Cake Mix pre-cuts friendly quilt patterns

I’m so excited to share this recent quilt finish featuring a fun pre-cuts friendly pattern. I think this might be one of my favorite finishes in recent months! It also has a memorable mistake in it- more on that at the end of the post. 😉

A while back the folks at the Fat Quarter Shop* reached out to see if I’d like to be a part of the Cake Mix Quilt Along featuring their latest publication: The Cake Mix Quilt Book Volume 1.

This book has patterns for 16 quilts and feature the Moda Cake Mix Recipe Cards in all of the quilt’s construction. There are 8 different sets of “recipe” cards. The book features two different quilt patterns per “recipe.”

The recipe cards are so clever! It was my first exposure to them and I’m a convert! Basically they’re paper-piecing templates created specifically for 10″ x 10″ (Layer Cake) precut squares. They come as a note pad of 45 of the same paper-pieced sheet. As I mentioned there are 8 different recipes with a different combination of sizes of half-square triangles and squares.

I chose to make the Ganache Quilt.

My pattern required the use of Cake Mix Recipe #5 – each page created a set of 4 half-square triangle blocks and 2 four-patch blocks. Using the paper-piecing templates made the blocks – especially the HST’s – come together so quickly and accurately.

There’s obviously some trimming involved but it’s slick and once it’s done, everything is ready to sew together!

For my quilt I pulled together a variety of prints from Riley Blake Designs in this color palette. I used prints from the following collections and basics: Dear Diary, Happiness is Handmade, Ava Rose, and the Riley Blake Kisses (in Red, Raspberry, and Honey). Metalic prints are from the On Trend collection.

When I picked out the fabric, I was thinking of a spectrum/ombre look, but wasn’t really sure how it would turn out. I toyed with bagging the idea because I liked the scrappy, colorful look of the pattern sample in the book.

But as soon as I laid out the blocks I was smitten. Lots of times by that stage I’m still pretty undecided, but this time I loved it!

Once it was sewn together, it turned out even better than I’d hoped!

Big shout out to Melissa from Sew Shabby Quilting who did the quilting on this one. I had  her use the Marbled Cake all-over pattern for this one and really love the results.

For the backing I used a solid Riley Blake Confetti Cotton in Riley Mustard. I love the pop of color.

This is a great versatile pattern that comes together so nicely. As are a lot of other patterns in the book. I definitely want to make a few more of them – I especially like the Cake Mix Recipe cards too. No thinking and no measuring and perfectly accurate blocks!

You can find the Cake Mix Quilt Book pattern book here. The Cake Mix Recipe cards are found here.

You can check out the other patterns in the book each week as part of the Cake Mix Quilt Along tour on these sites:

• Monday, November 13 – Ginger Bread Quilt by Melissa of Happy Quilting Melissa
• Monday, November 20 – Sherbert Quilt by Melanie of A Bit of Scrap Stuff
• Monday, November 27 – Fondant Quilt by Sinta of Pink Pincushion
• Monday, December 4 – Taffy Quilt by Sondra of Out of the Blue Quilts
• Monday, December 11 – Crème Brulee Quilt by Sherri of A Quilting Life
• Monday, December 18 – Sundae Quilt by Anorina of Samelia’s Mum
• Monday, January 8 – Marzipan Quilt by Amanda of Jedi Craft Girl
• Monday, January 15 – Parfait Quilt by Charise of Charise Creates
• Monday, January 22 – Banana Split Quilt by Connie of Freemotion by the River 
• Monday, January 29 – Ganache Quilt by Amy of Diary of a Quilter
• Monday, February 5 – Fruitcake Quilt by Sharon of Lilabelle Lane
• Monday, February 12 – Meringue Quilt by Erin of Why Not Sew?
• Monday, February 19 – Buttercream Quilt by Sondra of Out of the Blue Quilts
• Monday, February 26 – Tiramisu Quilt by Jennie of Porch Swing Quilts
• Monday, March 5 – Cheesecake Quilt by Anorina of Samelia’s Mum
• Monday, March 12 – Petit Four Quilt by Seema of Hooks, Needles and Brushes

Okay, so here’s my confession on this quilt.

I have an unplanned goof “humility block”. Can you find it? I didn’t even notice until the day after I took the pictures of the quilt for this post!! (Hint: it’s in the top right-hand corner.) All I could do when I saw it was laugh. Last week as I was working on this deadline (which, although I really enjoyed making, I had totally pushed the deadline too close) it was such a crazy week: my husband was out of town, my youngest was sick, my oldest is in the middle of final preparations for her 18-month LDS mission – in other words it was a busy regular-mom-life-filled week.

And so that one, turned-around four-patch block became kind of endearing and a good reminder that I don’t have it all together in my life, and that’s okay. It’s still pretty beautiful.

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