Friday, March 22, 2013

Double Layer Cake Quilt

No, not an eating cake...a fabric cake!I've been cutting fabric, and sewing blocks for a Double Layer Cake quilt for my brother. It will be king size (100 blocks plus borders) and will be for their bedroom...the room I made the black drapes with herringbone white/black trim.They are scrappy...and I'm using load of the black on white and the white on black fabric from my stash. So, this is also a good stash-busting kind of project.
The blocks are nine inches finished. They begin with a large stack of 10-inch squares of fabric. Each of these squares is cut into two pieces...a 3.5" x 10 inch...and a 6.5" x 10 inch. (sorry no photo before sewing back together)
 
The stacks of fabric pieces are shuffled to mix them up...and then these two pieces are sewn back together...making a new stack of blocks that are 9.5" x 10". They are mixed up so that you don't sew two "matching" fabric back together...how dumb would that be?...but, it has to be said. Hugs!
 
 Next, rotate the blocks...and cut into two pieces that are 5" x 9.5". Each of these new pieces now has two fabric in them...because they share a piece from both of the previous fabrics.
 
Shuffle the stack again, divide the stack in half...rotate one half so that the smaller square from the half's is towards the outside on each stack.
 
 Sew these together, and you'll have a stack of blocks that not measure 9.5" square.
The Double Layer Cake block is complete. 
 
Assemble in rows, then sew the rows together to form the center of the quilt. Add borders if you like.
Layer the quilt top with batting and a backing fabric...and quilt this sandwich of layers. Lastly, finish off the raw edge with a binding...and you have a quilt! Here is a computer rendition of the idea...using only four types of fabric...and I'm using about fifteen (I just didn't want to work that hard on the laptop).
I'll be sewing my rows all weekend!
It takes some time and effort...but is an easy-quick block to create.
I stitches cut, stacked, stitched, ironed, re-stacked, shuffled, stitched, ironed...and now have 100 blocks done. It took me two days...and that's not all I have done.
 
 I also got a little CQ Stitching done yesterday too! The letter "S" was stem-stitched on one of my unfinished-object (UFO) blocks.
 
Photobucket

1 comment:

Wendy said...

I made a Christmas quilt this way that needs to be quilted. This is a great pattern for layer quilts.