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- Layer cakes. They're a fast and easy way to buy fabric. Colours and the patterns all coordinate. So why is it so tricky
to sew them all together? Here are nine fast and easy quilt blocks that you can sew with 10-inch squares, and stay to the end where
I reveal a cool trick on how to pull it all together and make some unique
and interesting designs. So stick with me and I'll show you. (bright cheerful music) Hi, I'm Karen Brown of
Just Get It Done Quilts. I give you tips, tricks, and strategies to help you make the quilt
that you want to make. And if you enjoy this
video, I would appreciate it if you hit that
(graphic chimes) subscribe button. My first five StashBuster
videos were all based on fat quarters and viewers
kept sending me these emails. "Can you do one for layer cakes?" And I thought, well, challenge accepted. Four months and many
trials and errors later, I now have a quick and easy system so that you can have your
layer cake and eat it too. So last week in my
"Deep Dive on Pre-Cuts," I found that there are many
issues with layer cakes. And if you want to watch
my video on pre-cuts, I'm going to put the
link in the notes below. Sure, they are a nice manageable size and you get a complete line so
you know all the colours match and you know the fabrics work together. But I quickly found out that
not all layer cakes are equal. Some layer cakes have
40 pieces, some have 42, some have only 20, some have only a couple of duplicate fabrics, some
have two, three, four, or even five copies of the same fabric. And the fabric is precious. At a 30% premium, you don't
want to have any wastage. I did a lot of thinking
and a lot of sorting and a lot more thinking
and a lot more sorting. Honestly, I think my brain almost broke. Then one day the solution
just flashed before me. I was going to let symmetry
do all the heavy lifting. (bright cheerful music) So for this method,
you need an even number of rows and an even number of columns so that you have four equal
quadrants to work with. And to make symmetry work for me, I'll need four copies of the same block, one for each quadrant. And to figure out how
many block sets I need, I take the total number of
blocks and divide it by four. And in this example,
I will have 48 blocks, which means I need 12 block sets. If I had chosen a layout 8 by 10, I would need 20 block sets. And if my layout was 6
by 6, I would need nine. (bright cheerful music) Here are nine fast and easy blocks that have little to no wastage. The 1st block has no piecing at all. This is for those
colourful big hero prints that we don't want to cut. Block number 2 is the Rail
Fence with two fabrics and Block number 3 is the
Rail Fence with four fabrics. We have the large 4-Patch and we have the small 4-Patch. We have the HST Block and then
we have the small HST Block. And I've also done a video on
how to make the perfect HST, and I'll link that one in the notes. We have the Flying Geese Block. I've also done a video on Flying
Geese and how to make them, and I'll link that in the notes. And lastly, we have the
Quarter Square Triangle Block. Now you'll quickly realise that there's more
variations of these blocks. You can change their orientation. You can take a two-color
block and make it four colour, and you can even combine block
elements to make your own and play with the orientation
if you feel like it. Now I have instructions on cutting and everything to do with this in a handout that you can
download from my website, Just Get It Done Quilts.
(bright cheerful music) Next, we are auditioning our fabrics and it's just as simple as folding them up against one another and
seeing how they play against one another and
deciding on a quilt block. So I am using fabric here from
three different layer cakes, just to illustrate what different
block layouts you can use. So don't panic if you see
fabrics from different lines. Depending on the number of
squares in your layer cake, you might need to add in some squares from your stash. First, arrange all your fabric by value. You've seen me do do this before, but it's a very good first step. Just take a black and white photo. It doesn't need to be exact. You just want the darkest ones in one pile and the lightest ones in the other pile. This is just so as you're
making your blocks, you can choose from both piles
and get the highest contrast. These choices are made in
the moment as you move along. So in my handout, I have this little guide that tells you how many fabrics you need of each for the block. So for this one, you need two pairs of two different fabrics. On this one, you need
four fabrics the same. And on this one, you need
four different fabrics. So we have actually seen
this pile of fabric before. When I was talking about
organising your UFOs, this was one of the ones
that I stopped making, I didn't like what I was doing, and I put the fabric back into my stash. I just love the fabric, and
I especially love this one. And I do not want to cut these up. So I actually have four of this one. There's two with a sort
of a red background, and there's two with a green background. So that's great. I'm going to keep that as one pile. I have this fabric which I really love, and I have two of them. So I could do the half and the half, or I could do the HST,
and that's another set. And I just fold it over to
remind myself what I'm doing. One of the fabrics I really liked and I bought the fabric line for was this beautiful multi-coloured brown. But I only have one copy of it. I have to use one of the ones
that have four for this one. I'm going to grab two from this pile. And I guess I'll grab a
red one from this one. I'm just going to fold them. As you can see this one, it
doesn't really change that much from this to this. And I'm just going to make a
simple 4-patch out of this one. I've got good contrast
between all four colours and I've got good contrast in the pattern. I'll probably go like this. I'll probably lay it out like that, and that's my first set of four. This fabric has strong
directional elements and this solid fabric has an ombre effect. And I'm lucky enough
that I have two of them, because I think they're a great candidate for the Rail Fence Block. So you're choosing the best
block to go with your fabric. You can use all of one type
of block if you choose, you can use a variation of them. But the key is you're grabbing
four fabrics for each block. (bright cheerful music) So you are making four of every block, but this is the trick. Each block is going to have
a different orientation. So in the block pattern I have provided, I show you how the layout
is slightly different for every single block. I show you where each one
of the fabrics should lie. And I always lay out my
fabrics before I sew. This means I make sure all
the directional fabrics are going in the right direction, and I have everything in its proper spot. And in my in-between stages,
I always lay them back out because I am just shocked at
how easily I can mix these up. I turn them upside down,
I flip them around. It's just amazing. So I always do in-between
layouts just to be sure I'm sewing them in the right orientation. (bright cheerful music) So I pin them to keep my
light blocks together, and soon you have a
stack of your 12 piles. (bright cheerful music) So I have made three block sets
for three different quilts. The monochromatic orange blocks, the complimentary Christmas blocks, and this layer cake called On the Farm. As assortments go, this one is by far the most challenging. It has red, it has a mint
blue, it has a green, and it has an orange, and I
have a huge range of value. And the assortment only gave me one of this bright yellow and orange square. And that's going to draw the attention no matter where it's put. So you start at the centre
(bright cheerful music) and layout your fabrics so that each block lies in the identical
spot in each quadrant. (bright cheerful music) And then I take a picture of the layout. (camera shutter clicks)
I usually do two to three layouts,
just so I have a choice. (bright cheerful music) If you like the layout, then
you sew it all together. (bright cheerful music) Now there's an easier way to do this than physically throwing
them out on a floor or on a design wall. Now you've heard me talk
about PreQuilt before. The quilt that's on my wall in my home studio was made with PreQuilt. And of course I did the PreQuilt Challenge last year with Laura. So in the notes below, I have a link to this master copy of the
No Fail Layer Cake layout. And this has a master of all the blocks that I've talked about and a
number of variations of them. Just click this infinity
button in the corner and press delete,
(keyboard key clicking) and you have a clean work area. I like to edit the
blocks so they're similar to the ones that I've actually made. And I delete any ones that I'm not using. Then I place them one
at a time just randomly in the top left quadrant. There's no particular order. I'm just putting 'em all out. Then we want to click on this magic wand and ta-da!
(quilt chimes) And if you don't like it,
you can rotate the blocks you can move the blocks around, and then you can hit
(quilt chimes) this magic wand as many times as you want until you get a design that you like. And I think I'll go with this one. (bright cheerful music) You could also reverse engineer this and make a design that you like, then make your blocks to match that. You can join PreQuilt for free. This allows you one free design that you can download and print. And if you haven't
checked it out recently, they've added triangle
layouts and layouts on point. Plus they have their own YouTube channel full of tutorials on how to use it. This video is not sponsored
or affiliated with PreQuilt. It's just a tool I find very useful. (bright cheerful music) It's amazing the results
when you let symmetry do the work for you. And because of the secondary
designs that appear, I can do some very interesting
work with the quilting. I'm not sure if I'm going to
do this on my sewing machine or I'm going to wait 'til I have access to a longarm, stay tuned. Now you can truly use this method with all sizes of blocks. So handouts on all these
blocks are available from my website at Just
Get It Done Quilts. I'll leave a link in the notes below. You can also download any of my other free Stashbuster patterns here as well. So if you like this video,
please give it a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe. And if you hit that bell
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at JustGetItDoneQuilts.com. So take care and I'll see you next time. (logo chimes)
