Tutorial Tuesday EQ7 How to determine a FQ pattern

I had a “conversation” with a fellow blogger who said she had a hard time trying to figure out Fat quarter friendly patterns in EQ.

here’s MY tip 🙂

So I have this file already- I made a quilt using Riley Blake FQs a while ago

Of course you know how to preview fabric yardage??!!

I went back to the quilt and picked a random color and colored in parts of the block

then checked the yardage again and BINGO! 1/4yd

I tried to color the other part of the block on a different block

well it MIGHT work it says 3/8yd ( I know it works from when I made the quilt) if you aren’t sure maybe sew a block together to test it

I even had the star block without the circle in the middle, but that also showed 3/8yd

but you see how I just colored the whole block.

Now another quilt, simple pinwheel and rail fence quilt

instead of going back and forth several times, I colored one block in blue and another in red, here I did 3 blocks in red, but it would be the same to color the “rails” in ONE block.

the blue shows 1/4yd and the red 1/8yd

see how it’s the same to color one whole rail fence block

Now just to test it out I colored the whole pinwheel block red too

and the yardage is STILL 1/4yd

PLUS the dark red AND the purple is 1/4yd together

Now it’s time to GUESS how many FQs I need, back to the main quilt

by just looking at the yardage it won’t help

go back and color just the borders a different color

Now you see the yardage, the total for the pinwheels is 2yds =8 FQs

and for the pinwheels it’s 2yds also. =8FQs

Let’s double check.

Knowing that 1 FQ makes 1 pinwheel block, there’s 17 block, so MAYBE we actually need more??

The rail fence block 1FQ= 2 blocks and there’s 18 blocks so that’s 9 FQs, that fits better

let’s go back and add some more to the pinwheel block

here I colored 1 1/2pinwheel blocks green

yardage is still 1/4

how about 2 whole pinwheels then?

hmm, yardage is 3/8 so it MIGHT work, but not sure.

so if we stick with 1 1/2 pinwheels =1FQ then you’d need 11.3 FQs, so 12.

If you THINK you can fit 2 on a FQ, and there’s 17 of them then 9FQs is enough.

You can even go in and look at the cutting directions.

let’s just round up to 5″ and a FQ is 18 x 20″

so you can fit 3 x4 squares on a FQ or at least 3 x 3 which is 9.

4 squares makes a pinwheel block, so easily 1 pinwheel blocks per FQ!

so I’d get 9FQs for 17 blocks

and 9 for the rail blocks

You can of course look at the cutting for the rail fence too, you get the idea.

Often bundles are at least 20 right, so that’s PERFECT!

one bundle and yardage for borders and binding to make this quilt