Quilt in a Day Forums

I have a question about making a twister quilt. I got 3 pkgs. of layer cakes and a 10" twister ruler in the mail today. The instructions say to put together 6 rows of 6 (36) squares and put a border around the whole square. When cut out and put back together, it will be something like 52" square. Well, I want a larger quilt than that, so what do I do?
I'm torn between making 2 sets (or 3, maybe)of separate 36 squares together, bordering both or all of them, then cutting and adding them.OR, should I make it 1 bigger one... like 12 x 12 squares and border the whole thing once.
I'm confused. Has anyone ever made one of these before to know what to do?

The twister pattern has been going around my mini group for awhile. We are doing a pumpkin one now.
If you make bigger squares you will have to have a bigger ruler.
I think the way to go is to make more squares. You definitely need the first border to incorporate in the cutting. After it is put back together you can keep going with borders.
The layer cake squares(10") make a nice quilt. My friend just did one in Christmas and it is beautiful. I've made a few with charm squares and the pumpkin one is charm squares. It is amazing how fast these go together.
Another Mary on this forum is an expert, I'm sure she will be here to help.
I must add she helped me get started on this addicting pattern!

mary

I've made several twister quilts, and you have to figure out how large you want to have the final quilt to be and then add 1/3 of that measurement to the length and width to allow for "shrinkage" when you cut out the twister pieces. Save the left-overs and incorporate them into a border or small quilt when you are finished. They will be on the bias but worked into a border nicely. You could also plan ahead for the borders, but I haven't done that. I just made what I had fabrics for and added borders until I was satisfied. It definitely takes more fabric than you plan.

Some patterns call for making a 9-patch of your layer cake and adding borders all the way around, then cutting your twisters and sewing them together. This makes "blocks" instead of a whole quilt. You could make one and measure it, then do the twister and re-measure the finished product. That way you could get an idea of how much shrinkage you will have and re-calculate your quilt. You could do this with any 10" squares and not use your layer cake.

Are you totally confused? I don't have any books or anything. I just kind of winged it as I was making them. Right now I'm making the pumpkin twister and using the pattern. I had a different size ruler than they called for, so I drew the pattern on one of my rulers and am winging it again.

Good luck and be sure to post a picture!

P.S. It's definitely easier to work with the smaller units (blocks). I had made the whole piece and cut it and used a design wall and still had to do some ripping when I lost my place cutting, twisting and sewing. I put my fabrics in a diagonal pattern rather than random (easier).

I've trade a twister ruler with another quild member, this wknd I cut the squares, any info will apply here also...