From Marti Michell Quilting Blog: Chart 19, Template Cutting Tricks and Ava, Block #10 in the Farmer's Wife 1930s Sew Along

Teaching Your Templates Cutting Tricks

The more you use your From Marti Michell Perfect Patchwork Templates, the more you love them and when you spend enough time with them, you can actually teach them tricks. Typically, any time you use a size-specific template to cut a different shape, we call it a template trick.

Our latest book, More Bang for the Buck, published earlier this year, was written to help you get even more value from your From Marti Michell template sets. You may have owned templates before you started this project, or you may have just bought them for the Farmer’s Wife 1930s Sampler, but we want you to use them on future projects, too.

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The book includes:

how to convert quilts with ruler cutting instructions to template cutting,
clues for determining which template set is perfect for replicating an antique quilt you snapped a picture of at a show,
why 1.414 should be a quilter’s favorite number
and so much more.

There are simple instructions for calculating yardage and yardage yield charts so you won’t have to calculate fabric requirements. You’ll discover that it rarely ever takes more fabric to cut strips on the lengthwise grain as opposed to crosswise strips…yes, really! The Patchwork Trio Charts have been my go-to pages as we have worked on the conversions for The Farmer’s Wife 1930s Sampler Quilt. The 48-page book is packed with information about the 16 From Marti Michell Perfect Patchwork template sets that include a square or make a square. It even includes a pattern for a queen size Toad in a Puddle quilt if you are looking for another project.

Ask for More Bang for the Buck! at your local quilt shop or visit our website.

Probably my favorite part of the book is the section called Teaching Your Templates New Tricks. Here is a reminder of the great tricks we've covered so far in the Farmer's Wife 1930s sampler PDFs:

With Belle (Template Conversion Chart #5) we cut the house shape this way:

In Susannah (Chart #8) we cut this shape, and the same shape for Katherine in mirror image:

In Granny (Chart #9) we flipped the A-2 triangle to make a larger triangle:

In Jenny (Chart #10) we learned how to cut parallelograms with a triangle whether you're left- or right-handed (shown here: right-handed):

And, in Ava (Chart #19, download below), there are two cutting tricks. One, typically called the Honeycomb, is similar to the house. It only works with our square templates because of the engineered corners on our squares. They give an acrylic edge to align perfectly with the edge of the fabric square.

The second trick is how to cut a square with a triangle template.

It may not seem like a huge trick when the square you need to cut in Ava is a 1-1/2 inch square. It is easy to cut a 1-1/2 inch square with a ruler and if you own Set N, it includes a 1-1/2 inch square template to cut a 1-inch finished square.

However, we loved this trick when we recently needed to cut a 1-9/16 inch square to match the leg on triangle A-7 and a 1-9/16 inch acrylic-square does not appear in any of our template sets. So, it is rather like a trick play in football…you don’t need it very often, but when you need it, you need it!