A four patch is usually built one careful step at a time, cutting accurate squares first and joining them second. The Drunken Tiles technique turns that order on its head. Here the cutting and the joining happen the other way round, and the block more or less assembles itself as you go. In this demonstration by Nicholas Ball at a quilt show, four whole pieces of fabric become a set of matching units without a single measured square. The most important thing to understand is that the precision has not been thrown away, the method is built so that precision is not needed in the first place. It is a deliberate approach rather than a lowering of standards.
Here is how the technique works:
- Stack four pieces and make one angled cut. Take four pieces of fabric of roughly the same size and stack them all right sides up, in any order you like. Make a single cut straight through all four layers at once, edge to edge, placed deliberately off centre and at a slight angle rather than straight down the middle. Then move the top piece of the right hand stack to the bottom of that stack, which sets up contrasting pairs ready to sew.
- Sew, rotate, and cut again. Chain piece the pairs and keep them in the order they were sewn, press them open, and stack them in that same order. Turn the stack ninety degrees and cut again, anywhere across it. This time move the top two pieces to the bottom, then sew the new pairs. You are left with four units, each one holding all four fabrics exactly once.
- Solving the matching fabric problem. With only four fabrics in play, at least one unit will always end up with the same fabric meeting itself. This is not a fault, and it can create interesting secondary shapes across the quilt. If you would rather avoid it, make a second batch using one shared fabric and three different ones, then swap pieces between the two batches so no unit repeats.
- Scaling up and adding variety. The very same process works with nine pieces stacked instead of four. You make two cuts rather than one, and on the middle and right hand stacks you move the top piece to the bottom, then rotate and repeat, which gives you an improv nine patch. Adding a contrasting triangle to a corner of a unit, or a narrow strip along one edge, brings in a second element without changing the method at all.
Because the units will not come out at identical sizes, you have two ways to join them. You can square each one with a ruler and sew them together in tidy rows, or you can join them organically, working one edge at a time, cutting a straight sewing edge wherever you need one and adding a strip of contrasting fabric to fill any gap that opens up. For that second, more organic approach, a design wall, or simply a piece of wadding pinned to the wall, helps enormously as you audition each unit before it goes in.
Does the idea of cutting before you commit to a square appeal to you, or do you prefer the reassurance of measured piecing? I would love to hear whether you would give Drunken Tiles a go on your next improv project.
