Disappearing 9 Patch

Here is a small quilt made from a charm pack of Charisma by Chez Moi for Moda. The pattern I found on this blog is called the Disappearing 9 Patch. Basically, you sew 9 patch blocks (some of the easiest to sew blocks of all) and then chop them up, rearrange them and sew them back together. The result is decidedly not your typical boring 9 patch quilt. I used 36 of the 5 inch charms to make this 4 block lap/doll quilt. It is roughly 45 inches per side, minus seam allowances.

I pieced the four blocks and then put together the quilt by making a "sandwich." The bottom layer was the quilt batting and then I placed the top right sides up. The top layer was the backing fabric face down on the quilt top. I trimmed the batting and the backing fabric to be very close in size to the top and pinned it all together. I sewed around 3 sides making sure to catch all three layers in the seam. (I did have to repair one area where the batting was showing through after I turned it.) I turned the quilt right sides out and repinned it to make it smooth enough to quilt. Then I machine quilted down the seams to make it look more dimensional. I left the bottom open until almost all the top was quilted. Then I trimmed more of the batting away, turned under the last unfinished side and pinned it securely. I topstitched the last side closed and finished the machine quilting.

What I find very interesting about this pattern is that depending on what your 9 patch squares look like, you can vary the look of the pattern. Since the charm pack has all different squares of fabric, my quilt is very "scrappy" looking. If you use traditional color choices for a 9 patch, you get a distinctive pattern after you quarter the blocks and resew them. Here are some examples from Google Images.

I will definitely try this pattern again with a larger end result. I only had one charm pack of this particular fabric. Don't know who is getting this one yet.