What is an OBW? I'm fairly new to quilting & don't know all the terminology yet.

Stands for One Block Wonder. There are a couple of books out with the technique. Here are some photos: http://www.flickr.com/groups/oneblockwonders/pool/

LeAnne

A friend of mine used this fabric in a quilt. It is way prettier than the picture. If I remember right, there is some gold vein in it. It will be georgous!!!

And you mights also want to think about how you want to split the fabric up between the components (blocks, borders) BEFORE you start cutting.

IOW, you might want to cut the borders first (parallel to the selvedge) so they wouldn't have to be pieced.

Let's say you want to end up with a center that's 72" square made up of the blocks.

I'd FIRST cut a 180" (5 yards) long 11" wide strip from the length of fabric to be put aside for borders. This can later be cut in half both ways so you'd have FOUR 5.5" x 90" strips, which would be more than enough for borders. Even mitered. (or whatever width you might want. I'm partial to substantial borders).

Then with the approx 32" width of fabric remaining, you could use that for your OBW blocks.

If you first start cutting the fabric up for the repeats, then you're going to have scraps to put together for the borders.

And I think that's a great fabric. You've got a lot of value contrast areas, so the result should be fabulous.

how can you get 6 repeats out of a yd or 2 of fabric.

I did my Stack and Whack using this method and it worked really great. Looked so much nicer than all the seams.

If the repeat of the pattern is 12", then 6 repeats would be 2 yards. However, you would get substantially less blocks than if you used 4 yards of fabric.

If the pattern repeat is 24", to get six repeats you'd HAVE to get at least 4 yards. (24" x 6)/36" = 4'

Now, you'd get as many blocks as the 4 yards of 12" repeat, but your blocks would be more varied because of the larger repeat.

If you think about how you cut the blocks (after you've stacked the fabrics), this might make more sense.
Well, if I explained it clearly. I hope.

I'm new to quilting. What is obw?

OBW is a One Block Wonder. You use one fabric with a large repeating pattern (for more variation in your top, it should have multiple colours and/or designs in the pattern). Using the one fabric, you make kaleidoscope kind of blocks, just one type of block, just one fabric. The results are incredible.

Here is a link to the first result of a search for it on our board...
http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-77939-1.htm

Search OBW using the search feature, many people will post the pictures of their original fabric along with the finished product. It's VERY cool. This pattern has been on my "bucket list" but until yesterday, I hadn't found the "perfect" fabric for it! I found it!!!

There is a dedicated section on these, which saves having to do a search, you will find it by clicking on "Topic Lists" at the bottom of the page.

http://www.quiltingboard.com/virtual...jsp?vsnum=1006