One of my favourite uses for the 9 Patch is to set it with an alternate block, this has the effect of creating a frame around your alt bloc, either diagonally or horozontally, depending on how you set your blocks. You can use another pieced block as your alt block or some applique. Or you can use that lovely blank space to feature some fancy quilting

I'm just going to run quickly through making some four patches the method is very similar to piecing the 9 Patch so I thought we could do them here ready for next month, so that next month we can concentrate on doing some triangles.

Choose two medium fabrics that go well together (Pic 1)

Cut twenty 2 1/2" squares, ten out of each fabric (Pic 2)

Join squares together in pairs of alternating colour (pic3) Press seams towards one of the colours

Join pairs to make a four patch, butting seams as previously described for the 9 Patch (Pic 4). These are to be 4" finished, so at this stage should measure 4 1/2"

Choose a dark fabric for your triangles and a light suitable for a background. Set theses aside with your five 4 Patches till next month (Pic 5)

Some more musings :lol:

Have Fun, this craft of ours is for enjoyment and relaxation. If things really turn to custard, it’s only fabric, you can put it in your scrap bin and make another.

Know when to walk away. If something is going badly and stressing you out, take a break, do something else, take a walk, read a book, anything. I promise things will go much better when you get back to it. Unless of course you’ve got a deadline. I really don’t have anything helpful to say about that. I am the worlds worst at the last minute panicked deadline :oops: :lol:

Simple doesn't mean boring. I have tried to use the 9 patch and variants to show that you can make some really wonderful quilts out of some quite simple shapes. Some of the most awesome quilts I’ve seen are those that are based on simple shapes with clear clean lines. So even with beginning skills, we can make a stunning quilt.

I hope this all has been of some use to you. I had a lot of fun playing around with the different settings and searching out some different uses. Please let me know if there is something you’d like covered, I’m open to suggestions. Perhaps there may be a particular block you’d like to do. We must be careful there though, block must already be in the public domain, as we don’t want to run into any difficulties re copyrights.

I’ve decide to use the sample blocks I make for any of these tutorials in a quilt for the ST Vincent DePaul's, they do Christmas Packages for needy families (among other things) and were very helpful to me when my kids were little and we didn’t have much. In Techno Speak that’s maximizing your returns :lol: or what I like to call killing two birds with one stone, Hopefully help someone on here, get to play with all sorts of patterns and shapes, that I'd never have the time to actually make, practice my computer and tutoring skills and someone gets something nice for Christmas, win win really. So I hope Y’all don’t mind being guinea pigs :D . Hope you have as much fun as I did
Cheers

One other thing: I was wondering if it might be better to put all the instructions in a single PDF File that can be downloaded to your computer. the pictures in this post seem to load on in a random order no matter in which order I post them. Would a single downloadable file be easier for you to use? What is your oppinion?

Next Month
The Split 9 Patch and a couple of ways of putting triangles in our blocks

Wow, Shelly - thank you so much for all your hard work! A pdf would be great; there is so much information it would make it handy to re-read and take over to the sewing machine with me. Awesome tutorial!

Shelly thanks for the tutorial. I love 9 patches...but not great at turning things on point, so I really appreciated that aspect of the lesson.

Thank you so much! It is quite obvious that you've put a lot of thought, effort and time into this and I cannot say how much we are appreciating this!

I think showing us how the 9 patch can be used is fabulous because it shows how versitile it is and how, as you said, we can make simple quilts that do not look boring!

Thanks so much folks, you makin me blush :oops: , I hope people find it of use. I was a bit light on cutting instructions, but you can only put so much in at once, so if any body wants something covered in more detail, all you have to do is ask and I'll do what I can to work it into a later lesson. I am aiming to post around the 22nd of each month and am going to trial it for a while to see how it goes, so I wanna see some pics :P

I forgot to post a notice in the other thread that the first lesson was posted duh :lol: So I betta go do that now

Could Shelley please tell me what a pdf file is and how to go about getting the information.... thanks....

Hi Joy, a PDF file is one that can be read by your Adobe Reader. As most people have Adobe Reader on their computer this is a great way of being able to share documents and pictures with different computer systems. For instance if I posted a file that was written using Microsoft Word you would only be able to read it if you also had the same program on your computer. Don't worry about it for this first lesson though, There are no PDF files to download, I was just making enquiries to see if people would find this useful