There is no block in this quilt. Not one. There is a single triangle, cut three hundred and forty eight times, and twelve columns. The surface only looks pieced from complicated units because five solids keep changing places inside a shape that never changes at all.
The counting goes like this. Three hundred and twenty four full triangles from Template A, twelve half triangles from Template B and twelve more from Template C, which are the pieces that square off the top and bottom of each column. Twelve columns, twenty seven full triangles in each. The triangles are joined in pairs first, then the pairs go into columns, then the columns are joined two at a time until the top is one piece. Seams are pressed up in the odd numbered columns and down in the even numbered ones, so every join between columns has something to lock against, and the column seams themselves are pressed open.
The templates print inside the PDF and have to be printed at one hundred percent. This matters more here than it does in most template patterns, because the triangle is as tall as it is wide. That is not a sixty degree triangle, so an equilateral triangle ruler will not cut it and neither will a strip and a forty five degree line. The printed templates carry notches on the long edges, and the pattern tells you to line those notches up rather than the raw edges, which is what keeps the points from wandering as the column grows.
The pattern is from Robert Kaufman Fabrics, designed in house in 2015 to show what a plain palette can do. It gives two complete colorways with a fabric list for each, a cool one built on white, green, blue and a chartreuse, and a warm one built on white, mango, papaya, kumquat and lipstick.
Pattern details
Pattern name Soundscape
Brand Robert Kaufman Fabrics
Designer Robert Kaufman Fabrics, in house
Finished size 80 by 95 inches
Size category Full, at full width with a generous drop at the foot
Difficulty Experienced intermediate, the level printed on the pattern
Block One patch, a single shape repeated across the whole top
Technique Template cutting, triangles joined in pairs and pieced into vertical columns
Colorway Shown in COOL, with a second WARM colorway on page 5
Fat quarter friendly No, it calls for 3/4 to 1 3/4 yards of each of five fabrics
Jelly roll friendly No, the pieces are template cut and taller than a strip
Layer cake and charm pack friendly No, the triangle is larger than a 10 inch square allows
The pattern is free to download as a PDF, six pages, direct from Robert Kaufman: Soundscape quilt pattern. It includes the fabric list for both colorways, the cutting quantities, the full column assembly diagram and the three templates on the last page.
One note before you start cutting. The color order in columns one through six repeats in columns seven through twelve, so columns one and seven are identical, two and eight, and so on. The pattern points this out as a chain piecing tip, and it is also the fastest way to check your layout before a single seam goes in.
Fabrics and palette that serve this pattern
This design lives or dies on value, not on print. Every edge in the quilt is a straight line between two triangles, and the eye reads those lines only if the two fabrics either side of them sit at different levels of light and dark. That is why the original is all solid cotton and why the background is the fabric with the largest share, at one and three quarter yards against three quarters for the two accents. The background is doing the work of holding the pattern still while the colors move around it.
Prints are not forbidden here, but they have to behave. Anything with a direction will fight a shape that points left in one column and right in the next, and a large scale motif gets cut into fragments at this size and reads as noise. A small tonal texture works, and so does anything that reads as a single color from across the room. The original calls for Kona cotton solids, which are still made, so that part of the pattern has aged well. If you are pulling from what is on the shelf now, our solids give the cleanest edge between one triangle and the next.
It is a yardage pattern rather than a precut one. Five fabrics between three quarters and one and three quarter yards, seven and a half yards for the backing and five eighths for the binding, so it starts in fabric by the yard rather than in a precut bundle, and it wants planning at the cutting table before it wants shopping.
The real difficulty is not the sewing, it is the cutting. Three hundred and forty eight pieces come off paper templates, and both slanted sides on every one of them are bias edges. Bias stretches under a ruler, under an iron and under your own hand, and a triangle that grows an eighth of an inch on one side pushes its point off center for the whole column. If you want the points in this quilt to meet, our guide to cutting fabric accurately covers the ruler position, the blade pressure and the squaring habits that decide whether three hundred and forty eight identical pieces really come out identical.
