Searching for Cephalopods
42” x 42”
Designed by Heidi
Pridemore
GO! Big Electric Fabric
Cutter (55500)
GO! Qube 6” Block Set (55775)
I don’t know why but I love Octopus! Perhaps
its because they have eight arms and some days I wish I did too so I could get
more done. Maybe it is because they are smart animals that excel at creative
problem solving, a daily requirement for my job. Whatever the reason is, when I
saw “Come Dive With Me” from Windham Fabrics, I fell in love. So this month I
used my GO! Qube Mix & Match
6” Block Set to create a sweet wall
hanging using these darling fabrics. I
placed the diver prints in the borders and the cephalopod prints in the center
so it looks like the divers are searching for the Octopus. This ideas became
the inspiration for the name, “Searching for Cephalopods”.
The pattern for this
month’s project is free from The Whimsical Workshop. You can download the free
pattern at www.TheWhimsicalWorkshop.com along with our past free patterns. We have also included
traditional cutting instructions for this project in the pattern too.
When designing the
project, I laid out the fat quarters by pattern scale and directional prints.
As you can see this group has a lot of directional prints and the scale on
these is pretty small. The scale of the prints made it a perfect group to use
with the GO! Qube Mix & Match
6” Block Set since those dies are pretty small. So I
designed the quilt making sure to use the larger prints as block centers and
the smaller prints in triangles and squares going around them. This helped
showcase the fabrics and balance the design.
First step was to precut all my fabric
into smaller pieces and lay them out on each die before cutting. I find this step
keeps me organized and makes it easier to cut the right shapes from the right
fabrics.
Since there are so many directional
prints in this quilt that I was cutting into triangles, I wanted to share a few
tips on working with directional fabrics with half-square and Quarter Square
triangles. First up, Half-Square Triangles (HST), to cut the HST and have them
all going in the same direction around the block, you need to cut half of the
squares from the upper left to lower right corners and the other half cut from
the upper right to lower left corners to create a mirror image of the print in
half of the triangles. At least hat is how you would cut them traditionally.
Well when using the die
cutter, you need to make sure the direction on the fabric is going in the same
direction on all the squares, then flip half of them upside down, so half the
squares are right side up and half are wrong side up, still the direction of
the print going in the same direction. Then once you cut them you will have two
sets of triangles that are mirror image of each other and will work perfectly
in your block.
For Quarter Square
triangles, they are even easier, you need to make sure all the squares are
going in the same direction, then cut them with the fabric facing up on all the
squares. For each square you will get four triangles, one in each direction. I
like to separate them out by direction and lay them out in block as shown in
the quilt.
Now I am ready to visit the my 8 legged
friends in the deep blue sea with my new wall hanging. As always I would love
to see what you come up with using our pattern. We would love to add you to our
Bragging Rights Page on our website!
Make sure to visit my
blog each month where I will share with you some tips and tricks on cutting and
assembling of the project of the month along with posting the free pattern on
our website The Whimsical Workshop You
can also see our pattern and post at www.accuquilt.com
Until next time…..
Heidi
