This quilt is 76 inches by 88, uses twenty eight different fabrics, and takes 750 pieces. Robert Kaufman rates it for someone who says "I am a total beginner and want to learn more."
Those two facts sit badly together until you look at the cutting list, and then they stop fighting. There is not one triangle in this pattern. No curves, no templates, no points to match, no bias edges, no squaring up a block that came out wonky. Every one of the 750 pieces is a rectangle cut straight across the width of the fabric, and every seam is a straight seam joining one rectangle to another.
Monté is a free quilt pattern from Robert Kaufman, written around Carkai by Carolyn Friedlander, and published in 2016. It is big and it is repetitive and it asks for patience rather than skill, which is a fair trade for a first large quilt.
Pattern details
- Pattern name: Monté
- Designer: Robert Kaufman Fabrics
- Finished size: 76" x 88"
- Size category: Bed quilt
- Difficulty: Enthusiastic Novice
- Block: 12 1/2" square unfinished, thirty of them, set five across and six down
- Technique: Straight seams, sashing, borders
- Collection: Carkai by Carolyn Friedlander
- Fabrics: Twenty eight, twenty six of them fat quarters
- Price: Free to download
Download the free Monté quilt pattern PDF from Robert Kaufman
What the Monté quilt pattern is made of, counted
The pattern gives you a cutting list and four block diagrams and leaves you to work out the rest. Here is the rest.
Each block is seven rows tall. The top and bottom rows are 1 1/2 inches deep and hold three pieces each. The five rows between them are 2 1/2 inches deep and hold either three pieces or five, alternating. Three, three, five, three, five, three, three. Twenty five pieces in a block, and thirty blocks makes 750.
That number is not a guess. Every shape in the cutting list divides evenly into thirty.
- 2 1/2" x 6 1/2": sixty from the black, thirty from the prints, three per block
- 2 1/2" x 4 1/2": one hundred twenty from the black, four per block
- 2 1/2" x 3 1/2": forty gold, sixty black, eighty print, six per block
- 2 1/2" x 1 1/2": forty gold, sixty black, eighty print, six per block
- 5 1/2" x 1 1/2": forty gold, eighty print, four per block
- 2 1/2" square: sixty print, two per block
Three, four, six, six, four, two. Twenty five. Six separate lines of the cutting list, cut from twenty eight different fabrics, and all six land on the same block.
Ten of the twenty five are black and the other fifteen carry the design, which is why Fabric B asks for 3 3/4 yards while most of the others are a fat quarter.
Seven hundred and fifty rectangles is a lot of feeding through a machine, and it is the kind of job chain piecing was invented for. The black also wants 51 strips cut the full width of the fabric before any subcutting happens, so it is worth reading our notes on cutting fabric accurately before the first strip.
One block, four versions, and only the gold moves
The pattern asks for four block types: four Corner blocks, twelve Middle, eight Side, six Top and Bottom. Thirty in total.
Those names are the layout, not four different constructions. Five blocks across and six down gives you exactly four corner positions, six positions along the top and bottom edges, eight down the two sides, and twelve in the middle. The counts match the grid position for position.
And all four are sewn the same way. What changes is where the gold goes.
- Middle blocks have no gold at all
- Top, Bottom and Side blocks have gold at two corners, the two that face the outside of the quilt
- Corner blocks have gold at three
Count them: four blocks with three, fourteen blocks with two, twelve with none. Forty gold corners. Fabric A is cut for forty of each of three shapes, which is exactly forty corner units and not one more.
Each corner unit is three pieces, always the same three, always the same fabric as each other. That is the one placement rule the pattern insists on, and it is worth reading twice: pieces are sewn next to pieces cut from the same fabric when the rows go together.
The notched edge is not a pieced border
Look at the finished quilt and the gold border has a stepped edge where it meets the black, as though someone pieced a notched frame.
Nobody did. The border is four plain strips. The steps are those forty gold corner units, sitting inside the edge blocks in the same fabric as the border, so there is no seam to see between them.
This is also why the edge blocks need gold at all. Every other block corner in the quilt has neighbors on all sides, and the corner units there meet each other to carry the design across the seams. The forty on the outside have nothing to meet. Done in a print they would read as broken shapes around the edge. Done in the border fabric they disappear into the frame and turn into a decoration instead.
It is a quietly clever piece of design and the pattern says nothing about it. It just gives you four block diagrams and asks you to take special care with the fabric placement.
Where the grid goes
Between every pair of blocks there is a 2 1/2 inch sashing strip, twenty four of them, plus five more running the full width between the rows. Twenty nine strips, all cut from Fabric B.
Fabric B is also the background inside every block. Three hundred of its pieces go into the blocks and the rest becomes the sashing, so the sashing is the same black as the ground it sits against. Sew it together and the grid vanishes. What you see is one continuous black field with the design floating in it, and no sign that the quilt is built from thirty squares.
The arithmetic confirms the layout without you having to count anything on the diagram. Blocks finish at 12 inches, sashing at 2. Five blocks and four sashings across is 68 inches, which is exactly the length the pattern tells you to trim the row sashing strips to. Six rows and five sashings down is 82.
Then the borders, and these are not the same on all four sides. Three inches finished at the top and bottom, four inches at the sides. 82 plus 3 plus 3 is 88. 68 plus 4 plus 4 is 76. The asymmetry is deliberate and it is what produces the finished measurements.
The fabric for the Monté quilt pattern
Twenty eight fabrics sounds worse than it is, because twenty six of them are a fat quarter each.
- Fabric A, the gold: 1 3/4 yards, for the borders and the forty corner units
- Fabric B, the black: 3 3/4 yards, the background and all the sashing
- Fabrics C to F: a fat quarter or 1/4 yard each, used slightly more often than the rest
- Fabrics G to BB: a fat quarter or 1/4 yard each, twenty two of them
- Binding: 5/8 yard
- Backing: 7 1/4 yards
Our fat quarters and solids cover the prints and the two large cuts, and any twenty six fabrics will do as long as they read clearly against the background. The pattern tells you to use any combination of C to BB in any block, so there is no sorting to do and no diagram to follow for color.
The backing is the number to look at twice. 7 1/4 yards is what the pattern asks for, and that is three lengths of standard width fabric joined with two seams. A quilt 76 by 88 with four inches of overhang on every side needs a backing 84 by 96. At 108 inches wide that is a single cut, 96 inches long, which is 2 2/3 yards. Four and a half yards less fabric and no seam to piece or quilt across. Our guide to quilt backing covers both, and we keep wide quilt backing fabric for the version without the seam.
Before you start
Read the whole pattern first, as it says. Seam allowances are a quarter inch and seams are pressed open unless told otherwise, except for the block rows, where you press away from the black.
Then one piece of advice that is not in the pattern and matters here more than usual. The pattern hands you borders already trimmed to 68 1/2 and 88 1/2 inches, measured from a quilt that came out exactly right. Yours has twenty nine sashing seams across it in one direction and more in the other, and a thread of drift on each one adds up. Measure your own top through the center before you cut the border strips to length. If the number is not 68 1/2, use your number.
Decide the size before you start too. At 76 by 88 this is a full or double, generous on a twin and short on a queen, and our quilt size chart will settle it faster than a tape measure on the bed.
If the plus shape is what drew you in rather than the size, The Plus Side is a smaller free pattern built on the same motif. And there are several hundred more in our collection of free quilt patterns, most of them asking for a good deal less than 750 rectangles.
