Disappearing 9 Patch Part 2

So where did we leave off with part one??? Oh yes I remember. You should have 10 blocks of nine patches.

Like this...



Now each block of nine is going to get cut in half vertically then horizontally. It should be around 5 inches for your cutting lines. It will look like this. See how the nine patch disappears? It is looking like you spent hours piecing this baby but really it didn't take much time at all.



Now comes the part that is totally up to you. Now that you've cut all 10 of your blocks up it is time to arrange them. Make sure you have a decent space to spread out on and can step back and look at your design. I will warn you this took me a long time. First design... You will notice that you have one complete block of four pieces left over. You can make a small candle mat or small pillow tucks out of those at a later time.



I didn't like it so I tried again...

I started out with four squares as you can see. Yea this took lots and lots of coffee. lol



From there I TRIED to randomly place the rest of the blocks around them. In the end I came up with this. It's kinda hard to tell because my table is skinny so I had to overlap the blocks. I have six blocks across and six blocks down.



Next step is to sew the blocks together in rows. Whether you sew vertically or horizontally it doesn't matter. (Now comes the beginner part of me not making enough quilts yet.lol) As you can see I tried to start matching up the blocks to sew. I thought I would try chain piecing but it didn't work out so well because I walked away from the table and forgot how I had matched up the blocks. DUUUHHHH...

So I had to stop put them back and figure out what I had done. Do NOT do as I do. LOL. It takes more time then necessary. LOL. Figure out a method that works for you.



Once again I made a mistake while sewing the blocks together. I told you I am not ashamed to show you that I'm human and I make mistakes. LOL



I ended up sewing two blocks together at a time. (Again I am a beginner quilter too so I'm sure I'm making more work than necessary.) The next step would be pressing your newly formed blocks. Again find a method that works for you to remember where each block goes after you press it.



After pressing the blocks I then joined the blocks to the next set of block so on and so forth to make a row. Remember only a 1/4" seam is necessary. FYI you do not need to reverse your stitches whenever you start or stop a seam because you will lock the seam when you sew over it with another row. Remember press your new seams before moving on. I have found out the hard way if you don't press your seams they don't like to match up where they should.



Hang in there... What I did next is sew two rows together trying to match up seams where I could to make two joined rows. I always try to match up any seams in the middle of the rows. I figure people will notice that first if they aren't. As I worked outward some of my seams didn't match too great. Oh well with this quilt it's hard to tell. I have not pressed my seams at this point yet...



Can you guess the next step? LOL. Yep you are right press and sew the rows together to form your quilt top. Tada!!!! LOL



The next part will be deciding how you want to finish your quilt. Do you want borders? Are you just going to leave it as is. Do you want to hand tie it, hand quilt it, or machine quilt it? I am going to be honest right now. I don't know how to machine quilt. This of course would be a quick option. So if any of you who are quilting along (OR on a different quilt you are working on that you are machine quilting) know how to machine quilt and would be willing to post it on your blog I would ask you to let me know and I will link up with you for the next step. I do know how to tie a quilt, but I think I'm going to hand quilt mine. So this is the method I'm going to show you. If you are going to hand tie yours because you know how again let me know. I want to link up with you too. I'd LOVE to show everyone each of the methods used to finish a quilt. Don't worry if you haven't bought your batting or backing yet. I will let you know in my next post of Part 3 how to measure your quilt to add borders, how to measure your quilt for batting and a back, and if you are hand quilting how to mark your quilt. Until next time, if you have any questions please let me know.