How to Make a Nine Patch Quilt Block: Sizes, Strip Sets and the Disappearing Nine Patch

Nine squares in three rows of three. That is the entire nine patch quilt block, and the only number you need is the one that turns a block size into a cutting size.

Divide the finished block by three, add half an inch, and cut nine squares that size. A 12 inch nine patch wants nine 4 1/2 inch squares. A 6 inch one wants nine 2 1/2 inch squares, which is exactly the width a jelly roll arrives in, and that is not a coincidence.

What follows is the whole block. What to cut for nine sizes, two ways to sew it, the strip set arithmetic that gets you sixteen blocks out of nine strips, which way to press so the rows lock together, and what happens when you cut the finished block up and put it back together the wrong way round.

What a nine patch quilt block is

A nine patch is nine units in a three by three grid. That is the definition, and it is worth being precise about the word unit, because the units do not have to be plain squares. Along with four patch blocks, nine patch blocks form the backbone of an enormous number of quilt designs, and they are usually made up of squares and rectangles, with subdivisions inside those units creating triangles.

So the simplest nine patch is nine squares. Swap four of those squares for half square triangle units and you have a Shoofly or a Friendship Star. Swap them for quarter square triangles and you have an Ohio Star. The grid never changes, which is why blocks that look nothing alike are all described as nine patches.

Because the grid is three by three, the arithmetic never gets complicated. Add half an inch to the unit size for the seam allowances, a quarter inch on each side, and you have the size to cut. The block then comes off the machine at the finished size plus half an inch, every time. If it does not, the seam allowance is the thing to look at, not the cutting.

The classic two fabric version uses five squares of one fabric and four of the other, arranged as a checkerboard so the five are in the corners and the center. Five and four is worth remembering, because it comes back in the strip set method further down.

The nine patch cutting chart, in nine sizes

Every number here is in inches. The middle column is the size to cut nine squares, and it is also the width to cut strips if you use the strip set method instead. The last column is how many segments one strip about 40 inches long will give you, which is the number that tells you how much fabric to buy.

The 8 inch row is the odd one, because 8 does not divide into three whole measurements a ruler can find. Those numbers come from Barbara Brackman's Civil War Sampler, where the nine patch blocks are given at 8 inches and 12 inches, and the 8 inch set runs very slightly small on purpose. She asks for a scant quarter inch seam allowance right through the block to make up the difference. Every other row in the table divides exactly.

The formula matters more than the table. Finished block divided by three, plus half an inch. Any block size that divides by three cleanly can be worked out on the back of an envelope, and this block needs no templates at any size.

Cutting from precuts and yardage

Three rows of the table line up with a precut, which is why this block turns up in so many quick quilt patterns.

A jelly roll arrives at 2 1/2 inches, so a strip straight off the roll needs no cutting at all and makes a 6 inch finished block. That is the single fastest route from precut to pieced block that quilting has.

A charm pack is 5 inch squares. Nine of them, five of one print and four of another, make a nine patch that finishes at 13 1/2 inches, which is a generous block and a good pillow front on its own. Trim the same charms to 4 1/2 inches instead and you get the standard 12 inch block, which is the size most quilt patterns are written around.

A layer cake square at 10 inches covers every size in the table, including the 15 inch block, with plenty left over.

Precuts suit the patches. The background is the opposite case: it repeats in every block and it is what the checkerboard is read against, so it wants to come off one bolt from the first block to the last. That is a job for fabric by the yard, and solids keep the grid crisp when the other fabric is busy.

If you would rather watch the block being made than read about it, the video below runs through the basics and then a few of the variations.

Method one: nine squares, webbed together

This is the method to use when the nine squares are all different, which is most of the time in a scrap quilt, and it is how Yvonne makes the block on camera.

Lay all nine squares out in the grid before you sew anything, in the arrangement you actually want. Five of the focus fabric in the corners and the center, four of the background in between, or whatever scrappy mix you have decided on.

Now fold the whole middle column over onto the left column, so each middle square lies face down on its left neighbor. Sew the top pair with a quarter inch seam, and when you reach the end of the fabric, do not cut the thread and do not lift the presser foot. Feed the next pair straight in, then the third. That is chain piecing, and here it does something more useful than saving thread: it keeps the three rows joined to each other in the right order.

Feed each pair in immediately behind the last, with no gap. You want one stitch worth of thread between the rows and no more. That single stitch is what makes the seams nest almost by themselves at the next stage, and a long tail there is the most common reason they do not.

Open the pairs out, bring the right hand column over, and chain piece those three the same way. The block is now hanging together in one piece, in three rows, with nothing turned around by accident. Quilters call this webbing, and on a block with nine pieces it feels like fuss until the first time you sew a row in upside down. Press, then sew the three rows together.

Method two: the strip set, and why it is two sets to one

When the block is two fabrics rather than nine, nobody sews it square by square. Nine patch blocks are speed pieced by preparing pieced strips first, and it changes the job from cutting eighty one squares to cutting nine strips.

Cut strips at the width in the chart. For a 6 inch finished block that is 2 1/2 inches, so a jelly roll needs no cutting at all.

You need two different strip sets, and this is where most people take a wrong turn.

Set A is dark, light, dark. Crosscut it and every segment gives you the top row and the bottom row of the block.

Set B is light, dark, light. Crosscut it and every segment gives you the middle row.

Each block takes two segments from set A and one from set B. So make two of set A for every one of set B, and nothing is wasted. Two A sets and one B set use five dark strips and four light ones, which is the same five and four as the squares, and that is a good sign you have counted right.

At 2 1/2 inches, one strip about 40 inches long crosscuts into sixteen segments. Two A sets give thirty two segments, enough for sixteen blocks at two each. One B set gives sixteen, enough for the same sixteen blocks at one each. Nine strips, sixteen 6 inch blocks, nothing left over. That is the number worth writing on the back of your hand.

Sew the strips along their long edges with a scant quarter inch, and press as you go rather than pressing the finished set, because strip sets bow as they are handled and reaching into one with an iron is what puts the bow there. Then square up one end and crosscut at the same width you cut the strips, measuring from a seam line rather than from the raw edge so each segment is square to its own seams. It is the same habit that makes a rail fence block behave.

Pressing so the rows lock together

Press towards the darker fabric. Not because of nesting, but because a dark seam allowance lying behind a light square shows through from the front, and it is the sort of thing you only notice once the quilt is finished and it is far too late.

The good news is that pressing towards the dark takes care of the nesting on its own. In set A, dark on the outside, both seams press outward. In set B, dark in the middle, both seams press inward. Stack an A segment on a B segment and every seam is already lying the opposite way to the one it meets. Nothing to plan, nothing to remember. It falls out of one rule.

Three habits at the ironing board are worth more than any of this:

Set the seam before you open it. Press the closed seam flat first, then open it and press the allowance over. It settles the stitches into the fabric and takes the small puckers out before they are pressed in.

Press, do not iron. Up and down, not back and forth. A patchwork seam has no give in it and rocking an iron along one stretches the block out of square.

Use the long side of the iron. The point stretches. There are times when the point is necessary and pressing a nine patch is not one of them.

When you join the rows, feel for the ridge of one seam sitting into the groove of the other until there is no gap in the middle. Pin through the junction itself, through both layers, rather than beside it. Sew a few stitches, stop, check the next junction has not crept, and carry on.

Where nine patches go wrong

The block has nine pieces and eight seams, and every one of those seams is a chance to lose a thread of width. There are no points to cut off and no bias edges to stretch, so almost everything that goes wrong with a nine patch is a size problem.

A scant quarter inch seam, rather than an exact one, is what allows for the thickness of the thread and the small amount of space the fabric takes up when the seam is pressed to one side. It is what Barbara Brackman asks for through the nine patch blocks in her Civil War Sampler, and in a block with two seams across every row that allowance is the difference between a block that makes its size and one that does not.

Measure after the rows, before you join them. Each row should be the finished block size plus half an inch, so a 12 inch block wants rows that measure 12 1/2. If they do not, you have found the problem while it is still three straight seams away from being fixed.

Then measure the block. If it is consistently an eighth under, the seam allowance is a fraction wide, and moving the needle rather than the fabric is the fix. If it is right on one block and wrong on the next, the allowance is not consistent, which is the harder problem and the more common one. A consistent scant quarter inch beats an inconsistent exact one every time, because the block only needs its nine pieces to agree with each other.

And check the blade before you cut a stack. A dull blade stops slicing and starts dragging, and the layers shift a fraction under the ruler without you feeling it. A fresh rotary blade costs less than the fabric lost recutting squares that were never square. Our guide to cutting fabric accurately has the rest of the checks.

The disappearing nine patch

Make a nine patch, cut it in half both ways through the center, turn some of the quarters, and sew it back together. The nine patch disappears into something that looks nothing like it, which is where the name comes from, and it is the single most popular thing anyone does with this block.

Here is the number that almost nobody writes down. Cutting a block in half twice and sewing it back adds two more seams, so the block loses half an inch. Whatever your nine patch finished at, the disappearing nine patch finishes half an inch smaller.

Worked through with charm squares, which is the usual route: nine 5 inch squares make a nine patch that measures 14 inches unfinished. Cut it on the 7 inch line in both directions and you have four 7 inch quarters. Sew those four back together and the block measures 13 1/2 inches unfinished, so it finishes at 13 inches, and each of the four quarters finishes at 6 1/2.

One practical warning from that example. A 14 inch block needs a ruler longer than 14 inches to cut across in one pass, and a great many quilting rulers stop at 12 1/2. A long ruler is the tool this step actually asks for.

What you do with the four quarters is the whole design.

Turn every other one a quarter turn and the four center pieces stop meeting in the middle, so the block reads as a pinwheel of small squares. Turn them so the small squares meet instead and the block gets a strong diagonal. Or mix quarters from four different blocks, which is more work to keep track of and is the version that looks least like a nine patch when it is done.

The one thing to keep hold of is that all four small squares in the new block come from the center square of the original nine patch. Keep that center constant across every block and you get a constant accent running through the whole quilt. Make it different every time and you get a scrap quilt. Deciding that before you cut is the difference between the two.

The double nine patch

Replace five of the nine units with small nine patches and leave four as plain squares, and the block is a double nine patch. It is a nine patch built out of nine patches, and it is the block that makes an ordinary quilt look considerably harder than it was.

The arithmetic is the same rule twice. Pick the small unit size first. Small nine patches from 2 1/2 inch strips finish at 6 inches, so they are 6 1/2 unfinished. Cut four plain squares at 6 1/2 inches to match, put five small nine patches in the corners and the center, and the finished block is 18 inches.

Working down instead, 1 1/2 inch strips give small nine patches that finish at 3 inches, so they are 3 1/2 unfinished, the four plain squares are cut at 3 1/2, and the block finishes at 9 inches. Small pieces, and a block that punishes a careless quarter inch, but it is the same block twice over.

There is no clean 12 inch double nine patch, for the same reason there is no clean 4 inch nine patch: the small units would have to finish at 1 1/3 inches, which no ruler can find. The sizes that do work are the ones where the strip width divides through twice. 1 1/2 inch strips give a 9 inch block, 2 inch strips give 13 1/2, and 2 1/2 inch strips give 18. Those plain squares are where the block earns its keep: there is nothing in them and they are big enough for the quilting to show.

Nine patches with triangles in them

Once the four side units or the four corner units become something other than plain squares, the nine patch stops being a checkerboard and starts being a whole family of blocks. All of them use the same grid and the same cutting arithmetic.

Shoofly puts half square triangle units in the four corners and leaves the sides and center plain. Five plain squares, four triangle units.

Friendship Star uses exactly the same pieces and moves the triangle units to the four sides, turning each one a quarter turn from the last so the dark triangles chase each other round the center. Same cutting list, different block.

Ohio Star swaps those four side units for quarter square triangles, so each point has a triangle aimed out and another aimed in. Eight points to lose instead of four, which is why it is the harder of the two.

Beyond those three the list of named blocks on this grid is long. Barbara Brackman's Civil War Sampler gathers eleven of them in one chapter, all cut for an 8 inch or a 12 inch block: Tennessee, Calico Puzzle, Tea Leaf, Ohio Star, Lincoln's Platform, Richmond, Pinwheel, The Comfort Quilt, New England Block, Ladies' Aid Album and True Blue. Tea Leaf is one of many variations of the same nine patch, and pattern designers have also read it as a poplar, a magnolia and a maple leaf.

If half square triangles are the unit you are missing, all three ways of making them are in our guide to half square triangles, with a size chart covering every unit size in the table above. Take the four triangle units away and what is left is a Pinwheel.

Turning nine patches into a quilt

Nine patch blocks are almost never set edge to edge, and there is a good reason for that. A quilt made entirely of checkerboards reads as one enormous checkerboard, and the blocks stop being blocks.

Alternate them with plain blocks. Four patch and nine patch blocks are often set this way. It halves the piecing, it lets each block be looked at on its own, and the plain blocks are where the quilting itself can show. Twenty 12 inch nine patches alternated with twenty plain blocks, set five across and eight down, give a top of 60 by 96 inches.

Alternate them and watch the chain appear. When a nine patch sits next to a plain block, the corner squares of one nine patch line up diagonally with the corner squares of the next, across the plain block between them. That diagonal run of squares is the chain, and it is the reason nine patches and Irish chains are usually taught together. Our guide to the double Irish chain takes that idea as far as it goes.

Set them on point. Turning the blocks 45 degrees changes the quilt completely without changing a single block. It needs corner triangles and side triangles to bring the edges back to a straight line, cut to a formula rather than guessed at: our guide to setting a quilt on point has both.

Sash them. Sashing frames and separates the blocks and adds finished size for every strip you put in. A small setting square where the strips cross, sometimes called a cornerstone, turns the sashing into part of the design, and those squares can be pieced rather than plain. A tiny nine patch is the traditional thing to put there.

Whichever setting you choose, decide the finished quilt size before you decide the block count, because the block count is the easier of the two to change. Our beginner guide to making a quilt runs from cutting through to binding if this is a first quilt rather than a first block.

Take the whole block with you

Everything you need at the machine is on one sheet: the cutting chart for all nine sizes, both ways to sew the block, the pressing rule and the disappearing nine patch arithmetic. It prints on letter or A4 and nothing on it needs to print at actual size, because this block has no templates.

The downloadable PDF is here: the nine patch quilt block pattern sheet. It is free to print, use and teach.

Nine patch questions we are asked most

What size squares do I need for a 12 inch nine patch quilt block?

Nine squares at 4 1/2 inches, five of one fabric and four of the other. The block comes off the machine at 12 1/2 inches square and finishes at 12 once it is sewn into the quilt. Nine 5 inch charms trimmed down to 4 1/2 inches get you to the same place.

What size strips do I cut for a 6 inch finished nine patch?

Two and a half inches. Three strips sewn into a set, crosscut at 2 1/2 inches, and each segment is one row of the block. This is why a nine patch is the classic first use for a jelly roll: the cutting is already done, and one strip about 40 inches long gives sixteen segments.

What size strips for a 4 inch nine patch?

There is no clean answer, and it is worth saying so rather than fudging it. Four divided by three is 1 1/3 inches, which no rotary ruler can find. The two sizes either side of it do work: 1 1/2 inch strips make a 3 inch block, and 2 inch strips make a 4 1/2 inch block. Pick whichever of those the rest of the quilt can live with.

How do I make a nine patch quilt block from 2 1/2 inch strips?

Sew two strip sets. One with a dark strip either side of a light one, and one with a light strip either side of a dark one. Press all seams towards the dark. Crosscut both sets at 2 1/2 inches.

Take two segments from the first set and one from the second, put the odd one in the middle, and sew the three together. The seams nest without being planned, because pressing towards the dark sent them in opposite directions. The block finishes at 6 inches.

Make two of the first set for every one of the second and the segments come out even. Nine strips give sixteen blocks.

What is a nine patch layout?

A three by three grid, nine units, sewn in three rows of three. The units are usually squares, but any block built on that grid is described as a nine patch, including ones with triangles in some of the units.

What size does a disappearing nine patch finish at?

Half an inch less than the nine patch you cut up. The two extra seams take a quarter inch each.

From nine 5 inch charm squares: the nine patch measures 14 inches unfinished, the four quarters are 7 inches each, and the reassembled block measures 13 1/2 unfinished and finishes at 13.

What size is a double nine patch?

It depends on the strip width you start from, and only some sizes come out clean. 1 1/2 inch strips give small nine patches that finish at 3 inches and a block that finishes at 9. Two inch strips give 4 1/2 inch units and a 13 1/2 inch block. Two and a half inch strips give 6 inch units and an 18 inch block. There is no clean 12 inch version, because the small units would have to finish at 1 1/3 inches.

How many nine patch blocks do I need for a quilt?

It depends entirely on whether you alternate them with plain blocks, which is the usual choice. Twenty 12 inch blocks set four across and five down give a 48 by 60 inch throw with no alternate blocks at all. Alternate them and forty blocks cover 60 by 96 inches, but only twenty of them are pieced.

At 6 inches the count climbs fast. Ten across and twelve down is 120 blocks for a 60 by 72 inch quilt, which sounds impossible until you remember that nine strips make sixteen of them.

Which way do I press a nine patch?

Towards the darker fabric, all the way through. It stops the seam allowance shadowing through the lighter squares from the front, and it makes the rows nest on their own, because the dark squares alternate position from row to row and the seams follow them. Set each seam closed before you open it, press up and down rather than rocking, and use the long side of the iron rather than the point.

Is the nine patch a good block for a beginner?

It is the block most people are given first, and it deserves the reputation. No triangles, no points, no bias edges, no templates, and nothing positioned by eye. What it does teach is the quarter inch seam, and it teaches it honestly: eight seams in a small block show you exactly how consistent yours is. Make one, measure it, and you will know more about your machine than any amount of reading gives you.

Can I make a nine patch from a charm pack?

Yes, and it is one of the neatest uses for one. Nine 5 inch charms, five of one print and four of another, make a nine patch that finishes at 13 1/2 inches with no cutting whatsoever. A block that size is a cushion front on its own, or the starting point for a disappearing nine patch.

What to have ready

• Two quilting cottons that sit well apart in value, or a jelly roll and a background if you are going the strip set route. A charm pack covers a whole 13 1/2 inch block on its own.
• A rotary cutter with a sharp blade and a mat.
• A long ruler for cutting strips across the fabric, and a square one for checking blocks. If a disappearing nine patch is the plan, the long one needs to be longer than the block.
• Something that keeps the quarter inch honest on every seam, such as our seam guide ruler.
• Pins for the row junctions, in notions.
• An iron, and the patience to press rather than push.

Where to start

Make one 12 inch nine patch before you decide anything about a quilt. Cut nine squares at 4 1/2 inches, five of one fabric and four of the other. Lay them out, web them together, press everything towards the dark, and sew the three rows.

Then measure it. If it is 12 1/2 inches square, your quarter inch is right and every other size in the chart will behave. If it is not, you have learned that on one block instead of on forty.

After that, cut it in half twice and turn the quarters around, just to see what happens. It costs one block and it is the fastest way to understand why this plain little grid has stayed in use for as long as it has.

Marbelia Fernandes
The Fabric Hut Co-Founder

P.S. If you are making a stack of these from strip sets, sew all your A sets first and cut them before you touch the B sets. Mixing the two at the cutting mat is how six blocks end up with the middle row upside down, and they all look identical until they are sewn.