Blast of Color
38” x 38”
Designed and made
by Heidi Pridemore
This month Accuquilt
introduced a new GO! Qube Companion set called Angles. They sent us a set to
play with for this month’s free project. I have to say that the shapes that are
included in the new Angles companion set are some of my favorite shapes to
design with. So coming up with an idea for this month’s project was an easy
task. The Color Blast pattern includes both die-cutting and traditional cutting
instructions. The pattern is free and available from The Whimsical Workshop.
You can download the free pattern at www.TheWhimsicalWorkshop.com along with our past free patterns.
First I had to find the
right fabrics for the job. If you know me and our designs at The Whimsical
Workshop, then you know the brighter the fabrics the better. I also love mixing
my bright fabric with dark backgrounds to really make the colors pop. I had a
fat quarter bundle by Lib Elliott and Andover fabrics called Tattooed and I have
holding on to them for a special little project. I started with 15 Fat Quarters
from the collection and black solid fabric for my background. For this project only
part of each Fat Quarter is used so another options would be to use up smaller
pieces of fabric for each shape and make a scrappy quilt. Sky’s the limit on
how scrappy this quilt can get with this method!
Since this project had to
be made during our Studio’s busiest time, I decided to keep the project small,
but it would be very easy to enlarge it by using the larger sets of Go! Qube
and Companion dies.
When I started the design
for Color Blast I knew wanted to combine the original dies that came in the GO!
8 inch Qube set with several of the dies from the new GO! 8 inch Companion Angles
set. I used this as my starting point for my design. I also wanted to show you
that you can make different finished size blocks by adding more units to the
block. Instead of four units for an 8” finished block, I used nine units for a
12” finished block.
The first unit to make
for the color blast block using the new Angles set will be the Kite Block. This
unit is going to become the corner units for our blocks. The new angle die cuts
the pieces so the corners are angled and they fit together without any “dog
ears” of fabric that have to be trimmed up later. This makes lining up the two
shapes very easy and creates a very accurate unit once sewn. I always turn to
my GO! Electric cutter when I have a project with triangles because it is so
much more accurate than hand cutting.
Note for the side
triangle pieces in the Kite Unit, you will need one triangle that slants to the
right and one triangle that slants to the left for the background pieces. They
are mirror image of each other. When die cutting these pieces, cut half of the
pieces with the fabric right side up and the other half of the pieces with the
fabric right side down to create the mirror image triangles. If you are
following the traditional cutting instructions we have included a template for
each side.
Make four sets of kite
units for the blocks and 1 set of kite units for the border corners as shown in
the instructions.
Next up is to make the
side units. These are made by sewing together two rectangles, one of color and
one of the background (in our case the black fabric). These rectangles are cut
from the die in the original 8” Qube set. Make four sets of center units for
the blocks.
Now we are ready to
assemble the blocks. Each block is made
up of four Kite corners, four side units and one 4 ½ square also cut from the
original GO! 8” Qube set.
My first thought was to make each block scrappy, but in the end I decided to match the fabrics for each frame. I took a picture of both layouts so you can decide which one you want to do.
When sewing the units
together into rows, press towards the center unit (rectangle unit) in each of the three rows,
this will help you line up the pieces when you sew the unit rows together to
make the block.
For this quilt you will
need to make four 12” finished blocks from the assorted fat quarters as
directed on the pattern.
Next up, we need to make
the Triangle-in-a-Square units for the sashing. The side units are the same as
the ones used for the kit blocks and the triangle shape is another new die from
the Angles set. You will need to make four sashing units total.
Sew one sashing strip from
the instructions to the top of each sashing unit. Two of these will become the
vertical sashing strips. Sew together the two remaining sashing strips and one
4 ½” square to make the horizontal sashing strip.
Now we are ready to sew the four blocks
and sashing strips together for the quilt top. Once sewn together the sashing
strip units will form a star at the center of the quilt top.
For the scrappy border, cut four 2 ½”
squares from each of the fifteen different fat quarters. Lay out the one of
each fifteen different color squares in a pleasing manner to make one scrappy border.
Repeat the color layout for the remaining three scrappy borders.
Sew the squares together into one row
and sew the pieced row to one background border,to complete one outer border.
Repeat to make four of outer borders.
Now you are ready to sew the borders
and corner blocks to the center unit to complete the quilt top.
In this month’s pattern, we included two
options for the binding strips. There is enough fabric to cut the binding from
the assorted fat quarters to make a scrappy binding as shown here. We also included
instructions to cut a binding from the background fabric which is shown in the
image at the top of this post. As always I would love to see your projects, please
send them along your projects to us at info@thewhimsicalworkshop.com
and we can 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
