Checker board

I saw this quilt on the internet and fell in love. The post said she didn't have a pattern just made it up, well if you know me that was all the challenge I needed. I took a screen shot of the quilt because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find it again and I was right. I didn't write down the person's name so I didn't have any way to contact her again. I don't know how she put it together but after I studied it a while I could see it could be made using 3 different blocks.

The double nine patch was the first I spotted. I am not sure what size blocks she used but I decided on 1.5 inch strips. I strip pieced the units for the nine patch and that makes a 3.5 inch block so adding a 3.5 light square it make a 9 inch finished block.

The 81 patch is just 5 dark and 4 light nine patch units. This will also finish 9 inches.

The third block I call the bar unit. It is 2 dark and 1 light nine patch units with 3 different light squares sewn on either side of it. It is turned horizontal between the double nine patch blocks and is placed as a vertical block between the 81 patch units.

I wanted it to start and end with the double nine patch so I had to use odd number of blocks in a row and odd number of rows. I set mine 9 across and 11 down that makes it 81 by 99.

All the dark fabrics are batiks. I was already cutting a pattern called Mosaic by the  Quilted Twins using 2 inch strips of batiks so why not cut 1.5 inch strips and the same time. The Mosiac is still in the box because this one became an obsession. I started out thinking I would just make a few strip set then a few nine patch blocks, them a bar block then the double nine patch block and away it went. I love to multi task by cutting more than one quilt at a time, because you know how time consuming it is to cut a scrap quilt. A two color quilt can be cut much faster. So while you have the fabric out and pressed I like to cut for another project. Wouldn't you know just as I got all I needed cut for this quilt and the Mosiac the Quiltmaker magazine came out with a stash buster in batik on the cover. It is made with 3.5 inch strips. Poo I could have cut that one too, guess I will be pulling the fabric back out. I had not worked with my batik stash in several years and was thinking about getting rid of it and now I have one quilt finished and another two in the planning stages. These will put a pretty good dent in that stash.


I did the math on it and determined I needed 348 dark and 129 light nine patch units. If you have read my blog more than twice then you know I am not one to do all the cutting first , no I have to jump into the sewing immediately and it is probably good that I do it that way or I might not have finihed this one. I was using a lot of fat quarters and on the yardage I would cut it in half so that I was dealing with a 21 or 22 inch strip. Most of the time I could get 14 cuttings from one strip set but to make all these nine patch units it took approximately 60 of the dark sets and 44 of the light sets . That is a lot of cutting. Once I realized how much it was going to take I knew I would have to repeat fabric. I probably had 12 or 15 whites and off whites that I used. I haven't counted the total number of pieces it this thing but I probably will. Okay I stopped and counted and it is not as many as I thought it would be. There are 30 of the double nine patch blocks and 49 pieces per block that is 1470, there is 20 of the 81 patch blocks so that is 1620 and 49 of the bar units with 33 pieces each equals 1617 making it a total of 4707. If I had made this from individual squares it would have drove me crazy but strip piecing it was not bad.  



I am taking it to guild meeting tonight for show and tell so I better get up from here and get going.

Happy Stitching,

Teresa