How to use Directional Prints in EPP

Cherish Club Fabric Conversations #3

My favourite way to cut fabric for EPP is from a strip that I then sub-cut into the shapes I want to baste. Or I just grab a scrap, place the paper piece on the fabric and cut an approximate 3/8” seam allowance around it. I am what you might call a fabric cutting imperfectionist. It’s why I love basics like scattered florals or dots. They don’t care how you cut them, and they’re always happy!

As soon as you venture into basics that have a direction (up and down), or medium scale prints, they get a bit more fussy, especially for quilts made in rounds like Cherish. It can be worth giving them a little extra attention, taking a little extra time, ‘wasting’ a little extra fabric.

Cherish Quilt is a great quilt for getting to know your fabrics and how they interact with different shapes in EPP. You become familiar with working with scale and with direction. Take my photo above, for example. See the blue ‘strawberry seeds’ in the bottom right corner? Or the pink diamonds in the block above it? While I would instinctively treat both of these prints as basics, as prints not in need of special attention, it turns out they sit in that border at slightly different angles, because they’re directional. Same with the daisies in the top, centre block.

The pink floral sitting on the mushroom hexagon in the centre is a similar scale, but it’s scattered and non-directional. So while it’s not really a basic, and it’s busier than the other prints I’ve mentioned, I can cut into it without much thought.

Now, as you can see, just because my patterns didn’t line up, I didn’t change it! It didn’t bother me enough to unpick, but I did keep it in mind for next time. Here’s a small list of prints I now pay special attention to while making blocks in rounds, like Cherish.

Medium Scale Florals: These are all the florals between big bouquets (which I rarely buy, and save for random scrappy quilts or Cherish centres), and tiny, scattered florals (which I buy and use all the time).

The prints above like number 1, 3, 5, and 8 are flowers that have been turned into a strong, directional geometric print. They’re a great candidate for fussy cutting and will look wonderful if you place the same part of the design in the 6 centre diamonds of Cherish.

Prints 4 and 7 are scattered and not directional, but you might miss them all together if you just cut the fabric at random. They’ve got gaps between the flowers that make it worth placing your shape over the flowers intentionally to make the most of the print.

Prints 2, 6, and the last in the row are still very organic in feel, but have a strong sense of ‘up and down’. While you might not need to pick out the exact same part of the design for the shapes you cut, it’s worth deciding which direction you want the flowers to face inside the block, and paying attention while cutting.

In my Cherish blocks, I like to use prints like this in the centre diamonds of the borders. They often also work well in the centre hexagons and the border half hexagons. I usually stick to smaller scale, less busy prints for the first round of diamonds because I want it to feel like a picture frame.

Novelty Prints:

I can see as I upload my photos that I’ve put a floral in the picture above and butterflies in the medium scale florals photo. You can probably guess from this that I treat them pretty similarly! Most of my medium scale novelty prints are not strongly geometric. They’re organic in feel, often scattered, but big enough to make me pay attention. My goal using these prints is usually not to find the exact same strawberry or bird to repeat in my diamonds, but just to have them look tidy (and to not cut any heads off!).

You can see in the example below that it’s actually really lovely having different moths in those diamonds.

Medium Scale Geometrics:

Like medium scale florals, how you cut into geometric prints like this will depend largely on scale, direction, contrast, and the size of the shape it’s filling. I follow the rule that the higher the contrast, or the busier the print, the more fussy I like to be. The aqua diamonds above have a lot going on in that print, so I would probably choose the same specific part of the design to repeat in each shape. The triangles next to it are high contrast, but relatively simple, so I would just pay attention to direction. (Check out how to do this below!)

Those pearl bracelets on the end aren’t directional or complicated, but they are high contrast, and when I used them in my 1 1/2” diamonds in my latest Cherish, I decided to go back and fussy cut them. You can see from the photo below that the blue pearl bracelets are now very neat and orderly, but I didn’t bother with the mauve ones because they were really low in contrast and I wouldn’t see it from afar.

If you baste diamonds for your Cherish, and then change your mind about them, don’t worry! You can set them aside to use in the half and edge blocks. In fact, the green, leafy diamonds below were shapes I prepared for a first border round, and then decided it was too busy.

Stripes, Dashes and Grids: Those diamond rounds in the Cherish border can look so great made from stripes, but as mentioned earlier, you might find yourself surprised when you sew your rounds up, and the stripes go in different directions! That’s because the diamonds in the border at like a mirror, and you have to cut the fabric for them in opposite directions.

An easy way to figure out your stripe (or any directional fabric) direction is to draw lines on the paper pieces.

Then line up the drawn lines with the stripe in your fabric. Cut them out and baste them.

The half star at the top is made from diamonds both facing the same way. The one at the bottom is from diamonds facing in opposite directions. You can see that I haven’t gone to the effort of having the coloured stripes line up. I can imagine getting to this part of the block and deciding that I think it would actually be pretty cool to have a lined-up border. To achieve that, I would use my acrylic template, and mark the exact placement of the lines on the acrylic with a whiteboard marker.

If you look closely at my current Cherish Quilt, you’ll notice that while those red flowers in the half hexagon border are directional, I just cut them from a strip, alternating the direction for best fabric economy, and you can’t really tell from here that half the flowers are ‘upside-down’. I was very intentional with the stripes and some flowers, but I happily used a lot of discarded, randomly cut pearl bracelets in centre diamonds because I wanted to use them up. I guess you could say I’m selectively fussy. I’m trying to avoid a block looking so messy that it draws my eye immediately, but I don’t have the patience or desire to make everything perfect.

I hope these tips help you make great use of your fabric, and also encourage you to have a bit of a play! If you’re not sure how a print will look in a Cherish border, just cut and baste a couple of pieces to test it.

Any questions about medium scale and directional prints? Ask away below!

Happy stitching,

Jodi. xx

PS. Next week, we start stitching! If you haven’t bought Cherish and you’re feeling the FOMO, grab it here!