mama urchin

It’s funny that Anne mentioned Heather Ross‘s Mendocino line in my last post because that is indeed one of the quilt tops I made using this same design. On the rocket/robot quilt there were two large scale prints that I wanted to leave in large pieces. Then there were three pretty monochromatic small scale prints that were the same except in three different colorways. And then I had two prints left, one a stripe and one a sort-of medium scale print that had a lot of the other colors in it.

A larger version of the baby quilt for Tristan

For the Mendocino quilt I wanted to really feature the large scale print in yellow — Katie’s favorite color — so all of the big blocks are made from that fabric. The three smallest rectangles are made from three small scale mostly monochromatic prints — two are the same print in different colorways, one is a very similar print in a third colorway — and the two medium rectangles are made from more medium scale prints that include a lot of the colors in the quilt. I found that having the medium blocks incorporate a lot of the colors really helped the aesthetic of the quilt.

So for the nitty gritty stuff. I started with my finished large block size. On the baby quilt the finished large blocks are 9″ square, on the larger quilts they are 12″ square. For the medium blocks you just half — because there are two pieces — the dimensions, 4.5″ square for the baby quilt, 6″ square for the bigger. Lastly, the three smaller rectangles are one-third the large block in height and half the large block in width, 3″x4.5″ for the baby quilt and 4″x6″ on the larger quilts. After you figure out all those dimensions you need to add 1/2 inch to each side for your seam allowance. So my cutting chart for these quilts was:

Not too hard, right? Here’s a closer look at the medocino blocks, if you click through to flickr the dimensions are there too.