I’ve been looking for projects to try out that I can share with some of the other sewing gals. I’ve almost completed the Bargello Table Runner – it’ll get done over the weekend. The other day I came across another idea: a Kaleidoscope/Stack ‘n Whack octagon block for a quilt or table runner described on the Jordan Fabrics You Tube Channel. I decided to try it out.

Yesterday I picked up some large print fabric to see what’s involved. The tricky part of the whole project isn’t the piecing – it’s the cutting. I hadn’t bought enough fabric to end up with eight identical triangles (except in two cases) so I had to make do with 4 and 4 somewhat complementary triangles for three of the octagons; but it’s the construction of the block I was interested in trying out.

I laid out my dark fabric, found the pattern repeat, cut what I had into two repeats (I bought .7m – I should have bought 1.4m to get the eight repeats for cutting the triangles but with a bit of improvising I ended up with 4 layers instead of 8 which yielded enough triangles for the project), halved the width-of-fabric, then carefully aligned the printed pattern through the four layers as was demonstrated in Video #1 below.

Kaleidoscope Table Runner

Once I had my layers of fabric carefully aligned, I cut out 5.5″ strips, then cut out 45° angled triangles – in the blocks with the peach elements I had two sets of four triangles to sew together, in the predominantly dark blocks I was able to get eight matching triangles.

Next I stitched the octagons together. Today I added the corner triangles (cut from 3.75″ squares) and the sashing and added both to each of my five octagons. Finally, I added a 2.5″ outer border of a lighter grey version of the original fabric from which I cut the triangles.

All in all the project went together relatively easily – once I’d figured out the necessary size for the corner triangles! That took a bit of experimenting.

I’ve also figured out how I will piece the backing so I don’t have to buy any more fabric for this project. I’ll get that done tomorrow, then I’ll set up the quilt sandwich and get the table runner assembled.

It’s definitely do-able as a class project – I completed the runner in less than 6 hours.

I didn’t stop to take photos as I went along. The whole process is explained very clearly in the videos below. So if you’re interested in making a table or bed runner, or a full quilt using this kaleidoscope block watch Donna Jordan from Jordan Fabrics in Oregon as she explains the process.

The biggest hitch in the whole project is actually finding a suitable fabric for constructing the stack ‘n whack blocks – you really need a large print fabric with an open design and quite a bit of colour variation. I would say what I chose in the end wasn’t a colour combination I would normally choose but the selection was very limited at my local shop. I will look at a couple of other shops nearby to see what else I might find.

So here are the videos: