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!!!