Chain Reaction Quilt Patterns

"Chain Reaction" is a quilt designed by Lee Heinrich. It appeared in "Quiltmaker's" March-April 2012 issue. You can see it's an off-center X block, and it creates a really fun vertical design as you run down through with the chain effect and the different sized diamonds that are created because of the off-center X. After looking at Lee's quilt, we sent that off to "Quiltmaker's" Scrap Squad, which is a group of women who create a pattern after it's gone to the printer, before it's seen in print, so that when the issue comes out we can see a huge variety of what people have, how people have interpreted that pattern, and I wanna show you a couple of quilts made from some of the Scrap Squad members for "Chain Reaction." First is Bonnie Stapleton, and she has a teal background with pumpkin-colored chains running through her quilt. Melissa Radtke really played with the color design in hers, with the strips going from yellow to orange to red, back to orange, back to yellow in a diagonal setting, so she really paid close attention to her color arrangement as she was designing hers.

And Donna Hanley has a white and black chain running through each of the vertical rows, and then she alternates black and red in the opposite, in the alternating rows. So you can see there's a huge variety of things that you can do with this "Chain Reaction" quilt. So after seeing Lee's quilt and after seeing what the Scrap Squad was doing, this was one that I really wanted to play with. Now in the original pattern, the strips are all 2 1/2 inches, and that made me start looking at precuts. And so here you can see I've got some Tonga Treats from Timeless Treasures and the 2 1/2 strips come in a huge variety of colors, and obviously there's a whole bunch more out there, and you can also do the same thing just with cutting up your own scraps.

So as I looked at the 2 1/2 inch precuts, I also wanted to look at the 10-inch square precuts. So this packet has all 10-inch squares, and I wanted to use those for the background, but in the original pattern, you start with a smaller, about an eight by six-inch rectangle. After you add the strips, you end up with an eight-inch block. But I didn't wanna take a precut at 10 inch and trim it down smaller, so I calculated new dimensions, and that's what I'm gonna show you today is how to make "Chain Reaction" with the new sizes all ready for precuts. So let me show you what the, jump ahead and show you the finished blocks to show you the effect I was going for.

And you'll see with the off-center X, in this case I've got a medium strip that's running through and creating a medium chain, and then I've got the dark one running through here. And so about half of my blocks, in this case 20, are gonna have dark on the bottom, and the other half are gonna have mediums on the bottom. So, as we begin to make this, we're gonna have to first divide our strips into mediums and darks in order to get started. So for my version of "Chain Reaction," I'm using the precuts, and the first thing I thought after I selected these is, maybe I could divide them into blues and greens, but there weren't enough, it didn't divide out equally, so then I wanted to look at them by value. So after opening it up and dividing them into mediums and darks, the yellows, it was easy to see the two lighter yellows from the two darker yellows, and here it was a little trickier, so I divided them out what I thought was the darker ones and what I thought were the lighter ones.

And then what I did was take a picture, and converted the picture to grayscale so that I could see where I needed to make some changes. When you take the color out, it sometimes is easier to see that value difference. And so then by rearranging some of these, some of these that were actually lighter and some of these that are actually darker, and it can be tricky, especially with batiks, because you have such a variety of color happening on them. But by looking at it in grayscale, you can see where it's mostly more medium and mostly more dark. And then I can take another picture, convert it to grayscale, and see that I actually have a much better division now between my mediums and my darks.

And I'm not 100% convinced yet that my dark yellows and my medium yellows are gonna play into this, but I'm keeping them in the mix for now, 'cause I wanna see what happens when I start using them. So, now the advantage of having the precuts is that they're pre-cut, and so preparing them for the actual use in the block becomes a whole lot easier 'cause you have much less cutting to do. And let me show you how I cut these further. For my new sizes from the original pattern, I wanna cut these strips into thirds. Because this block is made with more trimming, I don't have to have real precise sizing as I make these cuts.

So, I'm keeping the folded edge at one side, and I'm just kind of aligning them on my mat using the lines on the mat. So this one's at about half an inch further away, and checking it at this end. And again, making sure that the folds are all on one side. If you are doing something where you needed precise two-inch squares, you'd have to be a little more careful than I'm being, but I know that these strips are approximately 40 inches long. You'll notice that in reality, if you come down here and take a look, in reality, they're all slightly different.

But because of the trimming that we're doing as we make the blocks, I'm not worried about trimming my selvages first, and I'm not as concerned about the exact size on these. I want them to be about 14 inches, and so, because I have the fold here, I can cut them seven inches long. And when these are opened up, now I have my 14-inch cut, and I have three more, or two more, that are also about 14-inch. So now I can divide all of these mediums into one pile, and I have all of my mediums pre-cut, ready to use. And I will do the same thing with the darks, and I will do the same thing with the yellows and kinda mix them in as well.

So, that's how you get your strips ready, is dividing them into your two color groups and then cutting them into 14-inch, approximately 14-inch strips. Next we're gonna prepare the background squares. So they're pre-cut into 10-inch squares, and we need to cut a line that's at a 30 degree angle. Lemme show you first kind of a reminder about some high school geometry. When you have a 30 degree angle, the opposite angle is gonna be 60 degrees, and sometimes it's helpful to know that so you can get an alignment for the right way for the direction that you wanna cut.

If you're right-handed, you can align this 60 degree line on your ruler right along the edge of your fabric, and you would cut right there, and you've got a 30 degree line. If you're left-handed, you would want to align the 30 degree line on your ruler on the edge and cut on this side. The difference this time though is that we're not cutting to the edge of the fabric at this point, we wanna be 1 1/2 inches away, and on paper right now, this is just a pretend 1 1/2 inches. So now I wanna align, the 60 degree line still stays at the top of the fabric, and now it's 1 1/2 inches away and I'm gonna cut on this side, if I'm right-handed. if I'm left-handed, I'm aligning at the edge of the fabric, 1 1/2 inches away, and I'm gonna cut on this side.

So lemme show you my version, which is right-handed. Because it's hard to align a piece of fabric on a half inch and know for sure where it is, I used some painter's tape and just lined that up at the top and the bottom at the one half inch mark, so that I've got a good half-inch guide. So now I can come over to 1 1/2 inches, and I'm gonna align the top edge of the ruler on the 60 degree line, 1 1/2 inches away from the edge of the corner. And that's the first cut to prepare the background squares. The good thing is if you align your precuts, your 10 inch precuts, you can line several up at one time.

In this case, I've got four here. You can align those up next to your painter's tape, your 60 degree line 1 1/2 inches away, and that's where you wanna be real fussy and make sure you're exactly 1 1/2 inches away and that you're along the top edge, and do your cut, and very quickly you can have all of your background squares cut and ready to go with all of your pre-cut strips. And then we're ready to start sewing. 'Kay, now we're gonna get ourselves organized and actually sew some blocks. So, for the first block, with dark strips sewn in first along the bottom of the X, I want 20 backgrounds that are all pre-cut, and I want 20 dark strips, and I want 20 medium strips.

And I'm gonna start with sewing a dark strip to the segment of the background that is cut at the closest to the 1 1/2 inches. If you notice over here, this is longer than the 1 1/2 that we cut, so, these I'm gonna set aside, I'll come back to them in a little bit. I'm gonna pick up a dark strip, and my first background strip. Now, if you remember, when we trimmed these strips, we left selvage on there, so there's selvage at this end, so when I'm sewing these on, I wanna make sure I get plenty up here, 'cause this is where I'm gonna be trimming. So I put these two pieces together, sew a 1/4-inch seam along this edge, and then it will be ready to trim.

So you're gonna line, and I would go through and sew all of my strips, 20 of my dark strips to the 20 background strips, and then I would bring all of them over to cut, but I'm just gonna show you one. So you're gonna line the background up, and you're gonna cut off that edge of the block, and you're gonna do the same with that edge of the block. Then you're gonna pick up your corresponding background piece, and I'm actually gonna flip to this one, so now you have your trimmed dark strip to your background. You're gonna pick up the background piece that matches, see this one's longer than the 1 1/2 inch, and now you need to offset this by a quarter inch. And let me show you how to do that.

And give you some hints for how to practice it if that's new to you. The edge that you wanna start at, and I'm gonna go ahead and mark this so you can see what's going on. If you mark a quarter inch on your seam, this is where you would be sewing. You want this quarter inch to be lined up exactly like that. So when your needle comes in, when you put this into your sewing machine, your needle's gonna be right there, and it's gonna nestle right into that spot.

You're gonna sew this, and then when you get to the other end, it's gonna be at the exact same thing, a quarter inch in here. If you're off, if you're sewing like this, you're gonna have too wide of an area here, and it's not gonna align. If you're off this direction, it's also not gonna align. When you get that perfect 1/4-inch offset, exactly like that, when it's sewn, after you press it and open it up, it's gonna align perfectly across that strip. So that's how you do the offset, 1/4-inch offset seam to get that background piece in place.

And you can mark, you can mark this edge for as long as you need to until you're comfortable with it, but really what's key is learning where that spot is so that when you put it into your sewing machine, your needle nestles right into that, where the two fabrics match. And so then you're gonna sew all of that. So now you're gonna have a pile of squares like this, that are all sewn together like that, and we're gonna do another cut at 30 degrees. And again, you wanna be careful Just show you, this is how it was oriented the first time we cut. If you remember, 1 1/2 inches in on this side.

We wanna do the same thing, but we wanna do it from this side. We want 1 1/2 inches from here, and we want the 30 degree line going this way. So in this case, I'm gonna turn the block over, align it to my painter's tape, make sure that I notice that it's 1 1/2 inches on this side so I want 1 1/2 inches right there, pick up my ruler, align the 60 degree line on the ruler 1 1/2 inches away from the edge of the fabric, and I'm gonna cut. Now this one, I would do these one at a time. I wouldn't try to stack these 'cause you, this wants to be pretty precise.

Leaving this one against the edge, move the larger segment to the side, and you're gonna cut 1 1/2 inches away from this edge, and that's how you're gonna insert the strip. And yes, I'm gonna turn the ruler, the mat, so that I can make that slice. And you're just gonna set this segment you trimmed away off to the side. So now, you've got your two halves ready to insert your next, your medium strip. And again, if you've done all 20 of these, you keep them lined up, so that your strips and backgrounds are all in the same order.

And again, I'm gonna pick up the one that has the 1 1/2 inch on this end with a medium strip. With the medium strip. And again, if I have selvage, I wanna make sure it's out of the way. I'm gonna line it up here, and I'm gonna sew that down. And after I press it, it's time to trim again.

So, I align that edge, trim off that, flip this over, trim this one off, and I have a trimmed block. that's now ready for its second side. So I bring this side back over, and again, I'm gonna offset by a quarter inch. I'm gonna do it. Okay, so, 1/4 inch there.

The needle will nestle in there, I'll sew my 1/4-inch seam, and after I sew that 1/4-inch seam, press it open, and the block is finished. So, the first batch of these will be 20 with the darker fabric sewn on first and the lighter fabric sewn in second. Then I'm gonna do the same thing all over again with 17 backgrounds, and at this time I'm gonna put the medium strip in first, followed by the darker strip. Now, one other thing, when I did the first batch, I pressed everything to the center. So all of the seams were pressed towards the strip for the 20 blocks with the dark fabric inserted first.

When I did the second batch of 17, with the medium strip sewn in first, I pressed those with the seam going away from the strip, and then that way, when I put these blocks together, they'll be able to be able to nest together. They'll nest together well, and so, that's how you're gonna get all 20, 20 blocks with the dark strips first, and 17 blocks with the medium strip sewn in first. Now lemme show you a couple pitfalls, 'cause we all know it happens. Lemme show you first. If you don't get your seam offset by a quarter inch, this is where it's gonna mess up.

In this case, the points were aligned instead of being offset, and you can see clearly now that this block is now not the same size, because you're gonna have to be trimming off here and here. When you first pick up the strip of fabric to sew to a background segment, you wanna make sure that you've got the, the shorter portion of the fabric near the top, this edge. And what you wanna do, you'll do do this once and check it to make sure, if you get these sewn in wrong, when you try to align this up, you don't have enough strip, you don't have enough of the strip to go all the way across. So you wanna make sure that you get everything sewn at the top edge. The third pitfall, when you are making your second cut, you've got 1 1/2 inches here, if you don't get the 1 1/2 inches over here, you can see you don't get an off-center block.

And so, I wanted to show you these pitfalls, 'cause they're things that we run into. Couple of these I had to make to show you the mistake. This one, I made it all by myself without intending to make this one wrong. So there you have 20 blocks and 17 blocks prepared and ready for layout and final design decisions. So now I've brought the blocks to a design wall, and if you remember, 20 of the blocks have a dark strip in the background.

I put a pin in the top corner of those so that I can keep them straight as I'm rearranging them. And you'll notice the dark strip block is always with the larger portion at the top. The lighter strip block always has the smaller portion at the top. So, here I've just put them up randomly, and you'll see the rows are staggered, so that means the second and fourth row, once you know for sure where the blocks are going to land, then you're gonna trim those blocks in half, both at the top and at the bottom on the second and fourth rows. But I like to put them up on a design wall so that I can see what's there, and then step back and start making some decisions about it.

And one of the things I noticed, because I was just putting them up randomly, I've got two backgrounds here that are the same, so I'm gonna trade these two, and just see what happens with that. And I like that better, but then you know what, here I ended up with two next to each other on my darks. And that may be okay, but maybe I wanna change that out, so, I'll come down to this one and rearrange here again. Now one thing that's key when you're doing this is take lots of photos. As soon as you get something that you think you like, take a photo so you can record it before you make more changes.

And now you can follow and see, okay, we've got the dark strip running down through, we've got the light strip running through, and again, take a step back and see, is there an area that's too dark or an area that's too light? One thing that I'm noticing is that this really light yellow against the pale background really tends to disappear, and I don't like that, so I'm gonna take that block away, and bring in a new block, 'cause I made a few extras. And then I can start to look at that and see, okay, is that all kinda working for me? And it's okay, I've got another spot over here with the two darks next to each other. So this one doesn't have a pin, so I'll grab, nope, I'm not gonna grab that one, 'cause I put the lights together.

We'll put this one down there. And put that one there, and I can spend a lotta time arranging and rearranging and playing with the blocks. Sometimes I'll put them on the wall like this and let it sit for a while, come back into the room another time and see if it, see what it looks like after I've looked at it for a while. One thing I'm starting to notice, you would wanna make sure in this case, by putting them up randomly, the yellows did get distributed pretty well. And you have to look at and decide, do I like those yellows, do I wanna keep them in?

Another thing now that I'm noticing is that I do have a lot of the orange backgrounds. I'm starting to wonder what happens if I put all the orange backgrounds together and kind of stop paying attention to the darks and mediums and the crosses, and just kinda play with the backgrounds so that the oranges are together and kind of moving out from orange out dark to light backgrounds. So, I'm gonna start moving some orange backgrounds around, and kinda bring them over here to one side. So now I kinda have the oranges happening, I've got some darker blues around them. I could bring some more blue up a little closer.

And again, just kinda step back, take a look and see, what do you think? At this point, there's no right or wrong, it's what you like. And so you might like them all scattered around randomly, you might like this background kind of centering it on the orange and then dispersing out to other colors so, this has just been a really fun way to play with these blocks. I really enjoy this part of it when I get to this stage, when the blocks are made and just kinda playing with it to see what it turns into. Lemme go back and show you another Scrap Squad quilt at this point.

This one was designed by Jackie Hughes. And if you remember all those pieces that we trimmed off from the center of our blocks, she took hers and incorporated them into her border. And it was a really fun way to use all these trimmings. You also could sew them together to create a panel strip for your backing. At this point now, I'll take these blocks off the design wall, and after knowing for sure what arrangement I want on my colors, I'll make that final decision, then I'll take them to the sewing machine to sew 'em together.

One more thing I wanna point out to you is, as you saw them together, make sure that you are aligning the strips next to each other more closely than the edges. Once have your vertical rows sewn together, if you're off a little bit on the edges, that's when you wanna do a final trim on your edges. So pay attention to where the strips are joining as you saw the rows together. And here you'll see what my final "Chain Reaction" is. It's a real fun, easy block, has a couple fussy moments, but I showed you how to take care of those.

And I hope you enjoy your "Chain Reaction" as much as I've had fun with mine.