Rectangular 18-Patch quilt blocks

Next up this month: a series of easy quilt blocks. In fact, they are easy and scrap friendly - a combination that sews up like a treat.

I am a member of Comfort circle, a group of 10 quilters (most in The Netherlands) who make charity quilts together under the umbrella of do. Good Stitches. You never know what block will be coming at you next. This March it is the 18-patch block, made up of rectangular patchwork pieces.

This block is easiest to sew by piecing together long, thin fabric strips and then sub-cutting the sewn strips into squares. This way you don’t have to sew together a ton of individual 1.5” x 2.5” cut rectangles. Naturally, I have plenty of long, thin fabric scraps! Yesterday afternoon, I dug through my strings for 1.5” wide strips. The ideal candidate would be 24” long or more, but I could also use a few shorter strips in series.

For each block, I’ve matched two fabrics in the same color family, as per the queen bee’s prompt. Before long my strips were paired, trimmed, sewn and pressed!

Here I am carefully sub-cutting the strip-pieced units into tidy 2.5” squares. Whenever you sew and then cut (instead of cutting and then sewing), you have the chance to increase accuracy. That’s definitely a bonus with this block, since it is made up of many small pieces. The more small pieces, the greater accuracy generally required in patchwork.

After sewing strips and sub-cutting the squares, your work is almost done. Simply sew three sub-cut squares together as a row and then join three identical rows to make a block. Easy peasy! For best results, join this type of patchwork with scant 1/4” seam allowances not true 1/4” seams. That provides the wiggle room for trimming things up at the end, to yield a perfect 6.5” square (unfinished) block.

What a great choice for a collaborative bee quilt! Since each block has its own simple color scheme, the blocks from our whole group should come together into a beautiful scrap-happy whole.