This is the first of a year-long series of posts about the quilts from Modern Patchwork. I'm highlighting a different quilt each month, and will be remaking either a regular size or mini quilt version of each of the book quilts.
I debated in what order I should attack these patterns and ultimately settled on sticking with the same order as the book. That means the first quilt up is Metropolis, which is on Pages 6 - 15 of Modern Patchwork.
The Metropolis quilt measures 75" x 75" and has 9 identical blocks, each 15" x 15", on the front.
The fabrics that I used for this quilt are (in the order they're shown in the photo on Page 7):
- Alexander Henry Dagmar and Dasha prints
- Keiki for Moda Wee Woodland stripe in brown, Free Spirit Spark Gold solid, and Studio E Bloom diamond print
- Kona solids in Brown, Everglade, and Aloe
The negative space is Kona Snow and the binding is another Keiki Wee Woodland stripe in mustard.
The blocks are made using a pretty straightforward piecing technique where pieces are sewn together, the block is rotated and cut in half, and then the block is sewn back together with an additional piece of fabric inserted between the two halves. The cool thing is that, if you follow the instructions in the book, you can make each block with only 9 pieces of fabric and no waste.
When I was desiging the pattern, I sketched out how I wanted the block design to look and then reverse-engineered it, determining in what order the pieces would have to be sewn together to overlap in the way I wanted them to, and exactly how big each of the 9 pieces would have to be to survive all of the cutting and sewing and still be the right finished size.
After I had the block pattern figured out, I used the same sketch as a guide to create a 500% larger version for the quilt back.
These are the mini quilt versions of Metropolis (aka the Alternate Ideas from Page 15). In next Thursday's post, I'll talk about how to use the pattern in the book to make a mini quilt version like this.
