Meadow Mist Designs: disappearing 9 patch

Friday, August 28, 2015

Quick and Easy Charm Square Baby Quilt

I'm back today with a quick finish and a tutorial. I needed to make a baby quilt for a co-worker at work, but after many hours of paper piecing this past week, I just wanted a quick and easy pattern. I had a bunch of charm squares (5" square) leftover from a fat quarter bundle of Maritime Modern by Riley Blake that I had already made 2 baby quilts from (you can see the first and the second here) and I thought that a disappearing 9-patch fit the bill perfectly.

Here is a quick tutorial so that you can just grab your supplies and start piecing to have a baby quilt finished in no time:

Finished size: 39" x 39"
This size is wonderful for a quick baby quilt because you can use a single width
fabric for the backing, no piecing of the back :)

Materials needed:

81 charm squares (5" square). You can use scraps or 2 Moda charm packs
1 ¼ yards backing
⅜ yards binding
42" x 42" batting (I pieced together some batting scraps for mine)

Piecing Instructions:

Step 1: Sew your charm squares into 27 sets of 3 charm squares each.

Step 2: Sew 3 charm square sets together forming a 9 patch. Repeat to form 9 total 9-patches.

Here are all of the 9-patches laid out together. You could sew the 9-patches together for a great simple patchwork quilt top (like is shown here at the bottom of the post).

Step 3: Cut each 9-patch in half once horizontally and vertically. The cut should be 7" from the side and 2 ¼" from the inner seam.

Step 4: Mix the cut blocks up in any new 6 block x 6 block arrangement. Here are two options I tried. I decided on the more randomly mixed up version.

Step 5: Sew the blocks into rows and then sew rows together. I prefer to press my seams open so that the quilt top lays flatter.

Step 6: Layer the quilt top, batting, and backing together. Quilt as desired. I decided to go with a random hook/wave looking pattern to mimic some of the wave designs in the fabric.

Step 7: Form the binding from 5 strips 2 ½ x WOF. (I was actually able to make the binding using only 4 strips with just a couple inches to spare).

For the binding, I tried glue basting with Elmer's glue and using the machine to stitch down the binding (I almost always hand stitch the binding). It worked great and I got very nice, crisp edges and corners. I will be employing this method more in the future.