9 Patch Slice and Dice Part 2

Have some fun slicing up your 9 patch blocks, put them up on your design wall and just see what happens!  Because everything I do is not perfect (therefore a "calamity"), I try my darnedest to turn a boo boo into something that works.  Just throw out directions, they're only a suggestion anyways!





 In this quilt block I used some batik charm square and pared them up with a warm bright cotton star print fabric.  The effect is like a ray of sunshine in the morning, maybe a bit like the beach, but a gal in Montana can dream can't she?





Once you get your 9 patch block put together, fold your block in half and press a little fold into each side of the block to help you make a perfect slice in half.  I tried to use my ruler, but I just fussed too much due to imperfect seams lines and decided to just cut the things in half the best way I could.  Whatever works for you! 

Hope you get the picture :)








Next, take your prizes over to your ironing board and make another fold crease in the center.  You'll end up with 4 equal blocks, each with one large square, one small square and 2 rectangles.  But before I let you go, I tried goofing around with my half cut blocks on the design wall............

It never fails, I always like what I see, just imagine the possibilities! 

Ok, you may notice that the design wall in the background of these pics looks very happy and has the faint shadow of some bold flowers.  I get vinyl tablecloths on sale, especially at the end of a season, and pin them up on the wall backwards so the flannel side is ready for my blocks to stick, works great.



Now just in case you were thinking I can count, I must share that I had an accident and mixed up my 9 patch squares.  It turned out that I made some with the background color in the center and at the corners, rather than the batiks.  Not to worry.  I decided this could be another cool design, so I finished making 25% of the blocks with the background in the middle, and the rest of the blocks had the batik in the middle.

Once I put the blocks up on the wall, I decided on the design you see in the last picture.  You can mix your blocks up anyway you want, in fact, I've seen these blocks turn out looking completely different than what you see here.  I added a border and wa la (not sure that's a word).

Signing off for now,

The Calamity Quilter,
Somewhere close to a seam ripper in Red Lodge, Montana

9 Patch Slice and Dice Part 1

I have these really colorful batik charm squares and I wanted to put them together with some type of bright cotton.  I had a few people pick the cotton from three bolts I had here at Quilt Lodge in Red Lodge Montana.  The overwhelming favorite was a bright yellow with golden stars from the Dusty Trails collection.

I didn't really know what was going to happen, I just started sewing blocks together.  The first issue?  What size to cut the yellow blocks?  The charm packs are listed as 5 inch squares, but if you use the pinking edge as a guide, they're really 5.25 inch squares.  I decided it was easier to just cut my yellow blocks 5.25 (I'm not good at measuring, so the easier the better).

End Strips of 12 blocks

I started my nine patch blocks with a batik on each end and a yellow stars in the middle.  I did goof up a few squares when I sewed them together making a totally different 9 patch. 

Middle strip of 12

So in order to make this whole thing more interesting I made 12 blocks with 5 batik squares in each and 4 blocks with 4 batik squares.  Thank goodness for a design wall to play around with.  Here's a few ideas of how to slice these blocks up, play around with them, and then sew them together.

Get ready to sew these together

9 patch blocks

First Slice

Now comes the fun part, just start slicing these blocks in half.  Since I worry about measuring, I used my iron to make a fold mark in the middle of each block, then I sliced at that point, which ends up being the middle of the block.

One slice of the 9 patch

Next I played around on the design board (very expensive vinyl tablecloth pinned to my wall backwards, the flannel back is perfect!

You can see that the pattern could look very complicated, but really, it's so simple!

Stay tuned for part 2 of the 9 Patch Slice and Dice.