Simple Designs with Nine Patches

Designing your own quilts can be real satisfying. And if you haven't ever done that, I'm gonna show you an easy way to design some simple, traditional type quilts. Don't worry about the word design. A design is simply a plan. You do something by design rather than by accident, and it's the same way with making quilts. You have a plan for what you're going to do. These are the supplies I use for my extremely low-tech designing. I use graph paper, pencil and ruler, calculator so I don't make a silly math mistake, especially on camera, and a whole bunch of fabric, which you probably have a lot of fabric at your house. We're going to design with little nine patches. I've been in a lot of nine patch exchanges, and I have about a jillion of these at my house, so I'm always glad to come up with new designs for using these little nine patches. These guys are three inches finished, which means when the seams are sewn all the way around it in a quilt, it will be three inches. Right now, it measures 3 1/2 inches 'cause there's a 1/4-inch seam allowance all the way around. Once again, the finished size. This very center piece is the only piece that's a finished size in this block so far because it's the only one that has the seams sewn all the way around it. I know that sounds really basic, but those kinds of things will be really helpful as we continue with this. One of the simplest designs to make with nine patches is the double nine patch block, and that's what I have right here, a big nine patch made with little nine patches going through it too. Because these nine patches, little nine patches, were 3 1/2 inches cut, the square will be 3 1/2 inches cut also. 3 inches finished, 3 1/2 inches cut. The simplest block on Earth just about, but you can do some things to it to jazz it up. One of the things you might do is to change this little center, this big block right here. And I've drawn in my book. I like to draw in a book like this so I can keep track of those designs. I don't lose them with papers floating around. So to embellish or to change this little piece right here, I could add triangle corners to it. And once again, I'm gonna measure it, just so you'll see how you would do this if you were working with a more complex piece. The square needs to be three inches finished. I'm drawing a finished size. And the little triangles, I want it to meet in the middle, so that means the side of the triangle is 1 1/2 inches. I'm going to assemble this with a stitch and flip method, which means I add 1/2 inch to that triangle if I were cutting a square. So this is how that piece can look. This is how the stitch and flip works. You just mark a diagonal line on the small square, align it with a larger piece, whether it's a square or a rectangle. You sew from corner to corner. I usually like to mark that so I can get to the corner okay. And you open it up and press it. And you're gonna go back and trim away those underneath pieces. Well, this little simple piece can really make a big difference in how the simple double nine patch comes together. Just adding that, and I've got a little star. I can flip 'em around, and I've got a different kind of a shape. Don't now what you call this, but that's a different kind of a shape. I can add things to the corner and change them, put a different center in the middle, and that gives me a completely different block too. Maybe I want to put just plain fabrics in the corner. This is, once again, a 3 1/2-inch square, cut 3 1/2 inches so it finishes 3 inches. And that's how that would look. Switch out the corners. Change these again. Every time you make a little change, you've got a different block going. So your plan may change as you go along when you see that you like something a little bit better. These corners also can be something different. If I decided I wanted to have, instead of a plain square for the corner, I want two triangles. The math for that is you cut... You add 7/8 of an inch to the finished size of that square. So the finished size of this square is three inches. I'm going to cut a square 3 7/8 of an inch, slice it diagonally, sew it together with another one, and then I've got this half square triangle. Get rid of that. And this, once again, completely changes the look of the block. Turn 'em around the other way. That's different too. This all is extremely simple way to come up with designs. Low-tech, low-math. Oop, let's switch these around. See what happens if I do that too. Every little change can make a huge difference in the way that your block looks. So that's one of the many blocks that can be made from the lowly little nine patch. Get rid of those. I think that was all I wanna gonna do with this particular one. So let's try something different. Here's a different nine patch, just 'cause you probably got tired of looking at those colors. I know I did. And maybe I would like something different, like... I didn't draw it in here. Oh well, that's all right. A piece like this. This is a little hourglass piece. The math for this, once again, I want it to finish three inches finished, so I'm going to cut a square an inch and 1/4 larger than that. So I'll cut a square 4 1/4 inches, slice it diagonally twice to get 1/4 square triangles. That puts the straight of grain on this outer edge to keep this piece stable. Sew those 1/4 square triangles back together. And here's what happens with four of those. You end up with this little star. And now I have corners to fill. What do I wanna do with them? I can put nine patches in there. I could just put a plain piece of fabric in there. That works. And of course you know that's a 3 1/2-inch square, cut 3 1/2 inches. I should say cut or finished each time I say something so that you know exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe these half square triangles from the previous one might work in there. Maybe the colors aren't the greatest, but you will get the idea of, of putting in the 1/2 square triangles in the corners. This is what I know keeps me running to the fabric store, is finding new fabrics and new shapes that go with fabrics and quilts that I already have. Rotate those, and you once again have something different. At home, I have a design wall. It's kind of like this surface. It's insulation board that I buy at the home improvement store, and then I wrapped batting around it. And I'm lucky enough to be able to staple it or screw it into the wall at home because I have my own sewing room that's a dedicated sewing room. And it's really handy to be able to stick up on the wall all kinds of different pieces and be able to really get a good distance look at what I'm making 'cause looking at this from farther away makes a ton of difference. So if you're lucky enough to do that, take advantage of that. If I just rotate these pieces, once again I have something else that's very different. And I brought in some other things to add to this. Each time you've got something different going on, the big trouble is you eventually have to make a decision and get something sewn, not just play with all the pieces. So that's a couple of the things to do, building on the idea of a double nine patch. There are certainly other things that you can do with your little nine patches. Let me see what I have over here next. This is called a sister's choice block, and I started this by drawing it in my book. Like I said, I like to keep my designs together in a book so I don't lose those pieces of paper. This is what I drew so that I could figure out what size pieces I needed to cut to make this block. And once again, this is three-inch finished block, so this rectangle, I'm doing this as a rectangle with the stitch and flip corners on it again. The rectangle finished measures one by three, so the cut size will be 1 1/2 by 3 1/2. The little square that I'm gonna cut to do the stitch and flip triangle, I'm measuring it, so I make sure I get it right, was one inch finished. So I'm going to cut 1 1/2-inch squares to be able to do the stitch and flip. Sometimes you don't wanna draw the whole size, the actual size of the piece you're gonna make. And once you get used to doing this kind of work on the graph paper, you can just draw it really little like this and change the sizes. If I did something like this, I would write myself a note, "Okay, I wanna make this larger. I want to make each of those squares represent two inches." And then I'd be able to figure out what size to cut everything. And if I have something that's a really weird size like this block, I pulled this out of my closet to see what else I had made with nine patches. I'll put this to the side right now. Well, this silly thing, these squares are 1 3/4 inches finished. That's not math I'm gonna do in my head, just 'cause I know I can't. So to figure out what size rectangle I need right here, if this is 1 3/4 inches finished, I need to multiply that by three. This finished piece will be 5 1/4 inches, so I need to cut it... Okay, two dimensions. 5 1/4 by 1 3/4 inches finished, so I need to add 1/2 an inch to each of those dimensions to figure out what size to cut the base square. This, once again, is a block that you can alter. What if you made the 1/2 square triangles? Once again, this is 1 3/4 inches finished, .75. And I'm going to add 7/8 of a inch to that, which is .875. Okay, let's make that simpler. 7/8 of an inch is 7 divided by 8, so you can just do that on your calculator. 7 divided by 8 equals 8.75, just like I said. And now I'm gonna add the other number. Plus 1.75. So the square I need to cut to do this 1/2 square triangle is 2 5/8 of an inch. Slice it in half diagonally, sew it together. Well, these can really alter the block a lot. If I put it this way, I've made a different shape here. Same thing if I do it here. What if I want to move those into the center and just make the nine patch be different? That's another block. Rotate them. This goes on and on, doesn't it? So this to me is what makes quilting so fun and exciting, is little simple changes can make a huge difference in the way that something looks. Let's see what else I had here. I wanted to show you a sawtooth star, starting with a nine patch. There's my, once again, three-inch finished nine patch. And on this page, I drew a simple sawtooth star. The rectangle I need for that is 1 1/2 inches by 3 inches finished, so it needs to be cut 2 inches by 3 1/2 inches. The stitch and flip corners will be 1 1/2 inches finished, so I'm gonna cut them two inches. Same technique to stitch and flip. Let me put this a little closer. And here's what I ended up with for my sawtooth star. Obviously have a stack of things over here, so you bet you know I'm going to play with those again too. There's a basic sawtooth star. Can put in these as corners. Whoops, right side up would be helpful. And just like everything else, if you shift the position of things, you get a different block. Well, what if I wanted this to have light corners or light points on it? That gives me a different block too. And now since I already have these things made, let me see what happens if I stick those on there. I've got a block that's growing and has a completely different shape now. And if I were gonna make this an entire block, I have a three-inch finished square to fill in right here, so I can go back to some of these pieces I had before. Maybe the colors aren't exactly what you do, but you can get the idea. I'm gonna put these to the side right now. And here we are with half square triangles in here. What if I want to switch those out and add a different fabric? Kinda like that a little bit better. It gives it a little bit more pizzazz. Whoops. Get that in the right way. Well, what if I wanted to change this out? I made these little half square triangles, and I'm just placing them on top of here, but if I were going to actually sew this, these darker red pieces would be cut as half square triangles too. And you can just draw that on your graph paper and figure out what size they need to be. Every little change in here can make a big difference in how your quilt looks. Swap 'em. Swap these. And these are all just the very same units, simple math, simple stitching. It's the change of fabrics that make a difference and the changes in the values, the values being the darks or the lights. If I put a dark corner on there, then that coral stands out a little bit better. I'm not gonna do too much more of this because I think you're getting the idea, and I'm hoping you're wanting to run to your own fabric stash and get started on some of this. One more of those. Okay. So that's just one of the jillions of things you can do with these nine patches. Gonna take a quick look in my book and see if there were some other things that maybe will spark ideas for you. Here's my little drawing of the nine patches and the hourglass blocks, which can make an overall pattern. You don't have to do just a block and do something different. Sometimes you get an overall pattern with it. But if you did just a block, like this much of it, you could decide whether you want to add sashing to it or alternate blocks. And here's one I wanted to show you. This is something I just drew on here to see what it would look like. And in this particular design, the nine patches are not in a block, but they're in the sashing. And I sewed a little bit of that so you can see what that looks like. Here's my sample of how I did it. I'll show you that in a second. Get rid of all that. Bear with me while I set this up because I think as I lay these pieces out, you'll begin to see how this was, how the nine patches are built into the... The nine patches are in the sashing. They're not in the block. I didn't design a block around the nine patches. The nine patches are in the rows of the sashing. There's really not much of a true block in this quilt. See if I can get this the right way or at least close enough for you to see what the heck I was doing. This must go this way. Oh, I know. I'll put this one here. That's the trouble when you put something on your design wall and you sew it, and then you take it down, and you think you can get it back together again. Okay, there we go. I think you're seeing this design start to come together. Oh, that one goes up there. More right... Sorta like Laurel and Hardy making a quilt here, only it's just Laurel. There we go. This kind of a design would have to be put up on your design wall and taken down bit by bit because the star that appears here is made in three different rows. So you'd either need a design wall, or clear your family out of your house, and put it all over the floor, or put it on your bed and not go to sleep till your quilt's put together. But it's a fun way to work anyway. And just so you know how these star points were made, it's exactly the same method that I showed before, the stitch and flip. Three-inch finished nine patch. This square right here is six inches finished, so it's cut 6 1/2 inches. This light-colored sashing was a complete strip. It was a whole strip like this size, 6 1/2 by 3 1/2. And those star points were done by stitch and flip. Here's the first one. Whoops, let me move all this out of the way. The first star point, I drew the diagonal line, stitched on the line. Flip and press it. You'd wanna go in there and trim that away. And then your second star point the same way. Place it on there, stitch, and flip. And then you come back and trim that away. Simple, simple sewing, simple math, a wide variety of quilts. I'm going to show you a couple of finished quilts now. Here are a couple of quilts that are made from the same units and pieces that I showed you on the table. This is a nine patch and hourglass. Notice that there's a star that appears. See the red points of the star? And as a design that shifts, then you can see the light points of the star. That's one of the things I really love about this particular kind of quilt. This is a six-inch finished nine patch, so the hourglass, to cut those pieces, you cut a square 7 1/4 inches square, and cut, slice it diagonally twice to sew those back together for that block. And I'll show you another one. This, once again, is nine patches and half square triangles. The way these are organized, they make strong diagonal lines. This is a quilt that was given to me by some friends in Tucson. The group got together and made all of these pieces, and then a couple of 'em got together and organized it, once again, on a design wall or on a big floor to make the light and the dark stripes appear. Six-inch finished nine patches, the half square triangles, six inches finished. So you cut the square 6 7/8 inches square. Slice diagonally one time, and put the square together, the triangles together to make that particular block. There were some leftover pieces from that particular quilt, so they were organized in a different way around a center. This is called a barn raising setting. And it will someday grow larger as I add some more of my pieces to it. And the last quilt I'm going to show you, once again, is those little bitty three-inch finished nine patches. This one was placed... All the pieces were placed on my design wall so that I could get the flow of color, the light down to the dark. You'll see the three-inch finished nine patch, and here's a half square triangle. Once again, you cut the square 3 7/8 inches square. Slice it diagonally one time. Sew those together. The only tricky little part of it is when the bands of color turn in the corner, and right here is one of those pieces. This is a three-inch finished block. So this piece is cut 3 7/8 inches square, sliced diagonally one time. And these little pieces are the quarter square triangles. That half of one of the hourglasses. So to get those pieces to make a three-inch finished block, you would cut the squares 4 1/4 inches square, slice diagonally twice, and then put those pieces together. I hope that in all of my rambling, I've shown you something that will make you excited to go to your stash, get out your fabric and play with it, get some graph paper, and design some really simple, easy to make quilts that are spectacular with the colors that you like.