Hey Everyone, welcome back to Stash Blasting Wednesday. I am changing my focus a bit and trying to get some of my projects completed and stash used up. Over the past few months I have made quite a few blocks and quilts but have not finished them and I need to focus on completing items rather than starting. I will still throw in some new things from now to the end of the year just to keep it interesting.
My Spring Fling Shuffle Block Quilt needs a backing and I have struggled with what to use since I made it a few months ago. I told myself there was no way that I was buying fabric for a backing when I had a whole stash sitting here in my studio. The problem was that nothing seemed to go with the top that was in my stash – I didn’t have a colour that matched or even a design.
Finally one day in the summer I was rummaging through one of the drawers looking for something else and discovered that I had a layer cake of this very fabric line. Yahoo! I now had something to make the backing out of and with the fat eighths that were left from the top it would be easy peasy.
A layer cake consists of 40 pre cut 10″ x 10″ squares of fabric – enough for 2 backings with what I had left over from the top. That is good because I still have shuffle blocks leftover as well and need to use them up.
Some of the layer cake fabrics
I laid out the blocks on the design wall until I came up with a layout that I liked.
20 squares on the design wall
I started sewing them together and decided to make 4 corners with what I had. This meant I had to cut the green row in half.
Four corners made
Then I added in two more pieces to join each corner.
Top and bottom made
And finally a strip in the middle to join the top and bottom. The quilt top is 43″ x 50″ and the backing is 46 ½″ x 54 ½″. I didn’t want it hugely bigger than the top as I didn’t want to loose too much of the backing fabrics and my design.
Back completed
This took me no time to whip up the other morning especially since there was very little cutting involved since I used the 10″ squares for most of the piece. That certainly is a bonus to using the pre cut pieces.
Now to sandwich the layers and quilt it. Maybe I’ll get to it next month.
Happy Quilting!
