Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Charity Quilt Pattern Idea

Here is a really simple charity quilt pattern. I made mine from my stack of 6" squares I have been cutting recently. Any size square will work though.

Start with forty-eight 6" squares and forty-eight 1.5" by 9" solid (or reads as solid) rectangles. Cut the squares in half once diagonally.


I used this as a Leader and Ender project. Above are my pieces stacked and waiting to be sewn. Sew the solid rectangle to one triangular half of your square along the diagonal you cut. Then sew the other triangular half to the other side of the rectangle. So basically you are inserting the solid rectangle into the diagonal of the square.

After you get them all sewn, you need to square them back up to 6" by 6".


Then play with your blocks. I chose to make an X pattern.


You could also just do a zig zag pattern with the solid rectangle. I think I'll try that next. I have another set of the red rectangles ready to go. I just need to pick out 48 more 6" squares from my stack.

You can do this with any size square. I wouldn't go much smaller than 5" squares though because then your insertion rectangle will have to be pretty skinny. If you go larger than 7" squares you may want to increase the width of your rectangles a bit. For the length of your insertion rectangles, just measure the diagonal of your square and add at least an inch. For 6" squares like I used, 1.5" by 9" rectangles are perfect. To square up your blocks just cut the largest square you can from your sewn blocks. If you follow my instructions you will be able to cut a 6" square from your sewn blocks with very little waste.

5 comments:

Barb said...

Looks wonderful!!

West Michigan Quilter said...

How clever. I bet I could do that with my 5" squares. Great charity project. Thanks.

Sandy H said...

I love this idea. Did you worry much about whether any of the fabrics coordinated with one another or does the solid just sort of naturally pull everything together? I'm still a newbie when it comes to "real" scrap quilts (my scrappies to date have mostly been precuts) so I'm a bit hesitant to just throw everything in a pot and hope it turns out OK. I do love this idea, though--what a great way to use up scraps!

Mama Pea said...

So simple and such a nice looking pattern when you are done! Nice!

quilthexle said...

Wonderful pattern - I will give it a try, for sure! Thank you so much!