Disappearing Nine Patch: One Block, Two Cuts

You sew a block. Then you cut it up.

That is the whole idea behind the disappearing nine patch, and the first time someone describes it you assume you have misheard. All that careful piecing, all those matched seams, and the next instruction is to take a rotary cutter to the middle of it.

What comes back is a block that looks nothing like a nine patch and considerably more complicated than one. It is not. It is the same nine squares, rearranged by two straight cuts.

Susan Claire of GourmetQuilter works through a version that starts with 5 inch squares, which is the size a charm pack already comes in. Her measurements are all in the video, and they go past quickly, so they are written out below.

What a disappearing nine patch actually is

A nine patch is nine squares in a three by three grid. Almost everyone who quilts has made one, often as a first block.

A disappearing nine patch, written just as often as a disappearing 9 patch, is that same block after it has been cut apart and put back together.

A disappearing nine patch is that block cut in half both ways, so it becomes four smaller blocks. Those four are then sewn back together, usually rotated, and the original grid vanishes into something that reads as a far more complex design.

Susan Claire is straightforward about the pedigree. As she says in the video, it is not a new idea. What makes it worth doing is the ratio of effort to result: you are sewing straight seams between squares, and getting a block that looks like you did something much harder.

The measurements, starting from 5 inch squares

This is the part worth having written down, because every number follows from the first one.

Two things worth checking, because they are where this goes wrong.

The 14 inches is not automatic. Five inch squares only produce a 14 inch nine patch if your seams are a genuine quarter inch. Three squares finishing at 4 1/2 inches each, plus the seam allowance at each outside edge, is exactly 14. Sew a fat quarter inch and the block comes out at 13 3/4, and then the 7 inch cut is not the middle any more. If your quarter inch is a matter of hope rather than measurement, it is worth fixing before this block, not during it.

Your ruler may be too short. Susan Claire points this out and it catches people. A standard ruler is often 14 inches long, which is exactly the length of the block, leaving you nothing to line up against. She uses a longer ruler for this cut. It is a small thing that turns a clean cut into a wobbly one.

How to cut a disappearing nine patch

Sew the nine patch first, in the ordinary way, with quarter inch seams. If you have never made one, the classic nine patch in three steps covers it and takes about ten minutes.

Then square the block up and lay it flat, as straight as you can reasonably get it. Susan Claire lines hers against the edge of her cutting board rather than trusting her eye.

Cut once at 7 inches, straight across. Then turn the two halves rather than trying to cut sideways across the mat. She is clear that turning the pieces is easier than turning yourself, and she is right.

Cut again at 7 inches. You now have four units of 7 inches each, and at this point they all look the same.

The bit nobody mentions: where the centre goes

Here is the observation that makes this block behave, and it is the reason to watch her version rather than any of the dozens of others.

The four small squares in your four units all came from the single centre square of the nine patch. The cuts go straight through it, quartering it.

That one fact gives you the whole colour dial.

Keep the centre square the same fabric in every nine patch and those small squares repeat across the whole quilt, holding it together. Change the centre from block to block and the quilt scatters. Neither is wrong, but it is a decision you make when you cut the squares, not when you lay the blocks out, and by then it is too late.

Susan Claire uses that deliberately. Her quilt runs black and white printed fabrics, the kind with writing and diagrams on them, against soft muted colours, a soft blue, a soft yellow, a green and two greys. She keeps a constant in the centre so the softness holds together instead of scattering.

Then it stops being one block

You can stop at four units and set them straight, and it looks good.

The version she builds sews four units back into one larger block, which measures 13 1/2 and finishes at 13. Rotating the units before you sew changes the design entirely, and there is more than one right answer. She shows two arrangements from the same four pieces.

The step past that is the one worth knowing about. Cut several nine patches in different colourways, then mix the quarters between them before you sew. Because the four units no longer come from the same block, colours meet that were never next to each other, and the quilt stops looking like a grid of repeated blocks.

You can also add sashing between the blocks, which pushes the design apart and makes the quilt bigger at the same time.

How many blocks make a quilt

Susan Claire's own figure: 16 of these blocks makes a nice lap size quilt.

At 13 inches finished, sixteen blocks in a four by four layout comes to roughly 52 inches square before any border. That is a lap quilt, a good sofa quilt, and a generous baby quilt.

Each block eats nine 5 inch squares, so sixteen blocks needs 144 of them. A single 40 piece charm pack does not get you there. Two do, with a few left over, and a 240 piece pack covers it with room to change your mind.

If you want a bed size rather than a lap size, the arithmetic for that is in our quilt size chart, which covers how far past the mattress a quilt actually needs to reach.

Choosing the fabric

This block was made for precut 5 inch squares. That is the whole reason it is quick: no cutting, and every square is already square.

The palette in the video is easy to build. For the printed black and white side of it, a black and white charm pack bundle gives you 84 squares in solids, enough for the graphic half of nine blocks. For the soft muted colours she pairs them with, the Morning Mist charm pack sits in that same quiet range.

If you would rather build the quilt around one collection than mix two, the charm packs are all cut to the same 5 inches, so any of them drops straight into these measurements.

One caution from the video that applies to any scrappy version. She notes that with a limited number of colours you will inevitably get two of the same sitting next to each other. She likes it. If you do not, lay the blocks out before you sew the rows.

If you like this block, you have options

The disappearing family is larger than most people realise, and they all work the same way: sew something simple, cut it, sew it back differently.

The disappearing four patch starts from four squares instead of nine and has a free pattern to download, and the disappearing four patch star takes the same idea somewhere else entirely.

There is also a disappearing pattern with fewer fiddly steps if the cutting still makes you nervous, and if you want to keep your nine patches intact instead of cutting them, setting them on point is the other way to make a simple block look complicated.

For a first quilt built on any of these, our beginner quilt patterns are sorted so you can see the finished size before you start.

Questions about the disappearing nine patch

What size squares do I use? Any size works. Five inch squares are the convenient answer because charm packs come that way, and they give you a 14 inch nine patch.

Where exactly do I cut? At 7 inches, both directions, on a 14 inch block. The cut is always the halfway line, so it moves if your starting square changes.

What does the finished block measure? Each of the four units finishes at 6 1/2 inches. Four of them sewn together measures 13 1/2 and finishes at 13.

Do the cuts go through the centre square? Yes, both of them. That is why the four small squares in your units are all the same fabric, unless you mix quarters between blocks.

How many do I need? Sixteen blocks for a lap quilt, which is 144 five inch squares.

Is there a written disappearing nine patch quilt pattern? The measurements above are the pattern. There is nothing else to download, because the block is defined entirely by the size of your starting square and the halfway cut.

A last thought

There is a particular nerve required to cut into something you have just finished sewing.

Quilting asks for it more often than people expect. You square up and trim away the edges you worked to keep straight. You cut a beautiful piece of yardage into squares. The whole craft runs on taking apart what you have made in order to make something better.

This block just makes that unusually obvious. Sew the nine patch. Admire it for a second. Then cut it in half.

Marbelia Fernandes
The Fabric Hut Co-Founder

P.S. Do the first one in fabrics you are not precious about. Not because it is difficult, but because the first cut is easier to make when it does not matter, and after that you will not think about it again.