Fabric Selection tips for the Avalon Quilt

Hi friends!  I’m so excited to sew with you over the next five weeks as we make an Avalon Quilt together!  This particular Avalon Quilt will be my fourth one!

Okay, so in my corporate life, I always like to start off meetings with a few important housekeeping items – you know, the important stuff like when there will be breaks? Where are the bathrooms? Are snacks provided?  In keeping this tradition, here’s a few important items:

• Learn all about the inspiration behind this pattern here!
• Shop all things Avalon, including the pattern if you don’t have yours yet here.
• Download the free companion pages for your pattern that include a coloring page and optional tracker (link in pattern).
• Snacking is highly encouraged.
• Follow and use the hashtag #avalonquilt on Instagram to see what all of our quilty friends are making!  

Fabric selection

Before you dive into selecting your fabric, you first need to determine which colorway you’d like to make.  The patterns comes with three colorway options, and I’ll be hacking the pattern to share a fourth colorway option using only fat quarters (rather than a background fabric).

Here's a few tips to help you pick out fabrics for each colorway: 

Two-tone:  Really, the sky is the limit here.  You can go with a high contrast for a punch of color or a low contrast for a unique quilt.

Five-Color:  Select your background fabric and then four additional fabrics that compliment one another.  Keep in mind that our Color 3 will create the secondary sawtooth pattern in your finished quilt top.

Multi-Color:  Dig through your stash or pick up a bundle of your favorites!  Make sure you pick a range that will give you some high contrast and low contrast blocks and really have some fun with it!

I’m actually going to go a bit rouge with my quilt.  You can use only fat quarters by selecting two for each block - one for the feature color and the other for your background pieces.  I’m using a bundle of some of my favorite Gingiber fabrics and mixing in a couple solids to round out my bundle of 18 fat quarters. 

Fabric Preparation and Cutting

Alright, you’ve made the final decision on which color way you are making as well as which fabrics you are using.  I’m going to say that we’ve earned a snack! 

That was delicious, and now its time to start cutting!  Follow the instruction in your pattern for the colorway you are making.  If you are making the multi-color option, mix and match your blocks and then keep them organized (binder clips work great for this).

Now, for my rouge quilt, my plan is to have a color blocked look.  I’m going to keep my feature color the same for each block and pair it up with one of the background pieces.  I’m not going to lie…this is the first that I have attempted a quilt using this approach and I’m hopeful I will like the final result.

If you’re following along with the schedule, week 1 is finished!  We’ll start making blocks during week 2, and it starts off with a square-in-a-square.

Square-in-a-Square

Let’s talk a bit about the square-in-a-square - the lovely center of our Avalon block.  A simple block to make that packs a punch!

You can follow along with the instructions in your pattern and gather your Color 1 square and four background squares.  Then, begin by drawing a diagonal line from one corner to the opposite corner on the backside of all of your background squares.

Place one marked square on one corner of the large square, making sure your fabrics are right sides together.  Then sew on the line you marked. 

Then, turn the unit around and place a second background square on the opposite corner and sew.  Using a ruler, measure your 1/4” seam allowance and trim.

Repeat the steps above for the opposite two corners.  You will notice the second square overlap the first squares a little bit.  This is correct and it is what creates the 1/4” seam allowance so that you keep your lovely points of your square-in-a-square. 

Then, trim and press and viola!

Coming up:  Weeks 3 & 4

In the next post, I’ll be diving into the four-at-a-time method for both half square triangles and flying geese as well as the basic construction of the Avalon block.  

Happy sewing!