Hey Everyone, welcome back to Stash Blasting Wednesday.

I am changing things up a little bit this week. Spring arrived today and I have had this wonderful spring like fabric sitting in my drawer that I bought way back in Australia intending to do something with it but of course never did. We all have so many great intentions and ideas when we buy fabric don’t we.

I thought I had bought myself a bundle of fat quarters but it turns out that this bundle was actually a bundle of fat eighths. A fat eighth is half of a long quarter and measure approximately 9 x 21 inches. I think I might have been a bit disenchanted by them as I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them after I figured out they were not as large as I thought.

Tonight I had a brain wave of what I could do with them and there are many – 40 to be exact. I took the black and white ones out as I felt they didn’t fit in with what I want to do.

This modern shuffle block uses a long block rather than a square block. I decided that 11 fabrics will be in each block which of course gives me 11 blocks. Not quite sure what the block will measure when I have it sewn together so will keep you posted on that once I have one made.

The hardest part has arrived – which eleven fabrics do I want out  of the 40 for the block.

After selecting my fabrics I drew out the block perimeter on a large piece of paper then divided it into sections. These sections will make up the pieces in the block.  I suggest making two templates as you will need one as a map for where to position each piece and the other one is going to be cut up.

Draw the template within the perimeter of the piece of fabric

Cutting the Fabric into Pieces

I figured the easiest way to cut up the fabrics would be to just lay my template on top of the stack of fabric and cut. I didn’t want to cut through 11 fabrics at once though so made another 2 templates. Having 3 templates to cut up I could have 3 stacks of fabric. This will certainly made it easier to cut with less possibility of the fabric shifting under the template.

Number the pieces from one to eleven making sure to sew the pieces together in an order that will create sections and then the sections can be sewn together.

Number pieces for easy assembly & identification

Make sure the fabric has been pressed well and lies nice and flat.

Layer the fabrics in the order you wish and then pin the template to the top of each stack. Make sure the stack of fabrics is well aligned. I had a total of 3 stacks.

Pin the template to the stacks of fabric

Cut all the pieces using the rotary cutter and ruler. Leave all the pieces in position with the template on.

Pieces cut with template still in place

The fabrics are cut – now what?

Tune in next week to find out how to shuffle the pieces so each fabric has a different position in each block. After that learn how to sew them together in a logical order to create the block.

Happy Quilting!

I shared this post on Fibre Artist Journey’s Design Wall Weekend.