Cutting Directional Prints for Triangles

It happens to all of us quilters - we come upon a quandary in our quilt making and we just don't know how best to cut our fabric to make it do what we want. We don't want to experiment with our precious (and expensive) fabric, so we just muddle along.

The best tip I give my workshop students is to practice on paper first! To help them feel confident in learning a new technique, I bring along construction paper so they can practice first, or second or third - until they get it right. It's only paper!

Here is a block that uses a directional print. It's the center of my Stacked Hearts pattern. That navy Kaffe Fassett fabric is out of print and I didn't want to make a mistake. I didn't want the fans to go sideways when I cut my squares.

So, I practiced on scrap paper first! Let me show you. I cut two squares of paper (probably 4"; I didn't take note of that part - it doesn't matter). I drew vertical lines on the squares. Then I cut them as shown in a "mountain" cut - from bottom left to top right in first square; from top left to bottom right in second square (on the right). DON'T MOVE THEM yet.

I labeled them A-D as shown. Now it's time to shuffle them. Let's see this using the navy fabric in the block above:

Triangle A will go at the top left of the block. Triangle C will go at the top right of the block. Compare to Hearts block above.

Triangle B will go to the bottom right of the block. Triangle D will go at the bottom left.

Let's look at a quilt I made about 20 years ago and was rejected by one magazine but welcomed by another (and put on the cover!). It uses stripes in the setting triangles.

Spring Bloomers

Same method of cutting squares (once you know the size of the squares). The SIDE setting triangles are cut from a larger square (into fourths).

I think I've said enough for today. I'll be back (maybe Wednesday) with some more samples. Especially as we look at how directional prints behave in half-square triangle units in a single block.