get 168 squares for each yard of fabric.

Finally, I divide the number of squares of each color by 168 to determine how much of each color to purchase.  As you can see from the picture above, I don't need very much of some of the colors, and luckily, I already have some white on hand from previous projects.

Phew, that's a lot of math.  I'm glad I wrote it out, though, so now I have a reference for if I forget how to do it in the future.  It really is easy, though, and the square patterns to design from Nintendo characters are practically endless.  Yay!  Plus, by using the method above, you can make the quilt any size you'd like.  I'll be sure to keep you posted on my progress.