I decided to do the Quilt Along over at Lily's Quilts. We are going to make jumbo Dresden plates - the finished block below measures 30x30. I decided to go whole hog and make the 9 block version.
At first I was planning on using my ancient collection of blues, that is until I pulled them out and discovered that I really didn't like half of them - too gray looking.
So I pulled out all of my odds and ends in rainbow colors. I have some pieces that were my friend's grandmother's, stuff I picked up on clearance at JoAnn's years ago and some newer American Jane fabrics from my stash. I went to the LQS and picked up some oranges, a green and some purples, to round it out. I love them!
Today I cut out all of the necessary wedges. I was nervous about this step. I think it is the first time I have cut out a non-square/triangle shape and it is just going to get worse with the outer sections. I obsessed over it enough that I came up with an even easier than the already easy way Lynne showed.
I printed two templates and taped them to the bottom of my 9.5 inch ruler.
One on each side of the ruler.
Then I just cut a 9 inch wide strip of fabric...
...and lined my templates up with the top and bottom of the fabric
and cut the left side of the wedge.
Then I slid the ruler over, lined up the top, bottom and left side
and cut the right side with my rotary cutter.
Voila! Easy as pie.
I turned the ruler over and kept on cutting.
This is going to be a delicious quilt!
10 comments:
Ingenious! I love it! Unfortunately I haven't got my rotary cutter and mat with me at school; I've been pinning the paper to double layers of fabric and cutting around it with scissors...
Cool technique!
Thank you so much for sharing and your timing is impeccable. I plan on cutting tomorrow. I am going to try your method. PLEASE be sure to share any more ingenious ideas you have about cutting the outside pieces!!! hehehe
Clever idea Leila - I was going to start cutting this weekend so your lightbulb moment has come at just the right time!
Clever idea! My template kept sticking to my ruler when I did mine last night! Wish I'd spotted this first!
I like your idea very much. And I definitely need to have such a nice square ruler. In the meantime I managed to cut the wedges with a paper template and my old sort of primary school ruler, but it would certainly be easier doing it your way :)
You're soo clever!!! Thanks!
This is a great idea, too bad I am down to my last fabric. You should post about it on flickr too!
FRIGGIN' Brilliant! I am going to use this for the rest of Elizabeth Hartman's New Wave quilt pattern that I am making.
FRIGGIN' Brilliant! I am going to use this for the rest of Elizabeth Hartman's New Wave quilt pattern that I am making.
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