One-Block Wonders Cubed!: Dramatic Designs, New Techniques, 10 Quilt Projects

By Maxine Rosenthal and Joy Pelzmann

Add New Dimension to Your Favorite Hexagon Quilts. Your favorite One-Block Wonders authors are back with new graphic techniques using triangles, cubes, and appliqué. Learn how to create optical illusions with your fabrics. Bonus projects include totes, coasters and placemats for using up left-over hexagons. Create interesting shadow effects with clever fabric placement. Try new kinds of borders with uneven edges, creative shapes, and hexagon strips. From the best-selling authors of the One-Block Wonders books. New techniques and design strategies using simple geometric shapes give you dramatic quilt imagery that seems to defy logic! Take the ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary with this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C&T Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781607051329

Maxine Rosenthal

Maxine Rosenthal has been making kaleidoscope quilts since 1988. The amazing variety of patterns that different fabrics produce has kept her sewing and quilting ever since. She resides in Woodbury, Minnesota. Her website is sites.google.com/site/maxinerosenthal/home.

Book preview

Authors

Chapter 1: A New Generation of

One-Block Wonders

To Dream the Impossible Dream, 48″ × 42″. Made and machine quilted by Maxine Rosenthal.

The adventure continues. Join us as we play with dimension, perspective, and color in new and powerful ways.

We have been creating kaleidoscope quilts for many years, and new and wonderful forms continue to emerge. In Maxine’s first book, One-Block Wonders, she presented the technique for making hexagonal and octagonal kaleidoscope blocks from a single fabric to create quilts full of swirling movement. In the second book, One-Block Wonders Encore!, we explored further variations using additional fabrics and design elements such as cubes.

In this book, we will share our latest breakthrough possibilities. We still begin with the basic hexagon blocks, but now we have added dramatic graphic elements. Once again these quilts look complex, yet they remain easy to construct.

Basic hexagons and cubes

We like to use up every last scrap of our fabrics and extra blocks. Some might call us thrifty; others think we are just eccentric. The reality is that if we like a fabric, we want to use it all. Many of these designs do not require a large number blocks, which leaves us with many leftovers. These very leftovers provide creative opportunities. As you read through the book, you will find the same fabric in several quilts and even in small projects such as totes. We were not buying additional yardage, but using every last beloved block.

In our previous books, the hexagonal kaleidoscopes created the design. This time we are adding strong graphic components such as triangles and interlocking forms to the quilts. At times, the kaleidoscopes even become the background for bold triangles, cubes, and other structures.

Detail of Catch of the Day (page 23)

We have also moved from just creating dimension to playing with the impossible. We have always been fascinated by the visual illusions created by artist M.C. Escher, and have found ways to pay homage to him in our quilts. We have devised visual puzzles that engage the viewer of the quilt by creating optical illusions with impossible structures.

tip

To locate images of M.C. Escher’s woodcuts and lithographs, see Resources, page 80.

New Math for Triangles, 39″ × 31″. Made and machine quilted by Maxine Rosenthal.

Supplies You Will Need

You probably already own all or most of the tools required to make these quilts.

Rotary cutting equipment: You will need a self-healing mat, long (24″) and short (6″–12″) rulers, and a 45mm- or 60mm-blade rotary cutter. It is a good idea to insert a new blade into the rotary cutter to ease the work of cutting six layers of fabric at one time.

A 60° ruler: This is mandatory for many of the projects in this book. We use the 8″ 60° Clearview Triangle ruler as pictured on page 11. (Also see Resources, page 80.) The measurements in the instructions are based on this ruler.

Flower pins: These pins lie flat and do not shift when you are cutting.

A sewing machine in good working order with a ¼″ foot

Thread

Iron

Design wall: This is indispensable for looking at a design from a distance. When you design on a floor, some things are closer to your eye than others, whereas on a wall, everything is equidistant. You can actually stand back and view the quilt, making it easier to see what is right and wrong with your design as you progress. You will see how useful this is when you play with illusion. Besides, you see the quilt grow before your very eyes.

60° equilateral triangle graph paper: This is perfect for drafting the projects because regular square graph paper does not work with 60° triangles. See Resources on page 80 for Internet sites from which you can download free PDFs to print this kind of graph paper on your printer.

tip

The Clearview Triangle ruler has a point at the top and begins measuring from that point. Other rulers may measure differently. If you are not using a Clearview ruler, check your ruler’s measurement by placing it on a tape measure. If there is no point on the ruler, begin measuring at the ¼″ line of the tape measure. Then, as you cut, assume the point was there.

Choosing Fabrics

Fabric selection is critical to making these quilts. As with the projects presented in our previous books, you still need fabric with very little background. The larger the print or design of the fabric, the less the kaleidoscopes will look like the original fabric.

Previously, our approach was to pick bold, large designs because the kaleidoscopes formed the primary design. This new generation of designs and techniques may or may not have the kaleidoscopes as primary. Sometimes the kaleidoscopes form the background, and then a muted pattern is more suitable. Generally, we make the blocks and let the blocks tell us where to go. If you wish to try a particular technique from this book, be sure to read the specific fabric suggestions with each chapter.

Blocks produced using bold fabric

Blocks produced using muted fabric

Choose fabric you love, because working with it will increase your pleasure in the process. The color is what often attracts you to a fabric in the first place. We start with color and scale of design.

There are also certain themes with which we resonate. Dragons and animals seem to be favorites, and we are always attracted to eyes. You will find certain designers who create fabric you love. We once bought a fabric that looked just perfect, only to find that we had already completed quilts in two other colorways of that exact fabric the year before!

tip

Use mirrors arranged in a V shape to get an idea of the kaleidoscopes a fabric will form. Move the mirrors around on the fabric to audition different possibilities. Simply use two small mirrors, or use the handy Quilter’s Design Mirrors available from C&T Publishing (see Resources, page 80).

Mirrors on fabric

Avoid using stripes. They require perfect alignment when sewing seams, and they distract the eye from the overall design of the quilt. Flowing forms within the fabric, in contrast, encourage the eye to move around the design. The aim of this book is to create designs that will engage the eye of the viewer even more than before.

Because there is so much going on