Peranakan Tiles Inspired Applique Quilt No. 2

Another project that converts hard tiles into soft quilts. Includes free vector and printable cut files!

Sew, Jahit Peranakan Tile Applique Quilt Cover Photo

I've written about how I came to love the aesthetics of the Peranakan culture in an earlier blog post about my first Peranakan Tiles quilt, inspired by the original floor tiles of the heritage shop lot that is now the Peranakan Tiles Gallery of Singapore.

This time, the inspiration came from a much less historic venue - the Asia-Pacific headquarters of Twitter in Singapore - more specifically, the floors of its lunch area slash multi-functional space (Source: Asiaone.com).

Sew, Jahit Peranakan Tile Applique Quilt

The Pattern

As before, I used the Canvas Workspace application that came with my Brother ScanNCut to trace the tile design and simplified it so that it becomes more manageable to applique. The blocks are identical in pattern with four different colour schemes - blue, green, purple and pink, as shown below.

Peranakan tiles pattern in blue, green, purple, and pink.

Click below to download the SVG and PNG (printable) cut files:

Sew, Jahit Peranakan Tiles 2 - Cut Files

.zip

Download ZIP • 129KB

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Note! The SVG and PNG cut files are prepared for raw edge applique, and include seam and overlap allowances. Read on for the stacking sequence.

The Dimensions

Without modifying the image sizes in the above cut files, the blocks will be 32 cm x 32 cm before piecing (i.e. including seam allowance). If you are piecing all the blocks together before sandwiching and quilting (i.e. quilting the regular way), then you have 1 cm seam allowance to piece your blocks in order to get 30 cm x 30 cm finished blocks.

However, I did this using the quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) method that had small amounts of the batting sewn into the seams. Therefore, some dimension of the fabric will be taken up in the fold around the slightly thicker seam due to the batting sewn into it. As such, I used only 0.7 cm (or a quarter-inch) seam allowance during piecing, in order to still get 30 cm x 30 cm finished blocks.

My finished quilt has an inner white border of 12 cm width and an outer batik border of 6 cm width, all around. The overall finished quilt measured 156 cm x 186cm.

Peranakan Tile applique quilt measurement

The Materials

As this project uses a fair amount of fusible web, I recommend using 100% cotton fabrics to achieve good fuse. As for the batting, I recommend using thin batting because the batting will form part of the seams in the QAYG method that I will be using in this tutorial, so thin batting will reduce bulk. If you are piecing the blocks together per conventional method, then any batting type will do.

For the backing, I used two of the printed batik fabrics I purchased from Semarang, Indonesia.

Here are the required yardage to make the quilt top in the dimensions described above (assuming width of fabric is 110 cm or 45 inches):

(These yardage include moderate allowance as buffer for gaps between cut shapes and a mistake or two. The illustration of each shape can be found in the following section.)

Light Grey Background: 2½ meter or 2¾ yard

"Corner Brown" pieces: 1 meter or 1 yard

"Strip Black" pieces: 1¾ meter or 2 yards

"Emblem" pieces:¼ meter or ¼ yard or a fat quarter

"Emblem Petal" pieces: ½ meter or ½ yard

Light Blue "Corner Colour" pieces: ½ meter or ½ yard

Light Green "Corner Colour" pieces: ½ meter or ½ yard

Light Purple "Corner Colour" pieces: ½ meter or ½ yard

Light Pink "Corner Colour" pieces: ½ meter or ½ yard

Dark Blue "Strip Colour" pieces: ½ meter or ½ yard

Dark Green "Strip Colour" pieces: ½ meter or ½ yard

Dark Purple "Strip Colour" pieces: ¼ meter or ¼ yard or a fat quarter

Dark Pink "Strip Colour" pieces: ¼ meter or ¼ yard or a fat quarter

The Process

Note: In the tutorial below, I used a variation of the quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) method where small amounts of the batting is sewn into the seams. You may of course, do it the regular way i.e. piecing the top first and then quilt with full batting and backing layers.

The yardage requirements stated below assume width of fabric is 110 cm (45 inches) and include moderate allowance as buffer for gaps between cut shapes and a mistake or two.