You Don't Know Jack

Hubster has been at me for ages to make him a union jack quilt ever since he saw a pillow in a magazine. Given the odd angles to the union jack I couldn't quite figure out a pattern on my own in my few attempts and shelved the project until I could find a tutorial or pattern I liked. My other issue was that I am not a huge fan of red, white & blue together as it makes me think of the American flag vs. the British flag. (A condition of being Canadian I suppose). But when I saw the Jack tutorial I posted earlier I started to get excited about the possibilities of fabric combinations. (Please check out the original tutorial at Lily's Quilts here)

I have been holding onto some batiks I picked up at the local quilt store which I have been hoarding uncut as I didn't know if I could get anymore of them. I decided this project would be the right time to use so I created this:

I used the purple and teal colourways and added a Kona Solids stripe in ash left over from this project. I thought using batiks would be a smarty-pants idea as they don't really have a front/back. Here is where it went wrong. The pattern requires precise cutting (check, did that) and with that, definite ways to use the precision cut pieces. I should have marked the batiks 'right side' to keep the triangles in the orientation they required. Oops! So in the end I had backwards blocks and after resewing had to cut down correct blocks to match the bodged together blocks. In the future I will make sure to keep proper labels on all my cuttings. Excellent lesson learned.

Even with these issues I still really like the block, and now that I know what not to do I think I might try to make this into a quilt for hubbie. I am trying to find more of this batik before I totally commit to that, and so far I've only seen a few of the other colours left at the quilt shop (who I am not happy with at the moment, but that's another story). So, I might have to rethink the blocks a bit - mix batiks & non-batiks? have all blocks different? have all blocks the same? So many possibilities. I think I might make this first block into a small wall hanging in the meantime since these colours were the ones missing at the shop (always the way). Actually, that is another lesson learned - if you adore a fabric buy yardage up since it might not be around anymore when you finally get around to using it!