Need some "math" help
 

I embroidered a guitar and when my daughter saw it she said it would be an awesome Christmas present for my 18 year old grandson - we can make 4 of them, then quilt blocks surrounding. It sounded like a good idea. So....got the guitars done - each is 11.75 long by 4.25 wide. I embroidered them on a 18 x 10 fabric. I'd like to do them as either a D9P or D4P but the math scares me......

The tutorials on both start with 5" charm packs. I have fabric to cut. D9P = three(3) 5" squares, with seams it becomes 15 inches minus two(2) 1/4 seams in the patch = 14.5" and that would work for the length, but not the width.

The D4P starts with 5" squares but has 3 seams so 10"-.75" for seams = 9.25 good for the width, but now the length is off.

Am I counting right, and how could I re-jigger the cutting to make this work? I don't want blocks that are too tiny, as the prints aren't too tiny.

Another easy/quick pattern idea?

Your starting squares for either D9P or D4P can be whatever size you wish.

And I'm thinking you could even try it with rectangles instead of squares for a slightly different look.

Creativity time here!

Just realized I'm off by one seam allowance on both, but that just makes it worse.

Or maybe use both d9p and d4p since each works for one dimension?

Ditto to this.

If you look at the D9P you'll see that it's really just strips and squares. You don't have to start with an actual 9 patch to make an arrangement of strips and squares. Use graph paper and design around the embroidery block sizes.