Tutorial: Make a Map Quilt

Like my Anchorage quilt or Grand Canyon quilt and want to make your own? Here’s the rundown of how I turn a map into a quilt design:

1. Find a source image (very high resolution, around 10,000 px on the short side)
2. Crop and edit image as needed in Photoshop
3. Create 2 identical artboards in Illustrator and place the image on each. One will be the color block and the other will be your quilting block.
4. If your computer runs too slowly with the large image size, create separate files for the color block and quilt block.

Color block

1. On the color block, embed the file and run Object>Object Mosaic.
2. Adjust the Object Mosaic as needed and delete the raster image when you’re happy with the mosaic.
3. Use the Recolor tool to reduce the number of colors or match a palette. If you have Adobe CC, try color.adobe.com for color schemes.
4. Alternately, if you’ll be digitally printing your fabric, split your design into blocks that comply with your fabric printer’s specifications: the best I’ve found are Dharma Trading Company and Spoonflower.

Quilting block

1. Run an advanced color Image Trace. Adjust the number of colors to suit the complexity of the quilting you desire. 10 colors worked well on this image.
2. Expand the traced image. Ungroup the traced objects.
3. Group all paths of the same color using Select>Select Same>Same Fill & Stroke
4. With each color group, change fill color to transparent and apply a stroke.
5. Reduce the number of paths:
   1. By toggling the visibility of the groups on and off, try to eliminate any unneccesary color groups. Thousands of paths can be eliminated this way.
   2. Open the Document Info (object info submenu) panel.
   3. On a small selection of paths (under 500 objects works best), run Wundes’ Select Paths By Size script. I selected paths with Width or Height of 50px or less.
   4. When the script finishes, all the small paths will be selected: delete them or move them to another layer for final review.
   5. Repeat the Select Paths By Size until you’re happy with the remaining paths.
6. Break the quilting design into blocks as needed for your CNC long arm machine. My design could be broken into 11×22″ blocks (6 blocks per quilting section, 9 quilting sections)

Pro tips

• Save often. With large numbers of paths, Illustrator tends to crash without saving a recovery file.