Color Play: Harvest Mixer

Have you had the chance to peruse our new Fall issue yet? The most recent McCall’s Quilting is filled with interesting, creative patterns that are all about cutting, sewing, then cutting and sewing some more! It’s a really good group of projects that explore this versatile technique in seriously clever ways; check it out in digital or print!

One of these projects is on the cover; Harvest Mixer by Debora Rivera. It’s such a bold, dynamic design that is really fun and easy to make.

So, when I decided to make a version of this design, I was easily able to adjust it to not only accommodate my requirements, but to have a little fun to make my quilt top a little different and unique.

I was lucky enough to have some fat quarters of the Spellbound collection, designed by Sally Mountain for Dashwood Studio, now available in the US (ask for it at your local quilt shop!). The collection has 6 prints, that are elegant and stylish with a fun Halloween theme. For this pattern, the more units you can make, the more variety the resulting blocks will have, so I wanted to make at least 4 blocks. Which means I need 16 units, which means I need 8 squares of the prints (to pair with 8 coordinating solid squares).

That means I need more than 1 square of some of the prints! And I can’t get 2 squares at 12 3/8” from 1 fat quarter, unfortunately, so I had to cut the squares smaller. I could just squeeze 2 squares measuring 10½” out of each fat quarter, so that the size I went with. I selected 8 solids to pair with the prints and cut 1 square from each color.

Once my 16 Triangle-Squares were complete, I then had to figure out where to make the second series of cuts for making the blocks. For ease and consistency, I trimmed all the Triangle-Squares to 10” square (they did not need much trimming, it mostly squared them up). 10 is a nice round number and there are many ways I could have cut the units but I settled on a simple 30:70 ratio and cut them 3” from the top and left corners. I’ll always wonder how it would change if I had chosen a more subtle 4:6 ratio, or a more extreme 2:8 ratio, but maybe next time! These slightly smaller blocks finish at 18” instead of 22” like Debora’s quilt. Once all the units were spliced in the same way, time to mix and reassemble all the parts and pieces! I switched it up in this step too, making my blocks look different from Debora’s. Instead of the narrow rectangles crisscrossing the block center, I put them around the block edges. This affects the look of the block, of course, and the look of joined blocks, too! What fun!

To make the color and print distribution even, I made 2 pairs of identical blocks, then placed the matching blocks diagonally from one another. It was fun, easy, and I am thinking I may have to get another fat quarter bundle or two of the Spellbound prints so I can make this top even bigger. Or maybe I can cut more rectangles at 3” x 7” and make a pieced border or two? What would you do for your version of Harvest Mixer?

Happy quilting!