Fox Field Mystery Quilt
Hi friends!
The past two weeks I’ve been working on piecing Tula Pink’s Fox Field Mystery Quilt for Craftsy. The workshop was from a few months ago so this fabric has been sitting in my sewing room tempting me for a while!
The blocks are a take on a log cabin block, starting with a diamond rather than a center square. I realized that the shapes were really similar to pieces I had cut for a few Jaybird Quilts patterns so I pulled out my Sidekick ruler and it worked perfectly for cutting precise diamonds!
I think Tula is an exceptional artist and I adore her fabrics. However, after feeling very frustrated with the pattern for The Butterfly Quilt, I took the time to read everyone’s comments on the Craftsy class before I started. The biggest complaint people had was that their top neutral triangles turned out to be half an inch too small and that the diamond dimensions were never provided.
So…I did a little quilt math (Yay!) and discovered where the inconsistency was. Her math is perfect for exact 2.5″ seams but the jelly rolls strips are slightly larger than 2.5″. To solve that issue, I trimmed my blocks down after each fabric addition.
In case you’re behind on making this mystery quilt too, I’ll show you what I did. After adding the jelly roll strips to all four sides, line up your ruler with the 60 degree line on your ruler along the top seam line, and the 2.25″ line on your seam parallel to the cutting edge. Trim and repeat on the opposite side.
Rotate your block to trim up the two sides. This time you’ll be lining up your 60 degree line on either your newly cut edge. Your 2.25″ line on the ruler should be lined up with the seam parallel to the edge you’re about to trim.
Repeat on the other side and you’ll have a beautifully trimmed block!
You’ll repeat this process with the second set of strips that are added. I know it’s a lot of extra work, but that way all your seams will line up perfectly with each other and the setting triangles. Woot!
So many happy colors.
So as I was piecing all of my blocks together, I noticed one other problem with the pattern. Sigh. I really don’t mean to bad mouth Tula as she’s one of my favorite designers, but I think this will probably be my last Tula Pattern.
The half diamonds on the sides do not account for any seam allowances. I noticed this entirely too late so I’m going to have to live with chopped off points when I add binding. Boo, Hiss. I’m really trying not to be such a perfectionist…
Thankfully, she did account for seam allowance in the setting triangles.
Keeping it real…I accidentally chopped off the point on this diamond and had to do a little surgery. Oops!
Its been too windy to get outside shots so I’ll have to do that another day. In the mean time, Boomer helped me take some photos inside. Thanks, buddy!
Are you a perfectionist too? What do you do when you find a pattern frustrating?