Double Disappearing Four-Patch Quilt Top

This is the third of my giving-away quilt tops.

I wanted something which would come up quickly and use up some hand block- printed muslin lying around in my stash for years. The squares were cut at 16″ from the 44″ wide fabric, leaving a strip of just over 10″ ( after removing the selvedge) along the length. The solid blue is cambric.

The four-patch was made to ‘disappear’ twice over in making this block! The first cuts were at 2.75″ on either side of the centre seams. After rotating the strips and stitching them back together ( you can check on YouTube – there are plenty of great videos explaining how it is done) I went a step further.

I cut strips 3″ wide at the top and bottom edges, swapped them and sewed them back to the block. I then cut 3″ strips on either side of the block, swapped those and sewed them back! This makes a 29″ final block. Three of those blocks make the centre panel and I made half blocks for the side panels, using the 10″ strip. I ended up with a quilt top 50″x 87″ after adding a 2″ strip as a border on the sides – seems to be a reasonable size for a young teenager.

Here is another look at the top on my ironing board. The blue is more of a turquoise actually, but my iPad just doesn’t seem to pick up the correct shade!