Quilt-along: Cutting your fabric

This is one of a series of posts for the Urban Lattice Quilt-along. Join any time!

Today we're cutting into our fabrics.

We'll first start with the triangle pieces. These will end up forming the squares in the quilt. Go ahead and cut out enough 5.75" squares for the size quilt you need. (Details can be found in the materials list.) Remember to give some thought to how much variety you want in your quilt. It's entirely up to you how many fabrics you use for this part of the quilt. For example, I'm using 24 prints for my quilt, so I'll only need one or two squares for each fabric.

When you have your squares cut, slice them in half and set them aside.

Cutting your lattice strips
Next let's tackle the lattice strips. Your lattice pieces need to be 1.5" wide and at least 19" long.  Depending on which size quilt you are making, you'll need anywhere from 12-42 strips.

Cut 1.5" wide strips from your fabric, selvedge to selvedge. You can either cut those strips in half, yielding you two 1.5" x ~21" strips, or you can be Type A like me and trim them to be 19" long if you want to minimize scraps/save fabric. Remember those lines we marked diagonal on the square papers? Those are placement lines for your lattice pieces. But I'm getting ahead of myself....more on that later. When you have your lattice pieces cut, set them aside.

Note: This is not selvedge to selvedge. I just happened to have a 19" piece of fabric.

Okay, now that your strips are cut, let's cut out our background pieces (labeled as B in the drawing below).

You have two options -- using trapezoids or rectangles. Frankly, the rectangles are the easier way to go but I'm going to show you both ways.

Option 1: using trapezoid-shaped background pieces

Option 2: using rectangle-shaped background pieces

Making your trapezoid template
Skip this part if you're opting to use rectangles instead.

We're going to make a trapezoid-shaped template that will make cutting out our trapezoid pieces easier. First, you need something sort of stiff like a piece of template plastic, cardstock, or scrapbook paper. (I taped two pieces of scrapbook paper together.) Draw an 18 inch line. This will be the base of the trapezoid. Then, using the 45 degree line on a quilting ruler, mark two lines at a 45 degree angle from each end of the 18 inch line.

Now that you have the three sides drawn, measure 5 1/2" up from your bottom line and draw a parallel line to finish the trapezoid shape. I've marked the trapezoid lines in yellow in the photo above so you can see what I mean.

Cut out your trapezoid shape and you've got your fancy-shmancy, handy-dandy template.


Cutting your background pieces

Cut your background fabric into 5.5" strips. One yard of fabric will yield seven 5.5" x 36" strips. If you are using the trapezoid template, you will save fabric (and minimize scraps) by flipping the template back and forth along continuous cut yardage. If you opt to just cut rectangles, you should end up with 5.5" x 18" rectangles.

You should be able to get 14 trapezoids or rectangles from each yard. 

Template in white.

 

Hopefully, this all made sense. As always, if you have any questions, please ask!  In the next quilt-along post, I'll show you how to assemble your blocks.