Download the free Weather Vane quilt pattern PDF from Robert Kaufman Fabrics. Seven pages, finished quilt 66 inches by 76 inches, designed by Darlene Zimmerman.
One thousand two hundred and ninety nine pieces go into this quilt top, and seven hundred and twenty of them are triangles. That is not a complaint. It is the thing to know before you start, because a pattern this size is either a pleasure or a slog depending entirely on how you cut it, and this one has a specific answer to that.
The block is a Weather Vane, a traditional design, and there are thirty of them here in six rows of five. It finishes at nine inches on a three by three grid of three inch units, and the three kinds of unit do three different jobs. The four corners are pieced from four two inch squares each: one red and background triangle square, two print and background triangle squares, and one plain square of the print. The four sides are a three and a half inch square of a second print with two adjacent corners snowballed in the background. The center is a plain square that matches the corner prints.
Thirty blocks, fifteen on one background and fifteen on the other, and the two backgrounds are the same design in two colorings. That is what keeps a quilt of thirty identical blocks from going flat: the field behind the blocks changes as your eye crosses it, even though the blocks do not.
Between the blocks there is sashing, and this is where the piece count comes from as much as the blocks do. Forty nine sashing strips and twenty cornerstones, so every horizontal seam in the quilt is a pieced row rather than a long strip. Sashing on its own would have been simpler. Sashing with cornerstones lines the blocks up in both directions, which on a thirty block quilt is worth the extra forty nine seams.
Pattern details
- Name: Weather Vane
- Brand: Robert Kaufman Fabrics
- Designer: Darlene Zimmerman
- Finished size: 66" x 76", a large throw
- Skill level: experienced intermediate, printed on the cover
- Block: a 9 inch Weather Vane on a 3 by 3 grid of 3 inch units, set with sashing and cornerstones
- Techniques: half square triangles cut from strips, snowballed corners, pieced sashing rows
- Fabrics: 15 fat quarters for the blocks, two backgrounds, a red, a sashing fabric, a border print, a binding, and 4 yards of backing
- Required tool: the pattern is written for the Easy Angle ruler. A workaround is below
- Pages: 7
The ruler the pattern asks for, and what to do without it
Every one of those seven hundred and twenty triangles is cut with a specialty triangle ruler laid on a two inch strip. The ruler cuts a triangle with the seam allowance already built in, so the triangle square it makes comes out at two inches with nothing to trim. Over seven hundred and twenty triangles that saves a great deal of time, and the pattern names the tool on the cutting page for a reason.
If you do not own one, you are not locked out. The triangle squares finish at one and a half inches, and the standard formula in The Quilter's Bible is to add seven eighths of an inch to the finished size, which gives a cutting square of two and three eighths inches. Pair one background square with one print square, draw the diagonal, sew a quarter inch either side of the line, cut on the line, and you have two triangle squares. Three hundred and sixty pairs will replace all seven hundred and twenty triangles.
The difference is real but it is time, not accuracy. The two square method uses more fabric and gives you three hundred and sixty units to trim to size. The ruler method costs you the price of the ruler and skips the trimming.
Everything counts out exactly, which is not always true
Seven different piece types, and every one of them lands on the nose. The backgrounds give one hundred and twenty squares each, which is exactly what thirty blocks need for the snowballed corners. The fifteen prints give ten three and a half inch squares each, and thirty blocks need one hundred and fifty. Their two inch squares come to one hundred and twenty, and there are one hundred and twenty corner units. Forty nine sashing strips for forty nine gaps. Twenty cornerstones for twenty intersections.
Nothing is spare. On a quilt with this many pieces that is worth knowing at the cutting table, because a strip cut crooked is a trip back to a fat quarter you may not be able to replace.
One small note from our own arithmetic. The width works out to exactly sixty six inches: five blocks, four sashings, two borders. The height comes to seventy six and a half, half an inch more than the cover says. Since the pattern tells you to measure the finished top and trim the borders to it, nobody sewing this will ever notice, but the number on the cover is rounded rather than calculated.
Fabrics and palette that suit this construction
Fifteen fat quarters do the blocks, and the pattern is unusually forgiving about which fifteen. Each print appears in two blocks and nowhere else, so a print that turns out to be wrong spoils two blocks out of thirty rather than the whole quilt. That is a good argument for pulling from a bundle rather than buying yardage, and our precut fabric is where to look for fat quarters and bundles that already agree with each other.
The two backgrounds are the fabrics doing the real work. They want to be quiet, light, and closely related to each other, because the whole design depends on the blocks reading forward against them. The original uses the same small print in two colorings, which is the easiest way to get that right.
The rest is yardage rather than precuts: three quarters of a yard for each background, seven eighths for the sashing, three quarters for the red, and two and three quarter yards for the outer border alone, since the side borders are cut along the length of the fabric rather than across it. That is fabric by the yard territory, and the border in particular should be bought in one cut.
The border print in the original is a farm scene from a line Darlene Zimmerman designed, and it is what turns a traditional block quilt into something with a period feeling. Her own patterns are at feedsacklady.com. Morningside Farm came out in 2015 and is long gone, so treat the SKU list in the PDF as a record rather than a shopping list. Any large scale print you love will do the same job, as long as it is calm enough to frame the blocks instead of shouting over them.
On the back, the pattern calls for four yards pieced into panels. A three yard cut of 108 inch wide backing covers a 66 by 76 quilt with room to spare and no seam at all, which on a quilt that already has thirteen hundred pieces in the top is worth considering.
The units and the finishing, worked through
The triangle squares are the whole quilt, so if the two square method is new ground, how to make half square triangles has three methods and a size chart for every finished size. Cutting accuracy matters more here than on almost any pattern we have covered, given seven hundred and twenty triangles and no spare fabric, and how to cut fabric accurately goes through the checks that fix most of it.
If 66 by 76 is not the size you want, our quilt size chart has the finished measurements to aim for, and this design grows in ten and a half inch steps once the sashing is counted. The backing is covered in our guide to quilt backing, and the binding is seven strips cut at two and a quarter inches rather than the more usual two and a half, which gives a slightly narrower finished edge. Machine sewn binding works the same way at either width.
More free patterns are in our free quilt patterns collection, and the simpler ones are gathered in beginner quilt patterns.
