Blue Spruce is a free double Irish chain quilt pattern that finishes at 80 by 100 inches. It is made from three fabrics and two blocks, every seam in it is straight, and there is not a single triangle anywhere. The eight page PDF is free to download a little further down, and the whole pattern is written out on this page as well.
There is no chain in this quilt.
Look for one and you will not find it. Nothing is pieced on an angle, and no long strip of fabric runs from corner to corner. There are only two square blocks laid down alternately like a checkerboard, and your eye does the rest.
That is the trick of an Irish chain, and it is why the pattern has been handed down through so many generations of quilters. It was made by women who could not waste cloth and did not have an evening to spare on points that would not meet. Every piece in it is a square or a rectangle. The design lives in the arrangement, not in the cutting.
Blue Spruce at a glance
- Finished size. 80 by 100 inches. A generous queen, long enough to tuck in at the foot.
- Skill level. Beginner. Straight seams from start to finish, no triangles and no points. There are crossings to match, and the blocks are built to nest so that they land.
- Block. Double Irish chain, worked as two alternating blocks, 10 1/2 inches unfinished each.
- Blocks needed. 80 in total, 40 chain blocks and 40 background blocks, set 8 across and 10 down.
- Fabrics. Three, and the binding comes out of one of them.
- Cutting. Strips across the width of fabric, nothing else. Everything is strip pieced and crosscut.
- Border. None. The chain runs off the edge of the quilt and the binding is the only frame it gets.
Download the free Blue Spruce double Irish chain quilt pattern
Eight pages: the fabric requirements, the cutting list, diagrams for all four strip sets, both blocks, the quilt layout and the finishing. Free to print, to use and to teach from.
Download the Blue Spruce quilt pattern PDF. Everything in it is also written out below, so you can read it here or take the printed sheets to the machine.
What you need
- Fabric 1, the dark chain. 2 1/2 yards. Cut 33 strips 2 1/2 inches by the width of fabric. Twenty three go into the blocks and ten into the binding.
- Fabric 2, the light chain. 3 1/8 yards. Cut 41 strips 2 1/2 inches by the width of fabric.
- Fabric 3, the background. 4 1/8 yards. Cut 11 strips 2 1/2 inches, 5 strips 6 1/2 inches and 7 strips 10 1/2 inches, all by the width of fabric.
- Backing. 3 yards of 108 inch wide backing. It covers the quilt with 4 inches to spare at the head and the foot, and there is no seam anywhere in it.
- Batting. 88 by 108 inches, which is 4 inches larger than the top on every side.
Buy the background in one cut. It is in every block in the quilt, and a second cut from another bolt will not match. Our own version uses three prints from one collection, a teal leaf print for the dark chain, a blue dot for the light chain and a cream floral behind them, all of it fabric by the yard. Any two colors you like will work against a background you have enough of, and the arithmetic does not change.
The width of fabric is taken here as 42 inches of usable width once the selvages come off. If yours runs narrower, the strip counts still hold, because every piece in this quilt is cut at 2 1/2 inches or crosscut from a strip set that is only 10 1/2 inches wide.
Before you begin
Seam allowances are a quarter inch throughout. Press every seam inside a strip set open. Long strips pressed all one way bow along their length, and a bowed set will not crosscut square.
Sew four blocks together first, two of each kind, and measure. That square should come out at 20 1/2 inches raw. Fix your quarter inch seam before you cut the rest of the strips, not after.
The chain block
The chain block is five rows of five squares, and none of those squares is cut as a square. Three strip sets make all 40 of them.
Sew the strips together in the order shown below, press the seams open, and crosscut each set every 2 1/2 inches. Sixteen slices come off a set. Cut one slice first and measure it: it should be 10 1/2 inches wide.
- Set 1. Fabrics 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. Make 5 sets and cut 80 units.
- Set 2. Fabrics 2, 1, 2, 1, 2. Make 5 sets and cut 80 units.
- Set 3. Fabrics 3, 2, 1, 2, 3. Make 3 sets and cut 40 units.
Lay five units down in the order Set 1, Set 2, Set 3, Set 2, Set 1 and sew them together along their long edges, matching the seams as you go. Press all four seams down. The block measures 10 1/2 inches square unfinished. Make 40.
The background block
Twenty one of the twenty five squares in this block are the same fabric, so there is no reason to cut them as squares.
Set 4 is a strip of fabric 2 at 2 1/2 inches, a strip of fabric 3 at 6 1/2 inches and another strip of fabric 2 at 2 1/2 inches. Make 5 sets and crosscut every 2 1/2 inches for 80 units.
Cut the seven 10 1/2 inch strips of fabric 3 into rectangles 6 1/2 by 10 1/2 inches, six from each strip. You need 40. Sew one Set 4 unit to the top of a rectangle and one to the bottom, along the 10 1/2 inch edges, and press both seams up. Make 40.
The pressing is what makes the quilt go together. The chain block has seams every 2 inches and the background block has seams only at 2 and 8 inches, which is where two of the chain block's seams fall. Press the chain blocks down and the background blocks up, and those crossings nest against each other at the machine.
Square each block to 10 1/2 inches by taking a little off each of the four sides, never the whole amount off one. The chain sits at a fixed distance from every edge, and a block trimmed off center pulls the chain out of line with its neighbor.
Setting the quilt top
Eight blocks across and ten blocks down, a chain block in the top left corner, and the two blocks alternate from there in a checkerboard. There is no sashing and there is no border.
Lay all 80 blocks out before you sew a single seam and take a photograph of them. A block turned the wrong way costs a second to fix on the design wall and an evening to unpick afterward.
Sew the blocks into rows. Press row one to the left, row two to the right, row three to the left again, so the allowances lock when the rows meet. Join the rows. The top finishes at 80 by 100 inches.
Quilting and binding
Layer the top with the batting and the backing, baste, and quilt as you like. One thing to watch: do not quilt the background more densely than the chains. Dense quilting flattens the area it covers, so a heavily quilted background with lightly quilted chains puffs the chains up and sends the quilt wavy.
Join the ten strips of fabric 1 end to end on the diagonal, fold in half lengthwise and bind. There is no border on this quilt, so the binding is its only frame, and it is cut from the same fabric the dark chain is made of. That is what carries the chain right off the edge.
If you have not bound a quilt before, making the binding comes first, then either a machine stitched binding, which is quick and hard wearing, or hand stitching it down with mitered corners, which is the nicer finish and a pleasant evening or two.
Questions about this double Irish chain quilt pattern
Is a double Irish chain good for a beginner?
Yes. Every seam is straight and every piece is a square or a rectangle, so there is no bias and nothing to trim to a point. The quilt does have crossings to match, 63 of them where the rows meet, and the two blocks are pressed in opposite directions so that those crossings nest instead of fighting you.
What size is the finished quilt?
Blue Spruce finishes at 80 by 100 inches. That covers a queen bed with a drop at the sides and enough length to tuck in at the foot. Taking out one column of blocks gives a 70 by 100 inch quilt for a full bed, and the strip counts come down with it.
Why are the seams pressed open in the strip sets?
Accuracy. A strip set pressed all one way curves along its length, and a curved set crosscuts into units that are not square. Pressed open, the set lies flat and the slices come off true. The seams that need to nest are the ones joining the units and the rows, and those are pressed to one side.
How much fabric does the binding take?
Ten strips at 2 1/2 inches, which is counted into the 2 1/2 yards of fabric 1 above. A quilt this size has 360 inches of edge, and ten strips joined on the diagonal give a comfortable margin over that.
Before you start
This is a big quilt built out of small, repeated steps, and none of the steps is hard. Sew the strip sets one afternoon, crosscut them the next, and the blocks pile up faster than you expect.
More free patterns are collected in our free quilt patterns library, and the free patterns hub sorts them by the kind of quilt you feel like making.
Marbelia Fernandes
The Fabric Hut Co-Founder
P.S. Cut one slice off your first strip set and measure it before you cut the other fifteen. If it is 10 1/2 inches wide, your quarter inch seam is right and the whole quilt will behave. If it is not, you have lost one slice instead of a day.
