Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a great project for you today. Let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t it fun? Now this is one of those fun blocks where you think you see what you’re seeing but you don’t see what you’re seeing. So here is the block right here. And it comes right down the center of these blocks. This is the block that you’re looking at that you think it is but it’s not, it’s this block here. So I want to show you how to make this. This is so much fun.

So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is three packs of five inch squares. And that’s 42 squares per pack. And I’m, we are using today Simply Chic by Anna Stewart for Benartex. And it just makes a beautiful quilt. You’re going to need about two yards of background fabric. Some of those are going to be the same five inch squares so you could use a pack, I think you’re going to need about 80 of those. Don’t hold me to that number but I think it’s about 80. And, and so, you would need two packs of that. But we’ve put it all as yardage so to include our first border out here. So two yards of background fabric. For your outer border you’re going to need a yard and a quarter. That’s a 5 ½ inch border. And so it just makes a really cute border.

So let me show you how to do this because this is really a fun quilt. And it’s just a fun take on an old block. We are making a nine patch block. We’re making it out of five inch squares. And we’re going to take five of our colored squares . And I have some I’ve pulled out of the pack right here. And I’m just going to lay them out like this. And then our middle square. Alright, then we’re going to add our white squares in, just like this, just like this. And you’ll see that it becomes a nine patch, just like that. Now when you make a nine patch block what you’re going to do is sew three rows, every row together. So three rows of three. You’re going to sew this row together, this row together and this row together. And to do that we’re just going to go over to the sewing machine. We’re going to lay our squares right sides together and sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. And I’m just lining mine up on my quarter of an inch line. And I’m remembering that I have a color, white, color on this row. And so we’re going to put our other row over here. And just sew a quarter of an inch right down that. Alright now we need to press this. And we’re going to press so that our seams here go out like this. Alright, so we want to make sure that you see that. So what I’m going to do basically is I’m just going to roll these out because that will keep my seam on the right side. I like to press from the top, make sure there’s no folds. And then I flip it over to make sure my seams are going the right direction. Alright now I’m going to go over to the sewing machine and sew these other two rows together and I’ll meet you right back here.

So now with our center block we’re going to make sure our rows go to the middle. So we’re going to bring this over. And we’re going to go ahead and just iron them so they come over to the middle like this. And we want to make sure they’re nice and flat. Going to iron it from the top as well. Make sure those seams are laying down. This guy wants to kind of go the other way. . There we go, alright. So when we do that, when these seams are in and these seams are out when we go to put our block together they’re going to lay very nicely, just like that. So now I’m just going to go ahead and go to the sewing machine and sew this row on the top and this row on the bottom. And I will meet you back here with the finished block.

So now we’ve got our block all sewn together. It’s pressed very nicely. What I was looking for was for these corners to match up. And like this one is a tiny, tiny bit off but it’s good enough for me. It’s good enough for me. So that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for this to have, you know, fairly good, sharp corners because that’s going to matter with what we do next. So now we’re going to take our block and we’re going to take our ruler and we’re going to come in 2 ½ inches on two, on the two long sides, ok? So we’ve got our ruler on there. And we’re going to come in 2 ½ just like this. And then we’re going to flip our block around and come in 2 ½ on this side as well. Alright now I’m going to set these up here. And then I’m going to do it to these sides as well. So 2 ½ . If you have a ruler that has a half an inch mark, watch that because that can, that can throw you off. It can, you know, give you, I mean just, just watch it. It has to be important that your ruler makes sense to your brain. Alrighty, here we go, 2 ½ from the edge on all four sides. We’re cutting the sides first and then the top and bottom. And then we have this middle block. We’re going to set this over here. We’re going to take another four patch and we’re going to do the same thing to it.

So once you get your blocks all cut like this and the parts are all separated now is where you want to lay them out. And this is where the swap comes in because we’ve got the middle from these legs going in this block, you know, and visa, versa. I don’t know if I said that right. But it was pretty close. Hopefully you’ll get the gist. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to lay this out and I want to make sure that I have, you know, opposite colors. And then we’re going to put our long strips on. And you’ll get to see how this is going to work. So here’s this right here and this one right here. So that worked perfect. So see how this is going to go, these corners are going to frame up these little stones and it just makes it really cute.

So let’s go ahead and sew on our short ends like this. And we’ll come over here. Now if you have, your seams will probably be going to the same direction so what you want to do is you just want to fold one so that it, it runs the opposite direction. Usually what happens is, is my sewing machine comes through, one lays down. If you happen to get a twist it is so not the end of the world. I just clip it and let it go. Alright, there’s that side. And I’m going to flip this around and sew this side on. Alright. You want to keep your little corners lined up, your seams matched up so that you get nice sharp corners. Alright now we’re going to press these out and just lay them down. Now because we’ve taken a quarter of an inch on this seam our long ones, the long side ones are now going to be too long. So what we’re going to do is we are going to match up these seams right here. And we’re going to put a little pin in there. Let me grab a couple of pins here. They don’t want, they don’t want to give up their pin cushion. Oh I probably shouldn’t, I probably shouldn’t put those in my mouth. Alright so what we’re going to do here is we’re going to line up this, this seam right here. So this is our seam that we’re lining up. And we’re just going to go ahead and put a pin in there so that stays nice and snug together. Oh golly, I hate when you get a bad pin. You just want to, I just toss them. I just, it’s so much work. Alright, then this one over here again we are also going to lay that so that is lays really nice. Put a pin in there and we’re going to do the same thing to this side. And I’m going to pin this whole thing before I even head over to the sewing machine. So then I can just sit down and sew my sides on. And then once we get them all sewn, that’s when our trimming will come in. Then we’ll trim our, our, our little block up so that it’s nice and square. Alrighty. I’ll put a pin in this last one. I’m working my way over to the sewing machine. And we’re going to sew these sides on. So, so again see how these stick out a little bit right here, that’s ok. We’re pinning from the seam, this is the seam we want to match right here, this little seam. So we’re just going to go ahead and sew along this. On the sides. I hope that makes sense to you. It’s super easy. Once you do it you’ll be like, Oh I know what she was doing. Alrighty. Let me lift my presser foot up there. Going to take that pin out. There we go. And I’m coming to this pin. I’m just going to pull it out as I”m going. Alright then we’re going to flip this around and sew down the other side. There we go. Make sure, I’m feeling, I’m feeling on my seams to make sure they’re nice and lined up. Pull that pin out. Get rid of those pins before we sew over them. Alright. Oop I’m hung up on the foot here. Let me get that. There we go. It still sewed fine. So let’s go press this back now. I’m going to go ahead and lay this down and make sure this lays really nice and roll it back like that. And roll it back. Alrighty.

So now what we’re going to do is we’re just going to trim our sides off. And I”m just going to do that right here right now. There we go. There’s that side. And I’m just laying my ruler along the edge using the block as my straight edge and going along there. Alright, so this is your block right here. This is how it fits into the quilt right here. See how that goes. And so I want to show you how we lined these out because this is really fun. And here’s your other parts. This is your other parts for your next block. And you can swap them two by two or you could really mix them up, whatever you want to do. Alright so here we go. We’re going to, we’re going to, I’m going to set this one right here and we are going to show you how these go together. So you’re going to put them together, sew them in rows. There’s four in a row. I’m going to show you two so you can see how this center block right here. See how this comes together. And really this looks like this is the block but we know this is the block. So if you sashed this you’re going to have a completely different quilt. I mean it’s just fun to think about the possibilities.

So let’s look at our quilt behind us. We have four, one, two, three, four big blocks across in every row and then we have five rows down. So it makes a nice good sized quilt. As a matter of fact it makes a quilt that’s 64 by 76. So that’s a pretty good sized quilt. Alright so let me show you something else here.

Sometimes you want to see what’s going to happen when you use a different fabric. So I took some solids. These are Grunge solids. And Here I want to, I want to move these so you can, you can see how these look. This is the outside of this inner block. And this is the inside of this outer block. So we just swapped them. And look what a difference it makes. Look at that color. Isn’t it fun? I mean it’s just fun to see things in different colors. So I hope you’ll give this block a try. I mean this is a great little quilt. Let’s see what we used on the back here. Oh. Isn’t that gorgeous? I mean to me this is like a, reminds me of a picnic blanket. So let’s see how much we needed for the back. You’re going to need 4 ¾ yards for the backing. And it just makes a nice great finished quilt. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the 9 Patch Swap from the MSQC.