Magic Stax Quilt Finished

You may remember this blog post from October 2019. I'm updating it with my finished quilt! 

I received this bundle of 25 fat quarters from the Michael Miller Tropical Batiks collection in early 2019. I couldn't believe the motifs and the rich colors.

Fat quarter bundle of Tropical Batiks by Michael Miller

Oh. You want me to open it up and show you all the fabrics? I can do that!

Tropical Batiks in all their glory!

I have worked with batiks for about 23 years and find that the simpler the pattern, the more the fabric gets to do the work.

These are fat quarters and that challenges me to make the best use of the fabric. I developed a series of patterns in the early 2000s that I call Magic Stax. They all start with 10-1/2" squares and are stacked in a small pile and are cut at the same time (ie, stacks of 5 or 6 or 9). Then the patches are shuffled, swapped and stitched. I had several different quilts published in quilt magazines and decided to revisit one pattern called Pickup Sticks.

No templates. Just stacks of squares. Measure and cut - that's it.

Pickup Sticks was made in 2011 with a pile of bright batiks from a variety of vendors. I had some black and white no-name batik left from some workshops and decided to go with that.

Pickup Stix

This is a picture of a piece of freezer paper cut into 4 wedges. Under that freezer paper is a stack of four 10-1/2" squares (this works with 10" squares, also). I measured in the same number (as listed in the pattern) on each side to get this uniform, slanted X.

Freezer paper ironed to a stack of 4 squares

 

A stack of four squares cut at the same time.

Peeled freezer paper away

Now we shuffle the patches. Note that the cut runs from top left to bottom right. I call this Block #1.

Same fabrics in each stack, but in different order

Time to add pre-cut strips. Looks similar to stained glass (to me). The slant on this stack goes from top right to bottom left. This is Block #2.

Adding strips to the blocks that slant the other way

And let's revisit that first stack of Block #1. This only needs to be trimmed at the edges with the black strips. Careful stitching is required. The key is to match those horizontal strips when you add the center strip!

Block #1 before trimming the excess black strips.

I stitched 16 blocks into four horizontal rows, but haven't finished the stitching (as you can see). Since I only have fat quarters, I'm going make a pieced border using the remainder of the fat quarters. I found some batiks for the border to make this finish to 47" x 47".

Pickup Sticks using Tropical Batiks by Michael Miller

You can find my pattern for Stained Glass Pickup Sticks at my Etsy shop, too!