Pre-Cuts Session 5: Inspiration

It is so fun to go to the quilt store and just pick up all these precuts and you just grab one pack after another, one jelly roll after another, put them in your cart, go up and check them out, and you're just filled with, oh my God, there's so much potential for these. And then you get home and reality sets in and you go now, what do I do with them? And you get a case of quilters paralysis. It's kinda like writer's block. You wanna quilt, but you just can't because you aren't really sure what to do, and you don't wanna mess it up.

So what do you do? You look for inspiration. My inspiration is having a good library. Having my resources handy so that 2:00 AM when I'm wide awake and I want some inspiration, I can just go downstairs and pull out a magazine and thumb through it or thumb through one of my books. I know it's a little old school, but it's how I roll.

Anyway, I wanna show you today some of the books and magazines that I feel are absolutely a must if you're gonna be working with precuts. I have been amazed at the explosion of precuts over the last few years. Before it was, it started with Moda introducing the jelly rolls just a few years ago, and from then, there has literally been this explosion of all the different precuts. So the magazines and the books are definitely working to keep up and I have been very pleased to see some of the new innovations that are out there. The ones that I'm gonna show you, I'm going to put together on a PDF that will be available for download.

So again, just sit back and relax and enjoy this session because I will have a library listing out there for you to download. "Quilting Quickly" is a wonderful magazine put out by Fons & Porter. And what to me is so exciting is that starting with a January issue, January, 2019, it will be renamed and called "Pre-Cut Patchwork." The only thing that you will find in the magazine will be precuts, and maybe supplemented and incorporated with some yardage, particularly for boarders and bindings and that sort of thing. But the bulk of the quilt will be done, every quilt will be done strictly with precuts. The magazines have innovative ideas for precuts.

I have just been so thrilled as I flip through and see some innovative ways like this one for using the strips of the jelly roll and then adding in the extra fabrics or even the layer cakes to complete it. They use the charms, I've been really impressed with the charms and the layer cakes with different ideas especially with circles that they do. You can cut layer cakes and charms either by rotary or use templates to get some very, very innovative quilts. You don't just have to use them as a whole, you can think out of the box and start using them. This one is a great example of how to use the strips of the jelly roll, the plain fabric jelly rolls that I showed you earlier for all the sashing on a quilt and then doing the framing around your patches.

So I think you'll see that you're gonna have a lot of fun with these magazines. They have a lot of how-to lessons, they also feature some specialty rulers that have been designed for precuts that will make very fast work of cutting the precuts and maintaining the precision. So again, "Quilting Quickly" will be called "Pre-Cut Patchwork" starting in January of 2019. And I highly recommend that you add this wonderful quilting magazine to your subscription list. Get it in your house, it's great.

Now, as far as books, this was one that I found when I was down in Phoenix at a quilt shop. The quilt shop was fabulous, I believe it was called Modern Quilting and I was amazed. It had a lot of modern fabrics, it was a huge store, tons of yardage, but what really amazed me was the incredible number of precuts that they had. Every precut you could imagine just about what's available there, even some of the newer ones that are hitting the market. I think they even had some of the hexagons, the hexies that that are one of the newest ones.

So if you ever get to Phoenix, definitely stop in. Anyway, I found this wonderful little book called "Quilter's Precut Companion" and I used it as a reference for putting together some of the information in this video. It is just a handy little reference guide. She shows you the different sizes for standard quilts, it had the information about the precuts and how many it takes to make the quilt. It also goes into fat quarters and shows you all the different ways that you can cut fat quarters.

A lot of tips, a lot of yardages for borders and for bindings, how to make the continuous bias strips. Yardage for backing. But then she goes into a lot of the different blocks and patches, or units rather, that you can make from the different precuts, how to make them easily and quickly. And I just thought this was a great, a handy reference guide and I highly, highly, highly recommend it. It literally is a good one that you're gonna wanna keep right by your cutting table.

Now, when it comes to the books, it's quite easy to find individual books as far as a specific precut and the ones that are the most prolific are your jelly roll books, because jelly rolls have been out the longest. There are some wonderful ones out there, but these are a couple of my favorite. Nancy Martin does some wonderful, wonderful quilts and quilt patterns. And she did a really great book here called "Rolling Along" featuring the jelly rolls. I really like this one here that was "Start With Strips" by Susan Ache.

Again, a very, very nice book with some innovative quilts that think out of the box. I particularly liked this one. You would never know that was made with precuts just because of the way she put it together and rearranged the blocks. So those are two very, very good ones for jelly rolls. Then we've got one here that's a good one for layer cakes strictly your 10 inch squares.

And this is "Easy Layer-Cake Quilts" by Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobson. Fun, fun, fun book that I think you will really enjoy that takes that basic 10 inch square and make some absolutely beautiful fun quilts out of it. We're also seeing a variety of books that feature combining precuts or that will have quilts of specific precuts mixed in together. So you may have some that are made strictly from charms or strictly from mini-charms, or you may find it where the charms, the layer cakes, and the mini-charms, and the jelly roll are all combined to make one incredible quilt. One I really liked was Sue Pfau, "One Bundle of Fun." She's got some great quilts, good instructions, easy to follow.

Wendy Sheppard's book "Creative New Quilts & Projects from Precuts or Stash," another good book, highly recommend both of these. We're also seeing some interesting things from manufacturers. So remember the Tonga Treats that I showed you, those beautiful batiks? Well, Tonga decided to have a companion book to go with it "Pick Up a 6-Pack." And these are patterns that are made using strictly the Tonga Treats and this wonderful book will give you some good information. And I think it's great that the manufacturers are doing that for us.

Moda also has a couple of books out that they're doing. This is one "Scraps Made Simple" and then "Mini-Charm Quilts, Clever Projects for 2 1/2" Squares" not just quilts, but also projects. Both books were, they put out a call to different quilt designers to come up with quilts for their books, and this is kind of the best of the best if you will. The other thing that's nice is that these Moda books, the Moda all-star books, they're donating the royalties to different charities. From the "Scraps Made Simple" the proceeds are going to the Alzheimer's Association, and for the "Mini-charms" book it's going to a group called LLC Canine Comfort Dogs.

So it's a nice way that not only are the books helping you to make better quilts and to understand precuts, but you're helping others in need when you buy these books. Finally, if I could only have one book, one book only on precuts, this is what it would be. It's called the "Precut Bonanza" by Kimberley Einmo. And what it is, it is 200 pieced blocks that are cut from strips and shapes. So you may have like your large strips or jelly rolls and also your layer cakes and charms, whatever.

But the nice thing is she has come up with a lot of pictures, a lot of step-by-step, especially I really was impressed with the way that she puts together the lone star quilt using the precuts. That's a good, good investment right there. But she also has all of these blocks. She does blocks for six inch through 24 inch blocks excluding the 18 and 22, which are just not reasonable sizes, but you will have blocks for just about any size quilts you wanna make, and she shows you exactly what you need to make these beautiful blocks from precuts. All throughout, there's not only some quilts made with it for inspiration, but all throughout she has her top tips in there that are very, very useful.

So, don't be stymied, don't get quilters paralysis, get yourself some good books, get yourself some magazines, and get the inspiration you need to get quilting with precuts.