The Irish chain looks like a quilt made of hundreds of small squares, and that is exactly why people put it back on the shelf. Counting out that many pieces, cutting them, keeping them in order, sewing them one at a time. It is a lot of evenings before anything looks like a quilt.
It does not have to be built that way. Almost every square in an Irish chain sits in a straight line next to its neighbours, and anything that sits in a straight line can be made from strips instead of pieces. Cut once, sew once, subcut, and the squares appear already joined.
Two quilters below show that idea from two directions. Moonkin Stitchery uses it to get to a twin sized quilt quickly, and Leah Day uses it to build a scrappy double Irish chain from fat quarters or a jelly roll. The method underneath is the same one, and it is worth understanding before you cut anything.
Why an Irish Chain Quilt Pattern Suits Strip Piecing So Well
Look at an Irish chain block and count how many of its squares have a different fabric above or below them within the same column. Very few. The design is built from runs of the same fabric, which is the precise condition under which strip piecing saves you time rather than costing it.
Instead of cutting individual squares, you sew long strips together along their lengths into a band, press it, and then cut across that band. Every cut gives you a whole column of squares already sewn, already the right size, already in the right order.
The trade is that accuracy moves from the sewing to the cutting. A strip set that drifts a sixteenth of an inch wide gives you every unit cut from it a sixteenth of an inch wrong, and there will be a lot of them.
Building a Double Irish Chain From Strip Sets
Leah Day's version is a double Irish chain, and she builds it from two kinds of block that alternate across the quilt.
The background block
She starts with five fat quarters in her focal colours, in her case the reds plus a gold, and slices all of them into 2 1/2 inch strips.
Those strips get stitched to either side of a 6 1/2 inch strip, making a wide band. She makes several of these, then subcuts across them. Each subcut piece is a short strip with a small square at each end.
Those pieces then get sewn to either side of a large background rectangle. That is the background block finished, and the little squares at its corners are what the chain will appear to pass through.
The five patch block
The other block is a five patch, and it comes out of strip sets too.
You need two kinds of strip set. One with three background strips and two focal strips, and one that is the reverse, three focal and two background. Subcut both, then combine the resulting rows into five patches.
Leah sews the five patch in stages rather than in one run. Two pieces together, then the other two together, then those pairs joined, then the fifth strip added last. Fewer long seams to fight with, and a check point at each stage.
Putting them together
Stagger the two blocks like a checkerboard. One background block, one five patch, one background block, all the way across and down.
The chain appears where they meet. The five patches read as the links, and the small corner squares on the background blocks are what appear to join one link to the next. Nothing in the quilt is actually a chain. It is two blocks alternating, and your eye does the rest.
The Cutting Trick That Keeps a Strip Set Square
This is the part of Leah's video worth watching twice, because it is the difference between a strip set that stays true and one that quietly goes off.
When you subcut a strip set, do not line your ruler up with the outside edge of the band. Those edges are the loose ends of the strips, and after pressing they wobble.
Line the ruler up with the seam lines instead. They run through the middle of the band, they were sewn straight, and they are the only reliable straight reference the piece has. Leah lines up two things at once when she cuts: the 2 1/2 inch measurement on one side, and the ruler's grid lines against the seams.
The second habit is smaller and just as useful. Rather than reaching across the mat to cut left handed, she turns the whole strip set around and cuts again with her dominant hand. Your worst cuts are the ones made at an awkward angle.
A ruler with clear grid lines makes this easier than a plain edge does, since you are matching lines to seams rather than an edge to an edge. Our rulers collection has the square and rectangle sizes that suit subcutting bands, and the 12.5 inch slotted ruler sets the width for you so you are running the blade down a channel instead of judging it each time.
Choosing Fabric for a Scrappy Irish Chain Quilt Pattern
Leah's advice on fabric placement is short and worth taking literally. Make all your strip sets first, then cut them all apart before you start assembling, so you have as much variety in front of you as possible.
You will still get repeats inside a block. That is fine. She only watches for the same fabric sitting next to itself or diagonally from itself, and she says plainly not to get obsessive about it. In a quilt with this many pieces the eye reads the overall effect, not the individual placements.
Since the whole method runs on 2 1/2 inch strips, precuts do the first cut for you. A jelly roll gives you forty strips already at width, and our strip rolls collection covers the same width across more collections. If you would rather cut your own and control the colour runs, fat quarters are what Leah starts from.
The background is the one fabric that should not be scrappy. It is what makes the chain visible, and it needs to stay the same across the whole quilt, so buy it in one go. Our solids collection is the simplest place to find enough of one thing.
Pressing So the Rows Nest
Strip sets have one habit that decides whether the quilt lies flat, and it is worth setting before the first band goes under the iron.
Press the seams in a strip set all in one direction, and press the seams of the next strip set the other way. When two subcut pieces meet, their seam allowances face opposite ways and lock against each other. You feel it with your fingertips as you bring them together, and it does more for matching than pinning does.
Keep the direction consistent across every band of the same kind. It is a small piece of bookkeeping at the start that removes a lot of unpicking later. There is more on the habit in our notes on strip piecing, and on how the same principle works inside a block in pressing and webbing.
Single, Double and Triple
The names describe how many rows of squares run in the chain.
A single Irish chain has one line of squares travelling diagonally across the quilt. A double, which is what Leah makes, runs two. A triple runs three, and that is where the strip order inside each band starts to matter a great deal, because the sequence of fabrics in the band is the whole design. We wrote about that separately in why the strip order is everything in a triple Irish chain.
If you are choosing where to start, the double is the friendlier one. There is enough chain for the pattern to read clearly, and few enough strip sets that you can keep them straight without a labelling system.
What to Sort Out Before You Cut
Decide your quilt size first, because it decides how many of each block you need, and the block counts decide how many strip sets. Whichever pattern you follow will give you those numbers. What this method changes is how you get the pieces, not how many of them there are.
Then check three things. That your quarter inch seam is consistent, because a strip set multiplies any error in it. That you have enough background fabric in one piece. And that your rotary blade is sharp, since you are about to cut through several layers of seam allowance repeatedly, which is where a tired blade starts skipping. Replacement blades are cheaper than a wonky cut.
For more quilts built from straight lines and precut strips, our beginner quilt patterns page collects the ones with the least fiddly piecing, and the free quilt patterns library has the full set.
Marbelia Fernandes
The Fabric Hut Co-Founder
P.S. Sew one strip set and subcut two pieces from it before you cut the rest of your fabric. Measure them. If they are the size you expected, carry on with confidence. If they are not, you have lost one strip set instead of twenty.
Methods demonstrated by Moonkin Stitchery and by Leah Day of Leah Day Quilting.
