What else is there to know? The Moda All-Stars are back with Mix It Up! - 16 Quilts from Moda's Cake Mix and Cupcake Mix Recipe Papers.

All My Ts by Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic - Cake Mix 2
Square Dance by Janet Clare - Cake Mix 7
Half and Half by Karla Eisenach of Sweetwater - Cake Mix 1
Frosty Days by Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill - Cupcake Mix 2 & Cupcake Mix 4
(Clockwise from upper left corner.)

Sixteen designers were challenged to make a quilt using one of the twelve Cake Mix Recipes or one of the four Cupcake Recipes. They could use more than one because... Mix It Up!

Picnic by Laurie Simpson is made with Cupcake Recipe 4 and an assortment of Charm Squares. It finishes at 51" x 51".

All of these quilts are made with Layer Cakes or Charm Squares, or an assortment of 10" x 10" or 5" x 5" squares. Some require additional yardage for sashing and borders, others use 10" x 10" background squares cut from yardage, that part of the mix varies.

What is a Moda Cake Mix? It's a foundation paper - kind of like triangle paper - that yields the makings for a block. The Cake Mixes fit Layer Cakes - 10" x 10" squares - and the four Cupcake Mixes are sized for Charm Squares - 5" x 5" squares.

These are the first four Cake Mixes. The blocks shown on the covers are blocks that can be made with the pieces from one or two recipe cards.

This is a Recipe card - Recipe 2. (I call them grids.)

Layer two 10" x 10" squares with right sides together - and the lighter fabric on top. (That allows the seams to be pressed toward the darker fabric while the paper is still attached.)

Stitch on the dotted lines - follow the arrows and numbers for continuous line stitching. Then cut the card-grid apart on the solid lines. Press the seams. Remove the papers. Trim the dog-ears. Now you have all the parts needed to make a block.

The Recipe 2 card shown above yields 2 HTSs that finish at 4-1/2" x 4-1/2" and 10 HTSs that finish at 2-1/4" x 2-1/4". Using one of the blocks shown on the cover, there are enough HTSs to make two blocks. The blocks can be the same, they can be the same block with positive/negative color placement, or they can be two different blocks.

This is Betsy Chuchian's Step It Up quilt. Betsy likes tiny pieces so she used Cake Mix Recipe 8 - the HTSs finish at 3" x 3" and 1" x 1".

While the Cake and Cupcake Mixes give options for blocks, Step It Up shows that there are no limits to the design options. Make the parts and start playing.

Some of the Cake Mixes make more than half-triangle squares - Cake Mix 5 makes the segments for four-patches and Cake Mix 12 makes segments with two squares.

Cake Mix Recipe 6 yields eight matching HTSs, eight matching rail-fence units and 2 plain squares.

Making the parts and then re-arranging them is where the fun starts... how a quilt like this comes about.

Corey Yoder used Cake Mix 10 to make Candied Cotton - the scrappy blocks are not what most of us would have expected after seeing the blocks on the cover. Very clever!

Some papers are easily compatible - Cake Mix 3 and Cake Mix 4, they make 2" finished HTSs and 4" finished HTSs respectively. Cake Mix 7 and Cake Mix 11 - 1-1/2" and 3" finished, and 1-1/2" and 4-1/2" finished. Cake Mix 4 and Cupcake Mix 2 also have the option of making the HTSs in two sizes depending on the cutting line used.

Rosebud Pinwheels by Brenda Riddle - Cupcake Mix 1
Quilter's Confetti by Kristyne Czepuryk - Cake Mix 8
Churn It Up by Barbara Groves & Mary Jacobson of Me & My Sister Designs - Cupcake Mix 3
Harbor by Sherri McConnell - Cupcake 4
(Clockwise from upper left - but you knew that, right?)

These are the four Cupcake Mixes. Seven of the sixteen quilts in Mix It Up! are made with Cupcakes and 5" charm squares.

The book includes excellent step-by-step instructions on how to stitch the Recipe Cards. There are also plenty of tips - especially from the designers!

This wouldn't be a Moda All-Stars book without a bit of fun - a few Secret Ingredients. Everything you didn't know you always wanted to know about what and how everyone likes to mix it up. Ingredients to have at the ready when sewing, mix tapes, snack mixes and color mixes.

A lot of the All-Stars like M&Ms and Lynne Hagmeier always has Twizzlers at the ready.

All of the important stuff is covered.

Two other things to mention - there is a Mix It Up Blog Hop with many of the designers in the book coming the first week of November. And rumor has it that there will be a few giveaways. There will also be a Mix It Up quilt-along in January.

The Moda All-Stars Mix It Up book is in shops now. So are the Cake and Cupcake Mixes. I bet you can find a few Layer Cakes and Charm Packs too.

Happy Friday!