Easy Stack Quilts: Fast, Fun & Fabulous Kaleidoscope Quilts for Fabric Lovers

By Paula Doyle

“This versatile method speeds up the quilt-making process while also yielding truly innovative designs”—from the author of Mini-Mosaic Quilts (Publishers Weekly).

Learn how to make kaleidoscope quilts using large-scale print fabrics! Easy Stack is a quick-cutting, fabric-efficient way to make great kaleidoscope quilts that are rotary cut and machine pieced. Using only 4 fabric repeats and easy-to-cut strips, you can create 3 kinds of fun and unique blocks. Then play with 8 setting options—with 4 quilt sizes from crib to king for each option—to create an endless variety of quilts. Get the most out of the large-scale fabrics you love!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781617455483

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I have always loved large-scale print fabrics. Whenever I go into quilt shops, I’m drawn to the racks of these prints. I know I am looking at something that will be here for only a short season; next season, there will be another equally beautiful but totally different selection of fabrics. For this reason, I cannot stop myself from purchasing some yardage (usually three yards) for a future and yet-to-be-planned quilt creation if I fall totally in love with anything. Once I get the fabric home, I try to get right to it. But all too often I put the fabric away in my stash, where it used to linger in perpetual closet limbo next to a few fabric lengths given to me by well-meaning friends and family members. Well, no more—thanks to Easy Stack!

A couple of years ago, I had reached the end of a major quilt project and was convalescing from breast cancer treatment. My friend Margaret Unite, who works at my local quilt shop, gave me a length of beautiful Effervescence fabric (designed by Amelia Caruso for Robert Kaufman Fabrics) and challenged me to make something with it. I had developed the idea of Easy Stack several years earlier and decided to make a few of the Four-Patch blocks from the fabric she had given me.

As I was unable to stand for very long, I decided to tear the length of fabric in half so I could rotary cut the half-width stacks (only 21˝–22˝across instead of the full width of 44˝–45˝) from a seated position. I found myself quickly immersed in a happy haze of stacking, cutting, and stitching; I delighted in choosing from the multiple design possibilities for each block. By the end of the day, I had a design wall full of stunning blocks that looked like millefiori jewels. The joyous thing was that each of the blocks was unique despite being made from only one fabric.

By the next day that quilt top was almost finished, and I started looking at all my treasured stash fabrics as potential Easy Stack quilts. Many of those fabrics are featured in the quilts in this book. For most of the quilts, I used just one fabric to make the Easy Stack blocks, but for some I combined blocks made from many different fabrics.

Easy Stack is simple, quick, versatile, and very fabric efficient—and it produces stunning and unique results. But most of all, Easy Stack is fun! My stash is now under control, and I have a permanent reason to indulge my love of large-scale print fabrics when I find something new at the quilt shop.

CHAPTER ONE

Easy Stack Basics

Easy Stack quilts use large-scale, roller-printed fabrics to make simple kaleidoscope blocks (see Roller-Printed Fabric, at right). You can make the blocks for Easy Stack quilts by stacking and aligning four repeats of a print before rotary cutting into squares, rectangles, or triangles.

Roller-Printed Fabric

Except for batiks and digital print fabrics, most of the printed quilting fabrics available in quilt shops are roller printed.