Becky's Nine Patch 16 The Last Post

Well I've posted all my Becky's 9-Patch work to date. There are other possibilities to explore. To speed up the sewing process still further a 3" finished square could be substituted for the corner unit. I thought I was the only person who had picked up on this pattern so useful for working with 3.5 and 2" strips and thought of emailing Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville http://www.quiltville.com/ as using precut strips is so much a hallmark of her work but looking through her book "Scraps and Shirttails" I realised the Bargain Basement quilt was made from Becky's 9-Patch blocks though she has given them very much her own stamp so I didn't recognize them immediately. Bonnie has been and is hugely generous to the online quilting community and it was through pressure from her many fans that her ideas took book form, first "Scraps & Shirttails" and next "Adventures with Leaders & Enders" and I believe more will follow but she still continues with an online presence.
Anyway tomorrow back to current quilty events in my life in less exhaustive fashion.

Becky's Nine Patch 15

Back with cheesecloth binding

Here pictures of the two quilts made with Oast Quilters 54" by 72". I could have joined the sets 3 by 4 to achieve the same measurements but preferred to make two quilts instead of one and add a 9" border. One is backed with striped cheesecloth surprisingly successful and the other is bound with it.



Cheesecloth back

Plain 9" border

 

Border of leftover 3.5" strips

This is my penultimate B9P post. After tomorrow it will be back to current sewing though I am sure I'll return to this block in due course - I have one or two more ideas up my sleeve.

Becky's Nine Patch 14

 

Broken dishes



Pinwheel



I'm getting to the end of Becky's 9-Patches now. I have made or rather made up so many as they have been the subject of charity workshops making Ami Simms' Twisted Sisters quilts in the morning and Becky's 9-Patches in the afternoon. I still have two from an Oast workshop which I'll photograph in full in daylight tomomorrow but so as not to break the chain of posts here are pictures of yet more centre variations:

Square in a square

Becky's Nine Patch 13

With the group I belong to, Quay Quilters, we made a charity quilt 2 sets by 3 with 9 inch borders so it still ended up 54 by 72".
We also altered the corner treatment with a counterchange tactic edging one colour square with another colour and vice versa.

sample

sample

Becky's Nine Patch 12

Here are the blocks joined into a set in the quilt. I called it "Strange Horses" after a poem by Edwin Muir.
I feel this pattern with its relatively few matching seams and speed of assembly lends itself particularly to charity quiltmaking. I selected fabrics with males in mind. Not many people make teenager quilts for Linus yet they are in demand and I think boys are less well catered for than girls. Also 9" blocks arranged three sets by four finish at 54" by 72" the preferred size for Quilts of Valour in the UK and the pattern is self bordering.

Here is a quilt made for Project Linus with members of Rambling Roses quilt group. They were given a precut set centre kit and then made up their blocks from their own selection of cut pieces. There were certain rules such as no repeated fabrics and no more than one batik which caused some chafing.

Centre detail

Set detail

Becky's Nine Patch 11

Next sew a 3.5" cut square to a cut 5" by 3.5" oblong and press as desired. Add this to the corner unit keeping the corner unit at top right as shown and press toward the the square/oblong unit. Add a strip cut 2" by 6.5" to the bottom of this piece and press towards the strip.

Lastly add a cut 3.5 by 9.5" unit to complete the blocks.

Becky's Nine Patch 10

Squares CUT 2" finish 1.5"

Oblong CUT 2" by 3.5". Press towards oblong.



Add 3.5" by 5" CUT oblong. Press towards small oblong.

 For this quilt I used greenish batik corner squares in two blocks of the set and orange batik corner squares in the other two. I pressed towards the corner squares. For this quilt I aligned ALL the blocks with the corner square top right. Note the horses are too are aligned the same way in each unit.

Becky's Nine Patch 09

This is the quilt I made for the magazine, this time with a four patch emerging in the centre and with an added border. This pattern is self bordering but the Laurel Burch mythical horses range I used had an interesting border print which I used  for the border. Notice how the border pieces are added with partial piecing, circling round the quilt.

Even though I was in America choosing these fabrics I found it very hard to find 6 or 7 I could use together. In the fabric shop I felt like a rabbit caught in headlights.

I used a consistent placement of fabrics checking I used the same section of striped border print in each set. Also even the waving grass fabric was directional so I paid attention to the placement of this as well.

Becky's Nine Patch 08

I seem to be keeping pace with my B9P posts and the days of the month though I'm not sure if I can stretch it to the 31st. .  Anyway here are some more B9P quilts, one made by Maggie, also from shirtings which she uses to cover her salestable. She had her own ways of managing stripes. Liz made hers amazingly quickly as a present and used contemporary fabrics consistently throughout the blocks. She also added a border.  Because of the repeated fabric placement she worked out a more streamlined method using some strip piecing and rewrote the instructions accordingly. I try to mop up some of my quilting energies by making charity quilts including yard square ones for older prison babies and the pattern lends itself readily to this. I used some pretty coordinating pastels also in a consistent placement.


Maggie's version



Detail of Maggie's B9P

Liz's B9P at Oast meeting

Charity B9P

Becky's Nine Patch 07

Here are some alternative centre treatments using bias as well as straight cuts and stripes cut parallel or at right angles to the selvage. I've also paid attention to the patterned batik trying to fussy cut the different parts of the pattern. The yellow triangles here are placed differently from the the coloured triangles in the other sets. As a traditional quilter I find this playing around with received elements makes the making process interesting and a form of creativity.


Use of straight and bias





4 blocks ready to join

 I should have included this photo of four blocks about to be joined into a set in my last post.

Becky's Nine Patch 06



Here are four blocks set together and a pleasing centre pattern emerges.  I pressed the joining seams clockwise pulling apart some of the stitches in the seam allowance at the centre to enable me to do so. This ensures the sets can be joined easily. Here the half square triangles form a  square in a square but you can also choose to do pinwheels or broken dishes or simply substitute a square; two different fabric squares will result in a centre four patch as you'll see in the next quilt I'll show you.

A "set"

         

                                                                                                                          

Notice the manipulation of striped fabrics here:
in two of the blocks the stripes are PARALLEL to the corner square and in the other two they are at RIGHT ANGLES to the corner square. Then the blocks are set alternately.

If you look at  these pictures of different sets you can see the same check fabric. In one it is cut on the straight grain and in the other on the cross. This is another way of creating variety and visual interest.

Becky's Nine Patch 05

The last two steps are adding the cut 2 by 6.5" strip to the bottom of the pieced unit, still keeping the corner square top left for all blocks. Press toward the strip. Finally add the large cut 3.5 by 9.5" inch piece as shown. Press towards this large oblong.

Becky's Nine Patch 04

Continue the piecing sequence.
Now add the framing oblong cut 2" by 3.5" and press towards the oblong.

Then add a larger cut 3.5" by 5" oblong to the corner unit and press towards the corner unit.

Next sew the two pieced units together taking care to keep the alignment constant through all the blocks, here with the corner unit top left. Press away from the corner unit.

Becky's Nine Patch 03

Here are the pieces laid out. For this setting make four identical blocks per set and lay out all blocks for the quilt the same way with the corner either top right OR top left but always the SAME way.

First sew the corner HST (half square triangle) and add the framing square. Press towards the HST corner square.
I am using the batik shirting for both pieces but to make the join look deliberate rather than untidy I used a different part of the print for the oblong and the square. Other sets in this quilt display different solutions to this design problem.

Also join a 3.5" cut square to a 5 "by 3.5" oblong as shown here and press as desired.

Becky's Nine Patch 02

In 2006 the Pick 'n'Mix retreat group was asked to mount a little exhibit at the Hever Show and the theme was black and white. Some of the members have won national and international competitions and all were very expert so I didn't even try to compete but after rattling my brain came across a b/w batik type print  shirt in a charity shop and snapped it up though I don't usually buy shirts with short sleeves for quilting. I added various other shirt fabrics from my collection and made this quilt which I am very fond of and hasten to point out its little quirks of fabric arrangement.
You can imagine how flattered I was when Lesley, a fellow member who was at that time an assistant magazine editor, said it would be a good suitable begniners' project for the magazine. I realise that statement might sound ironical but I WAS flattered!
The blocks were drafted to an odd size because the challenge quilts had to measure less than 50" but for clarity's sale I assume here a single block finishes at 9" though any measurement suitable for a nine patch can used:  6", , 7.5",  12" etc


Finished patch measurements



Becky's Nine Patch 01

This is my bedroom in days of yore (1996??) with a quilt made for my neice Becky on the bed. She was at university at that time. I chose the block because of the appropriate name. My source was Beth Gutcheon's "Perfect Patchwork Primer" published by Penguin and now long out of print. It's very readable (she wrote a novel as well) and I love the black and white block drawings leaving the user free to impose their own style. If you're a traditional quilter and a lover of blocks I suggest you lay hold of a copy if you happen to come across one.

The block is partly a ninepatch and partly a corner log cabin. As you see here I chose to set my blocks corner to corner in sets of four which created a pleasing secondary pattern and I have followed this arrangement in later versions exploring the various possibilities and I still have some more in mind.