Honeysuckle Lane: It All Began With a Four-Patch…

Thursday, November 16, 2023

It All Began With a Four-Patch…

This quilt (above) is made from leftovers, and to be honest, I like it more than the original quilt!

It all began with a four-patch idea (for another quilt) which turned into a double four-patch. I had a jelly roll of Moda Richmond Reds fabric that didn’t sell in my fabric destash, so I decided to use it up!

I made four-patch blocks, but they looked too busy and I added black plaid, making it a double four-patch (I think).

I prefer scrappy quilts and to scrap it up even more and to add to the overall size, I found pieces of fabric to use for the large solid blocks. Some pieces are fairly new, but some are older cotton prints, which has always been my preference.

This is the original below…

(Backing in progress)

Once the original quilt top was finished and pinned to the batting and backing (which is pieced), I went to clean and oil my sewing machine before I started to machine quilt it.

And then it happened…

I saw a few dozen leftover four-patch blocks by my machine and thought, what if I sew triangles on these and make them on point?! That will make them bigger and I can probably get a small throw quilt out of them. I took these apart and re-pieced with different prints to make them scrappy.

So I gathered up all the leftover fabric from the first quilt, and started cutting 4” squares, then cutting them diagonally and sewing them on.

I had to pull more fabric to get enough but I managed to find scraps that worked.

During all of this, my pin basted quilt is still on the living room floor. I totally abandoned it!

I arranged all the squares on the floor (on top of the first quilt) and numbered each row before I picked them up. I do this because no matter how careful I am, I get them mixed up or turned sideways.

After all the blocks were sewn together, it was still fairly small. I forget just how much a quilt shrinks when there are so many seams! Again, I gathered every bit of scraps from this project and cut strips for a border. They are 5” long and vary in width. I added narrow sashing between the blocks and the strip border.

I ended up piecing a few fabrics just to make them big enough. If you look closely you can see the tiny brown check is pieced, as well as the green floral in the last photo. I also used two fabrics to set this block on point.