Made in Cherry: A Few Tips and a Mini-tutorial

I wanted to share a few tips and ideas that I discovered while working on my Made in Cherry (Echo) quilt. I thought they might be helpful for someone getting ready to tackle this pattern or maybe even someone currently working on on. Due to the fact that the pattern makes a larger size quilt and isn't actually based on a block (although you can, and do, break it down into smaller units) there were a few steps in making the quilt top that were a little tricky and required some creative brain power to figure out the best way to approach them. 

To start, the fabric requirements as written for this quilt end up being a little non-standard for the typical  increments of fabric sold in the U.S. This is of course totally to be expected as the pattern was created by Sarah Fielke, who is an Australian designer, for Lecien, which is a Japanese company. The pattern calls for a half-meter (or 20") of eight different prints.  The way that I adjusted my layout to allow for the use of half-yard cuts was actually very simple. Rather than choosing -8- 20" cuts, I chose -10- half-yard cuts from a bundle I purchased. When it came time to cut my fabric I knew that I needed a total of -180- 4 1/2" squares and -20- 4 7/8" squares, so I simply cut 18 squares from each print at 4 1/2" and 2 squares from each print at 4 7/8". The math actually worked out perfectly this way.

 

Once I had gotten all of my squares cut, it came time to divide the 4 7/8" pieces into triangles to go around the outside of the star points. Since I was working with directional prints and wanted to have them consistently running from top to bottom, I discovered that I need to cut these triangles in a very specific way to ensure that I would have enough pieces with prints running in the correct directions to fill in around the star points. This is because the angles of the star points shift as you move around the star.



I cut the two 4 7/8" squares of each of the 10 prints together, layered one on top of the other. For the directional prints I made sure to flip one of the squares, so that when laid on top of the other, the prints would run perpendicular to each other. After making the diagonal cut, this resulted in having four triangles, two with the print running top to bottom and two with the print running side to side, allowing me to use this print on any of the star points regardless of the alignment of their angle.
  

   

I then laid out my star and made sure that I liked the distribution of the prints overall. Everything looked great, so I began to carefully divide the star into smaller stacks based on Chelsea's recommendations. I labeled each stack with a color-coded post-it and drew a little picture so that I would easily be able to tell where everything went as I started sewing. This may seem like overkill, but for me, the most challenging aspect of making this quilt top was staying organized. Even with this system, I still made a few mistakes that resulted in needing to shift some prints around.

Finally, I thought I would briefly share how I tackled cutting the 43" background square into triangles using a rotary cutter and mat. After measuring and cutting the 43" square, which ended up being a very tight measurement on standard fabric, I folded the square in half and lightly pressed. I then took each corner (on the fold) of this new rectangular shape and brought them together in the center to create a triangle. After pressing the diagonal folds, I then unfolded the triangle, refolded, and pressed the rectangle in half lengthwise to mark the center. With the center and diagonals marked by these new creases, I then lined up a yard stick (or meter stick) from the center point of the rectangle (on the fold)  to one of the corners and cut. I repeated this step on the other side of the rectangle and voila! ended up with four precisely cut triangles. 

I hope this post ends up being helpful for someone and that I didn't put anyone to sleep with the amount of detail! I was able to track down some more background fabric, so I'll be back next week to hopefully share some photos of the finished top.