Red Sky at Night Quilt - Cutting Your Fabric
I would be the last person to call myself organised or orderly. I'm more your chaotic, anxious artist type, and usually I dive into a quilt without much of a plan or a thought for yardage or piece numbers. But Red Sky at Night was different. I knew that the key for enjoying this quilt for me would be getting into a rhythm, having things organised and easily at hand, making the decisions early and then getting lost in each step. And for that, I needed to be prepared. And so, I counted the shapes carefully, planned the various units, broke it down into numbers of squares and rectangles. This week, I started another Red Sky at Night quilt, and I have all my pieces cut and sorted into ziplock bags and ready for sewing. It makes me feel so motivated and eager! Let me show you how I've organised my Red Sky at Night Quilt.
Settling on a Colour Palette
Last week, I was so sure I'd settled on a beautiful quilt palette of spring florals and solids, and a navy background, but then, while writing the blog post for choosing a colour palette for Red Sky at Night, I offhandedly mentioned a navy and low volume version. That night, I couldn't get navy and white out of my head! So, after reminding myself that I was making this quilt for me, I worked for myself, and I could do whatever I liked (I'm not sure why I need that reminder, but I definitely do!), I decided to change course and started bringing out my low volume scraps again. I weighed up using the Navy Grunge fabric as my background or main fabric, but after playing around on the drawing app Procreate, I decided to have the white-based prints as the background, or "light" colour in the pattern, and navy as the "dark".
I recoloured the scrappy green and blue version in the 'Choosing Colours' post, and kept these shades in place while thinking through how I would colour the EPP blocks. I think they actually look really lovely with a bit of variation, don't you?
Cutting from Scraps
The next thing I did was pull out my scraps. Cutting this quilt from scraps takes much more time than cutting from yardage, so I wanted to tackle the scraps first, and have the quick strip and square cutting from the bolt of navy as my reward.
So many of my scraps look like these pieces below, with random 'bites' taken out of them! Instead of working my way first through cutting all of the largest squares, and the next size down, and then the next, like you would with yardage, I actually worked on getting best use from my fabric scraps. This scrap fit multiple size shapes on it, and I cut a 4 1/2" square first, then a 4", and then from what little was left, I could squeeze out some 2" and 1 1/2" shapes. I didn't make a goal of completely using up each scrap, but once scraps are nearly done, I find it satisfying finish them up and throw out the last threads. It's a great way to tidy up my scrap baskets! As I cut, I made piles of each size square and rectangle, occasionally counting the pile, and then putting it in a ziplock bag when I'd made the right amount.
Cutting My Yardage
The Red Sky at Night pattern has different cutting instructions depending on whether you're cutting from scraps like I have above, or cutting from yardage, which allows you to cut strips first (and to sew some of those strips together, before you cut them into units). But when one of your colours is yardage, and the other from scrap, you need to follow the scrap cutting instructions for both.
I cut the yardage of navy fabric into strips first, following the strip-cutting chart in the pattern. It's so easy with a huge piece of yardage to be in 'strip cutting mode' before cutting those strips into smaller pieces! Then I packed the excess away and cut all of the strips into pieces, following the scrap instructions, so that I could sew them to my scrappy-cut low volume pieces.
The quick-view shape chart in the pattern was so handy to have printed out and next to me so I could quickly reference it as I was cutting my strips into squares, and check off each size as I finished cutting them.
All up, cutting took me a little over a full work day - a big job! But now my shapes are all cut and organised into ziplock bags, complete with their labels that I printed from the Red Sky at Night Pattern, and ready for me to dig through and use over the coming weeks. And my fabric is even all packed away and my desk is tidy! It makes me feel calm and certain and keen and READY to enjoy sewing this beautiful quilt. And, I feel just giddy about my navy and white choice - proof that a last minute change of mind is completely ok. ;P
Make Red Sky at Night Quilt with us!
Next week, I'm going to start following the instructions for making the first of the common units, shared across the quilt, units like the checkerboard and stripe. It's going to be so fun and easy sewing all of my little squares and rectangles together in one go, and then they're ready for whenever I need them in a block! I can't express enough how great it is to sew a sampler quilt this way.
If you haven't yet, grab your copy of the pattern and enjoy sewing this beautiful sampler quilt with me!
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