Download The Plus Side free quilt pattern PDF from Robert Kaufman Fabrics. Six pages, finished quilt 48 inches by 60 inches, with two colorstories.
Twenty blocks and the quilt is done. No border, no sashing, no setting triangles. What reads as a field of crosses floating on white is twenty identical twelve inch blocks sewn edge to edge in five rows of four, and the only thing that changes from one block to the next is which two fabrics went into it.
The block is a nine patch, though not the kind with nine equal squares. Its columns run three, six, three inches finished, and so do its rows. The Quilter's Bible makes the general point about this family of blocks: the units do not have to be the same size, and the central one can be narrower or wider than the ones flanking it. Here the four corners are 3 1/2 inch background squares, the four sides are 3 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch rectangles, and the center is a 6 1/2 inch square.
Those five middle pieces, the four side rectangles plus the center, make the large plus. The clever part is inside the center square, where a second and smaller plus is pieced from a 2 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch rectangle and two 2 1/2 inch squares, with four more 2 1/2 inch squares filling the corners around it. One plus inside another, in two different fabrics, from fifteen pieces.
Every one of those fifteen pieces is a square or a rectangle cut from a strip. There are no triangles in this quilt, no templates, and not one bias edge. That is why the cover carries the line Pattern Level: Enthusiastic Novice, with the note "I am a total beginner and want to learn more."
Robert Kaufman designed this one in house and names no individual designer. The PDF is from 2015 and shows the quilt in Urban Zoologie prints by Ann Kelle, in a colorway the pattern calls BOYS, with a second fabric list for a GIRLS colorway on pages 5 and 6. The two are not interchangeable, and the pattern says so in a note that is easy to skip: the GIRLS version uses ten fabrics instead of twelve, so only the background cutting carries over.
Pattern details
- Name: The Plus Side
- Brand: Robert Kaufman Fabrics
- Designer: Robert Kaufman Fabrics, in house
- Finished size: 48" x 60", throw
- Skill level: beginner, printed on the cover as Enthusiastic Novice
- Block: a 12 inch plus block on an uneven nine patch grid of 3, 6 and 3 inches, with a second plus inside the center unit
- Techniques: straight rotary cutting from strips, squares and rectangles only, no triangles and no templates
- Fabrics: twelve, plus 3 1/4 yards of backing and 1/2 yard of binding
- Colorways: BOYS, with an alternate GIRLS list on pages 5 and 6
- Precuts: none as written, though twenty of the strips are 2 1/2 inches wide
- Pages: 6
Where twenty different blocks come from
The instruction that makes this quilt is one line on page 4. Each block takes one fabric for the inner plus and a different one for the outer plus, the background stays the same throughout, and you repeat that twenty times with eleven fabrics to draw from. The pattern does not tell you which pairs to use. It says mix.
That is the freedom and it is also the trap. Pair two fabrics of similar value and the inner plus vanishes, the block reads as one solid cross, and the quilt quietly loses a fifth of its detail. Look at the cover photograph and every block has a clear step between the two: charcoal inside a dog print, pale aqua inside red, red inside a gray chevron. What has to change between the inner and the outer plus is value, not color.
There is a second thing the instructions do not mention. Each block carries four background corners that finish at three inches, so where four blocks meet, those corners join into a single six inch square of background. The white in this quilt is not empty space. It is a second grid, offset from the first by half a block, and it is the reason a quilt with no sashing does not look crowded.
Counted off the cutting list, the quilt needs eighty 3 1/2 inch background squares, eighty 3 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch rectangles, twenty 2 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch rectangles and one hundred and twenty 2 1/2 inch squares. All four numbers land exactly on twenty blocks with nothing to spare. Worth knowing before the rotary cutter comes out, because this pattern has no spare pieces built in and a miscut is a trip back to the shelf.
Fabrics and palette that suit this construction
The background is a single fabric and it takes 7/8 of a yard, more than anything else in the quilt. It does the most work and it should be the quietest thing there. A solid or a near solid is the safe answer, and the original used Kona Cotton in white for that reason. Kona is one of the few things in a 2015 pattern that you can still buy under the same name today.
The other eleven can be as loud as you like. Their pieces are small, each one is framed by background on at least two sides, and a novelty print that would be unbearable across a whole quilt is charming cut into 2 1/2 inch squares. That is what the original does with the animal prints, and it is a fair guide for any children's fabric you have been saving without knowing what to do with it.
On cutting, the pattern splits neatly in two. Twenty of its strips are 2 1/2 inches wide, fourteen for the inner pluses and six for the binding, which is exactly the width a precut strip roll comes in. The other twenty three strips are 3 1/2 inches and have to come off yardage, and eight of those are the background alone.
Do not go looking for the fabrics in the list. Urban Zoologie and the prints beside it went out of production years ago, and the SKUs in the PDF are there as a record of what was photographed, not as a shopping list.
The blocks and the cuts, worked through
The grid this block sits on is covered in how to make a nine patch quilt block, including the uneven versions and the arithmetic for resizing one. Since every piece here is a straight cut and there is nothing on the bias to blame, accuracy is entirely down to the ruler and the blade, and how to cut fabric accurately goes through the checks that fix most wobbly blocks.
If 48 by 60 is not the size you want, our quilt size chart has the finished measurements to aim for, and this pattern scales by adding whole blocks in rows of four. The binding is six 2 1/2 inch strips, which is the standard start for machine sewn binding. And if this really is a first quilt, how to make a quilt covers everything between the finished top and the finished quilt.
More free patterns are in our free quilt patterns collection, and the easier ones are gathered in beginner quilt patterns.
