Free Layer Cake Quilt Pattern | Layer Cake Spool

If you’re looking for a fun layer cake quilt pattern, you are going to love this!

I have been wanting to work on a simple quick project using up layer cake that I have in stash, and when I saw this as a free pattern, I quickly put it in my Wishlist to make. And it is pretty high up on the Wishlist to make. I just thought that it will make a quick project in between other projects.

And surely it din’t disappoint. 

You can get the free pattern below:

Layer Cake Spool Quilt Pattern, Layer Cake friendly Quilt

There are affiliate links used in this post in which I may earn commission from. Read the full disclosure here. 

I am using a layer cake in my stash, probably from a collection that is almost 10 years old by Basic Grey called Mon Ami. It is probably hard to get now and out of print, but Basic Grey always have collections that are pretty similar and you can check that out HERE>.

As for the background, I am using this dark teal Confetti Cotton Stargazer which I bought on sale for less than $6/yard HERE>.

I am trying to try out various colour for my quilt background. I love white and natural colours, but using different colours or darker colours can be fun and give a different look to the quilt. So, here’s one of them. 

Quilting Tools and Notions I used:

• My trusted workhorse, Janome Horizon Memory Craft QCP8200
• I used a teal color thread, Aurifil 1125 for piecing this quilt
• My favourite Ergonomic Rotary Cutter – this have saved my wrist a lot!
• Large cutting Mat
• Wool ironing Mat (I have no issues with the smell, but sometimes it can burn if the iron is way too hot and no steam)
• Oliso Pro Iron (I love this Iron, it lifts as you let go, saving the wrist from too much work and it gives a good heat and steam)
• Portable Design Board

Cutting and starching fabrics

I starched my layer cake just because I feel like I wanted to. You can read more about my starching method with homemade starch HERE>

There’s minimal cutting involved for this quilt, and you can starch because the blocks are trimmed down to a smaller size anyway. 

I am still using my old ruler, which was broken in half and glued it back together few years ago. It still works wonderfully. 

There’s a tip for you, don’t be too quick to throw it out, it still probably fixable. Gorilla Glue to the rescue. In Malaysia, we have what we call the Gam Gajah (elephant glue). Funny that all these glues are named after animals. 

The ruler I have there is by Sew Easy, an Australian brand, so if you’re in Australia, I highly recommend this ruler. If you are not in the Australia, my favourite ruler brand is Creative Grid. You can see their collection of rulers HERE>.

Getting organised for chain piecing

After the cutting, come the process of stacking the pieces to be chain pieced.

This is where my portable design board is always so helpful. You see that I use them very often. It is the best tools for patchwork. I can carry all my pieces to my machine easily and can stack lots of the pieces before I chain piece them. 

You can read more about these portable design board HERE>. I made them myself following a free tutorial,  but you can also buy them ready-made HERE>

The pattern calls for stacking the blocks in certain direction, and you must make sure that they’re stacked correctly. Otherwise you’ll end up with a totally different block at the end!

I got some of my stack mixed up, and the blocks turned out wrong. See photo below, the bottom two blocks are wrongly stacked. No spool there!

The quilt block came together pretty quick. And the blocks can be made faster by chain piecing all the way. 

I worked on it for several short sessions, but I pretty had my blocks all done in about 2-4 hours. 

My tweak to the pattern:

I did trim my blocks slightly large than what it calls for in the pattern, just because I didn’t want to trim out too much and waste the fabrics. 

You can do the same thing and you’ll just end up with a large block, and a larger quilt!

Laying the blocks out

I use to do the layout of my quilts on my bed or on the floor, but recently I made myself a design wall.

I have a wall in my sewing room that I simply hung up a large batting on. And although it is not perfectly flat, and sometimes it flips around making all my blocks fell off, it has certainly been a game changer!

I love seeing the blocks on the wall which make sit easy for me to arrange things around. 

Plus it’s also motivating me to get sewing cause I can see it every time I come into my sewing room!

I try to balance out the colours and try not to have any matching prints too close to each other. Just a general rule for getting a good balance. 

I have one more row to add, I could make it fit onto my wall, but this is a pretty large quilt for a layer cake. I’ll update the size when I complete the quilt soon.

I need to sew them together now and then add some borders.

It was surely a great start, and highly recommend the quilt pattern if you have some layer cake to use up!

You can get the free pattern below:

Layer Cake Spool Quilt Pattern, Layer Cake friendly Quilt