I HAD to piece!!

This past weekend, I realized that I NEEDED to do some piecing!! For the last few weeks, I have been sitting at Julio (my JUKI sit-down long-arm machine) doing thread painting and quilting.

I needed some time with Juanita (my JUKI home machine)!!

The week before, I had visited our guild Charity Bee and had picked up a stack of 185 six-inch squares…..

Yes….there is quite a variety there!!

I started looking for patterns and stumbled upon a pattern from “Theresa Down Under”

….and focused on the “Whirlpool” block…..

I did make one change to the design….. Instead of making the “diamond” units in two pieces (2 half-square triangle blocks), I chose to use one rectangle with the “snowball” unit on each end.

I decided to make the blocks 8-inches and to set them in a 4×5 format.

Now it was time to figure out exactly what I needed to cut.

I do this planning in three different parts.

First, I count the number and size of FINISHED units for each BLOCK……

Note that the 8 Background squares on the last row will be used to finish the corners of the print rectangles.

NEXT….. I plan the CUT sizes for each of the pieces…..

At this stage, I note how many I can get from each strip of fabric or 6-inch square.

Finally, I multiply those numbers by the number of blocks…..

AND, I have finally learned to calculate the background yardage needed……

Before I started making this last calculation, I would often run out of background before I finished the quilt!!!

I picked out the 40 squares that I would need and added a background fabric……

I chose to use my Accuquilt to cut most of the background pieces, starting with the 2.5-inch strips…..

Then I folded each strip and sub-cut it into 2.5-inch squares……

This was SO fast and within a short time I had all of these cut and ready to go……

Now it was time to cut the squares up into the needed pieces. Since I needed a series of rectangles that were 4.5 x 2.5-inches, I placed the squares on the Accuquilt and cut them into 2.5-inch strips…..

It was easy work to trim them to 4.5-inches….

So, everything is cut and ready to go…..look out Juanita……here I come!!!