Palazzo Quiltalong: Fabric Selection

Welcome to the Palazzo Quiltalong! This is a no-stress no-deadlines sew-together type of deal. The pattern is our free medallion quilt pattern Palazzo (click here to get the pattern), that we designed for our Ciao Bella fabric line, which we’re pointing out for two reasons:

1. The pattern is very specific about making the most of the Ciao Bella fabrics and giving you details of what to cut where. But this is a quilt along, and you probably have different fabric.
2. The free pattern was written by a lovely member of the Andover team in keeping with their standards for putting together a quilt from start to finish. But this is a quilt along, and we’re breaking it down into different steps.

So since we’re focusing on fabric today to get you started for this quiltalong, we made you some coloring sheets so you can print out line drawings of the entire quilt as well as the center blocks. There are spaces below the line drawings for you to tape fabric swatches or color in swatches, or just help you keep track.

Palazzo Coloring Sheets

As for the amounts you need of fabrics, we’re scrappy quilters, so we’re always going to say pull some fat quarters and smush everything together, but that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. The original break down is like this:

• Color 1/Assorted Greens: 4 fat quarters
• Color 2/Assorted Oranges: 4 fat quarters
• Color 3/Assorted Yellows: 4 fat quarters
• Color 4/Assorted Lights or Backgrounds: 4 half yards
• Color 5/Assorted Darks: 4 fat quarters

You’ll need approximately 1 yard each of 4 colors and 2 yards of background, that covers the inner blocks and the outer piecing.

For the rounds that use the border print, the pattern says:

• Border stripe: 2 yards
• Floater fabric: 2.25 yards
• Inner contrasting borders: 2.25 yards

This is assuming that the fabric you’re using for your border is a stripe that runs along the length of the fabric (not across the width) and you’ll be cutting it continuously. The floater fabric and the inner border yardage assumes the same. However, you can get by with less particularly for the inner border if you’re not fussy cutting.

But that brings me to the second point, we’re going to break the quilt down slightly differently during the quiltalong. This is the schedule:

• Week 1: 8 Palazzo Blocks
• Week 2: 8 Palazzo Blocks
• Week 3: Outer pieced border
• Week 4: Fussy cut border print (with options) and assembly

If you are hunting for a border print or ordering it and waiting for a happy mail day, you have plenty of time. And if you’re wondering why we’re going out of order, the short answer is that it’ll be easier to assemble. When you’re adding a piecing border, especially one that has pieces on point, there’s a decent chance that the pieced border will come out a different size than intended. We always write our quilt patterns to the math, but we always want to give you a process for making your quilts come out perfect without stress. Going out of order will do that.

On to the fabrics we’re doing for our quilts! Which I think needs a separate post because this is a lot.