Grand Canal Kate Spain Quilt (#87)

It was my lucky day when I stumbled onto two picture tutorials from Trish at Notes of Sincerity for an "easy square in square in square block".

With a little tweaking I found that 2 layers cakes (42 pieces each) can make this beautiful quilt and there is little waste. The quilt has 30 blocks.  

Choose your outside border fabric FIRST - put aside 60 layer cake pieces.  These will be trimmed down to 9"x 9" and cut on a diagonal.  These triangles are the last round of each block.  

Cut 23 layer cake pieces into 5" squares ... yield will be (92) squares ... you need 90.   
(30) of these will be your starting center - leave at 5"x5" 
(60) of these will be cut on the diagonal and make the
       smaller middle round    
(leftovers: 1 layer piece and a few 5" squares)

Follow Trish's first tutorial here for the first two rounds - and trim your blocks to 7.5" as she recommends. Her second tutorial here is how she ends up with an unfinished 10.5" square. 

The only thing I did different than Trish was to cut my 60 outside pieces to 9"x 9" instead of 7.5".  Then its just the same technique as the first two rounds: cut on the diagonal and attach to the 7.5" block.  When finished, trim to 13" x 13". 

And that's it.  With a little prior thought on what fabric you want in the center and on the larger outside areas - 2 layer cakes works nicely.

I am not compensated by anyone for my supplies but do enjoy Green Fairy Quilts for reasonable pre-cuts - which is where I got these Kate Spain beauties.  Whether it is Trish's way with scraps or this way with layer cakes - the final result is pretty sweet. 

Notes:
Yes, I lost (or wasted) an inch trimming down to a 9"x 9" on that last piece -  but when I used the whole 10" square for the final round it was too big & unbalanced.

Lastly - since I was making a minky quilt and needed to keep it to 60" wide - I trimmed my blocks 12.5" x 13" (instead of the 13"x13" mentioned above).

Materials:
Grand Canal by Kate Spain / Moda / #grandcanalfabric 
Aurifil 50wt.  # 5007, #2000
Warm & White batting
Minky dimple dot / vanilla
Notes of Sincerity / Square in a Square Tutorial
Green Fairy Quilts / layer cakes
Size: 60" x 75"
November 2017