My Favorite Color is Moda Sew Along - Cutting Tips

Ready to cut your fabric?

To get started, find a bin or tub to store everything in and put a new blade in your rotary cutter.

Here are a couple of helpful things I learned during the cutting process:

1. Baggies are a must. Get 20 baggies and mark each with a block number (1-20). I marked mine with a Sharpie and, even though this was completely coincidental, it made it easier to see numbers through the bags than a label would have done.

3. Use the biggest bags you have - within reason. If they're too small, you'll have to fold your pieces and have to re-press them before you can sew. At least 8" square would be ideal.

4. Rearrange your baggies in numerical order after cutting each color or they'll get so mixed up that you'll have a hard time finding the one you need.

5. Save your scraps.  You never know what mistake you may make when you start making blocks. I'm pretty sure I will need to cut at least one or two replacement pieces in this process.

6. PLEASE NOTE: The cutting instructions for some colors flow over 2 pages. Pay close attention.

7. To avoid cutting the wrong fabric, cover the side of the pattern you're not using with a piece of paper.

8. When you're done cutting, arrange your baggies from largest to smallest in your bin so you can just grab the next one each month. I'm ready to sew!

My Favorite Color is Moda Sew Along - Introduction

An introduction:

Moda is hosting a sew-along in 2021 using Bella Solids - the "My Favorite Color is Moda" quilt.

Kits are available in 6 colorways or you can purchase a pattern and use your own fabrics.  This would be so pretty as a scrappy quilt!

Aren't they beautiful?

I'm a little late in posting, but right now we are cutting our fabric and sewing hasn't started yet.  We start sewing on February 2nd. Moda will have a blog post with tips for each block every month and I will also post over here with tips and the link to the Moda blog posts.

Moda's Intro post is over here: https://my.modafabrics.com/inspiration-resources/my-favorite-color-moda-1

The quilt is 81" x 99" finished.

I have kits for all the colorways as well as individual patterns available on the website.

I will be posting regularly on Instagram as well as the Twiddletails Quilt Alongs Facebook group.

Temperature Quilt - Calculating Fabric Quantities

 Calculating the amount of fabric needed to make a temperature quilt is very hard.

It depends on the size & design of your quilt and blocks.

The easiest way is to buy a fabric bundle, but you will definitely have some fabrics that get very little use. In my experience no quilter has ever complained about having too much fabric though.

You will therefore just have to determine how much you need of the color/s you will be using the most.

Because I'm making an applique quilt again this year, albeit raw edge not needle turn, I'm hoping to do a little homework before I start.  This way, hopefully, the block making process will be a little shorter.

Historical data is very helpful here. See this post about how to get hold of historical data.

I requested just the 2020 data for my purposes. In order to determine how many days fell in each of my temperature ranges, I first sorted by minimum temperature and counted those, then sorted by maximum temperature and counted those.

Here's what I found:

I had 55 occurrences of the the 66 to 70 degree range which means this is the color I will need the most of.

If you know how much fabric each block requires, you can do the math from there.

My plan is to pre-cut a bunch of background squares and maybe even make a couple of blocks ahead of time.

I also used the data to see how many occurrences of specific temperature combinations there were.  Now I know I can pre-make at least 5 of quite a few. (The pictures are a little fuzzy, so hopefully you get the idea.)

If you're on Facebook be sure to join the Twiddletails Temperature Quilt Along group where a whole lot of sharing and advice can be found.  It's grown into such a fun group in the last year.