4th of July Quilt: Beginner Friendly Tutorial

Let’s start with the obvious. Why am I showing you a picture of a Christmas quilt when the title and the featured image clearly suggest that the quilt for today is a 4th of July quilt? Not to mention, it’s May.

Well, this Christmas quilt was actually the inspiration for the 4th of July quilt for this post. I made that Christmas quilt for one of my awesome repeat clients last year. He’s a super fun client to work with because he choses and collects all the fabrics himself and sends them to me with the instructions: “what can you make with this?”

This Christmas quilt was part of a large order of five quilts that needed to be made quickly. The fabrics he sent were a mix of fat quarters, and off the bolt cuts of quarter yards, half yards, single yard, and multiple yards. A lot of the prints were large prints, so I didn’t want to cut the pieces too small and not be able to see the whole picture.

Something that goes together quickly and showcases the large prints without doing a plain basic squares quilt… enter a large block disappearing nine patch. If you’ve never heard of a disappearing nine patch quilt, it involves sewing a standard nine patch block and then cutting it so that you can rearrange the blocks into something that looks more complicated than it actually is.

Since there were a lot of fat quarters and quarter yard cuts, I decided to use 9 inch squares to build my blocks. This makes HUGE blocks so that your quilt goes together quickly.

You may have also noticed that this doesn’t look like what you might think a disappearing nine patch looks like. I chose to use this arrangement for disappearing nine patch blocks because it looks great with scrappy style quilts. If you are newer to quilting and don’t know what the more common arrangement I’m talking about even looks like, Magpie Quilts has a pretty example.

Disappearing nine patch quilts are super versatile. There are so many ways to cut the blocks and rearrange them. You can even add in some pieced blocks in the spots that won’t get cut to make it look really interesting. I did that in this quilt.

Alright then. Enough about the Christmas quilt, and on to the 4th of July quilt I promised in the title.

The 4th of July Quilt

I made this quilt the same way as I made the Christmas quilt, except I used Layer Cakes. Layer cakes are packs of precut 10 inch squares in coordinating prints. The precuts are great because they save you all the time you would have spent cutting the squares. They typically have 42 squares per pack. This one uses two packs, but you could also make a smaller quilt using just one layer cake.

I could explain more about disappearing nine patch quilts, but it’s going to make a lot more sense when you actually make it. So, let’s make this quilt top.

What you need

-Fabric requirements:
Quilt top = 2 layer cakes – I used two packs of “Land That I Love” by Michael Miller Fabrics
Backing = 6 yards – you will have some left over
Binding = 3/4 yards – this is using width of fabric strips cut at 2.5 inches wide
Batting = I used warm and white

-Tools:
Rotary cutter
Scissors
Cutting mat
Ruler – I use a 6″x24″ ruler for this one because the 9 patch blocks are so large
Thread

Now that we have our stuff together, let’s make it!

Full Disclosure here – I’m not a pattern writer (at least not yet). So, this beginner friendly tutorial will be in the form of, step by step instructions, instead of a downloadable pattern.

Step 1 – Make your nine patch blocks.

Using a 1/4″ seam allowance, assemble your nine patch blocks as shown in the picture. Note how I chose to place the blocks. For the way we are going to do our disappearing nine patch, the blocks in the corner will not be cut or changed. I wanted to leave the truck prints uncut so that the blocks will showcase the whole design. So, I kept those prints in the corners on all the nine patch blocks.

You will make nine of these nine patch blocks. There will be three layer cake squares left over when you are finished making all the nine patches.

Tip: While I’m sewing the rows together, I like to finger press the seams of each row in opposite directions so that the seams will nest. This means that when you place your rows right sides together the seams will be going in opposite directions as shown. I don’t usually pin, but putting a pin just before and just after the nested seam will help you get accurate seams.

One more tip: Before moving on to the next step, it’s a good idea to press the blocks to flatten out the seams. You’ll get more accurate cuts in Step 2 if your block lays nice and flat.

Step 2 – Cut your nine patch blocks in half vertically and horizontally, forming four quadrants as shown.

The squares are 10 inches with a 1/4 inch seam allowance, so in theory, that should make those middle blocks 9.5 inches wide, and the mid line that you cut along should be 4.75 inches from the side seam. But, layer cake squares aren’t standardized, so it’s a good idea to measure the size of the middle row to be sure you are cutting along the actual midline.

Step 3 – Rearrange your quadrants to form your new blocks.

I like to cut them all up first before sewing them into the new block arrangement. This allows you to rearrange each quadrant of the blocks and will give you so many more possibilities for the layout of the quilt top. It also allows you to do a better job of evenly mixing your colors and print types through out your quilt.

Step 4 – Lay out your blocks. You can see how I arranged mine in my layout area/floor. Take pictures with your phone so that you have something to look back at while sewing them together. I don’t like to overthink the layout too much, but I do like to have a nice balance of colors and prints and not have two same prints touching if possible.

The picture on the left shows what it looks like when you don’t mix the quadrants up before sewing the final block together. The quilt on the right shows how I was able to balance out the colors by mixing up the quadrants.

Step 5 – Sew all your blocks together. There are only nine of them, and they are HUGE. So, it goes fast.

That’s it; your quilt top is finished! Baste it, quilt it as desired, and bind it.

Finished quilt top will be approximately 84″x84″, perfect for a summer picnic quilt.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get mine quilted and bound soon to show you how it turned out!

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you found it useful. Feel free to leave a comment or email me if you have any questions.

Happy Quilting!