At Anita Goodesign we love giant hoops. When machine embroidery first emerged as a hobby, the biggest hoop was a 4"x4"! Can you imagine? Now we have hoops that are sometimes larger than 9"x14", we are able to create designs we could only imagine a few years ago. We can even create 9"x14" quilt blocks in our hoop. You might be thinking "Whats the problem?" The problem is a simple one. Those giant hoops use a lot of fabric and most of that fabric ends up thrown away. This lead us to the first main principle of Anita's Quilting In-the-Hoop.
As shown above, an 8" x 12" hoop takes approximately 12" x 19" of fabric. This leads to a lot of waste—even if you are careful—and makes estimating how much fabric you need for each quilt block more difficult.
Once your design is stitched onto your chosen fabric, you then would have to remove the design from the hoop and use quilting rulers and a rotary cutter to square off your block to a perfect 9" x 9" quilt block—which can be a whole challenge on its own!
Now, let's take a look at how Anita's Quilting In-the-Hoop method saves SEW much fabric and time measuring, so you can stick to embroidering the things you love and quilting beautiful projects with ease!
Our Mix & Match Quilts all work the same way. Simply hoop a piece of cut-away no-show mesh stabilizer as the block's foundation. Then, all of your fabrics and any folded fabric pieces are placed into your block as appliqués. This saves you lots of fabric when quilting!
If you are creating an 8" block for Quilting, all you will need to use is a 9" piece of base fabric.
The best part? You will never be able to tell that the fabric you see in the finished quilt wasn't hooped. You also wont be able to tell that the quilts weren't pieced in the traditional manner since the blocks will join together.
Watch this clip below as Melissa further explains how Anita's Method saves you fabric and leads to beautiful quilting results!
Handy Fabric Calculator Chart
This chart will help you estimate the amount of fabric needed for the quilt block size you choose to make. The first measurement will tell you what size to pre-cut your fabric to completely cover the block plus a 1/2” seam allowance on all sides. The second number tells you how many pieces you can cut from one yard of fabric (measuring 45” x 36”). The number of cuts was calculated using a quilting calculator.
Just starting out?
Check out some of these great beginner-friendly quilting collections below!
