Here are the basic blocks in my “Gnomes Spring Laundry Day” quilt. The Square in a Square block and the Tree with 2 Bars both finish at 8 inches square. The laundry on the line strip is the width of fabric x and will finish at 4 inches wide.
I used Electric Quilt 8 to design the quilt. (See my previous post). The tree in the right hand block looked like it was going to be easy…except it wasn’t! EQ8 provides 3 directions for 3 ways to make blocks—rotary cutting, cutting templates and foundation piecing. This is the first time I have used all three to make a block.
I usually pick the rotary cutting option. But this time it asked me to cut the tree with 66 degree angles at the base. Right. 60 degrees would be a piece of cake. In fact I have a stack of rulers which can do that easily. My next idea was try altering the block so I could cut it with the Tri Recs rulers. It was a great idea. I found the Tri Rec instruction sheet in my box of specialty rulers but the rulers themselves were not to be found in any of the usual places. So that wasn’t going to work.
It was down to printing the foundation patterns or cutting a template for the tree. I did print the pattern but it looked like I would be wasting a lot of fabric with the foundation piecing.
So here’s what I did. I cut a template for the tree using template plastic and used the rotary cutting instructions for the tree trunk, the light blue patches in the block and the yellow and orange bars.
I’ve learned that it is a good idea to make a single block to check the instructions before cutting all the pieces. Unfortunately, I have found math errors in the EQ8 cutting instructions twice recently. In the tree block it said to cut the trunk 1 7/8 inches. It should have read 1 5/8 inches. Since I had printed the foundation piecing pattern used that to check the measurements of all the pieces using that block. It can easily be done in the computer program or you can also just the print block option in the EQ8 program (See below).
I never had any problems with the measurements in the cutting instruction in EQ8 in the past. The first time it happened a few weeks ago, I thought it was just a fluke. Both times the instructions were 1/4 inch too large. Having had had it happen twice, I recommend using the print block option and checking the finished measurements carefully before you cut all your fabric.
This is the quilt block I modified, printed from EQ8. (It’s not to scale, so you won’t be able to use it).
So, the tree was a challenge. But doable with a variety of cutting methods. Off now to cut all the fabric for the quilt.