Moda Fabrics Ruby Star Cascade Quilt - Downloadable PDF

Moda Fabrics Ruby Star Cascade Quilt Pattern – Downloadable PDF Summary

The Ruby Star Cascade Quilt is a striking pieced quilt pattern designed by Moda Fabrics, finishing at a generous 49½" x 59½" — a versatile lap or throw size. Released in celebration of National Sew a Jelly Roll Day (September 21, 2019), this pattern is a free downloadable PDF rated at an intermediate difficulty level, making it an excellent project for quilters who are comfortable with basic piecing and ready to work with angled cuts and bias edges.

What Is Being Made

This pattern produces a single quilt design — the Ruby Star Cascade — featuring a flowing, diagonal cascade effect created by joining parallelogram-shaped segments cut from Jelly Roll strips. The interplay between assorted print strips and background strips creates a dynamic, column-based layout that gives the quilt its signature cascading visual movement. The finished quilt is assembled from eight vertical columns that are joined together to complete the top.

Materials Required

• Prints: 1 Jelly Roll (40 strips, each 2½" x width of fabric)
• Background: 1 Jelly Roll (40 strips, each 2½" x width of fabric)
• Binding: ½ yard of fabric
• Backing: 3½ yards, pieced horizontally

A Jelly Roll is a pre-cut fabric bundle consisting of 40 strips, each measuring 2½" x the width of fabric (approximately 44"–45"). Using two Jelly Rolls — one in assorted prints and one in a coordinating background — makes this pattern an ideal stash-buster or a showcase for a curated fabric collection. The Ruby Star name suggests a bold, jewel-toned or high-contrast fabric palette, though the pattern works beautifully with any Jelly Roll combination.

Techniques Used

• Angled cutting at 45°: Strips are layered wrong sides together and cut using a ruler aligned to a precise 45-degree angle, producing the parallelogram-shaped segments (labeled A, B, C, and D) that form the quilt's diagonal design.
• Bias edge management: Because the cuts are made on the diagonal, the resulting segments have bias edges that are prone to stretching. The pattern specifically recommends starching and pressing strips before cutting to stabilize these edges — a key intermediate-level technique.
• Precise measuring and marking: Each segment is cut by measuring 12" from the point along the top edge of the layered strips, ensuring consistent parallelogram dimensions across all 184 total segments.
• Column-based assembly: Segments are joined into columns rather than traditional rows. Column E is made from 23 assorted A and C segments (print and background), and Column F is made from 23 assorted B and D segments. Four of each column type are constructed, then joined together with careful seam matching.
• Directional pressing: Seams in Column E are pressed down, while seams in Column F are pressed up, allowing the seams to nest cleanly when the columns are joined — a standard quilting technique for achieving flat, accurate intersections.
• Quilt finishing: After the top is assembled, the quilt is layered with batting and backing, quilted, and bound using six 2½"-wide strips sewn end to end.

Stitches and Piecing Details

• ¼" seam allowance is used throughout all construction steps, which is the standard seam allowance in quilting and essential for maintaining accurate finished dimensions.
• All piecing is done by machine sewing, consistent with standard quilting practice for Jelly Roll-based projects.
• The binding is created by sewing six 2½"-wide strips end to end and applied using a traditional quilt binding method.

Pattern Structure and Cutting Breakdown

The cutting process yields four distinct segment shapes:

• Segment A