Two Charms & Two Yards - Disappearing 9-Patch

Two Charms and Two Yards - A Disappearing Nine Patch Quilt

My local group of quilt ladies has agreed to take on donating quilts to five different local organizations - They are that awesome!!!! Even better, my local quilt shop, Aunt Judy's Attic, has been hosting a Charity Sew Days weekend - the first weekend of every other month (January, March, May, July, September - 2019).
**Update: So many charity quilts were made and turned in, November charity sew day has been canceled**

For the March Charity Sew Days, I was going to be missing the first day - so I wanted something quick. I remembered I had helped pick fabrics from the color wall for an in-shop, custom made charm pack and there was going to be one leftover. I decided to grab it up and have a go at making something out of it.

Nine Patch Diamonds - a 3D Block

How to assemble a Nine Patch Diamond 3D Block.

This tutorial is a spin off of the 3D Hexagon Table Runner - Easy Y Seams Project. The Easy Y Seam technique is the same method used to piece this project together, there is no need for me to repeat it twice. In this tutorial, I will cover how to cut and sew together a Nine Patch Diamond. This tutorial works best if you have a 60° triangle ruler.

For this tutorial, I'm using, 27 different fabrics. You will need 9 lights, 9 mediums, and 9 darks. Or, you can do a simpler version and choose 3 lights, 3 mediums, 3 darks. I'm not going to go into much depth about color/fabric selection here. If you would like more details on how to figure out what is light, medium and dark, check out my fabric selection/supply list by clicking here. 

How much fabric:
Well, that depends on the outcome... What size of quilt do you want to make? Are you going to use 3" or 2.5" strips?

Smaller strips will require more fabric as it creates more seams. While that may be true, some of you may be more comfortable using jelly rolls rather than cutting your own strips.

Below, I have created 3 charts, each with different quilt size options. **an inch or two of extra fabric as been added to each of the #s in the charts.

Option 1: uses 2.5" strips. As an example, if you are to make a twin size quilt, you will need 9 different light fabrics that measure 13" x WOF. From that 13", you will cut 5 strips that measure 2.5", and you would repeat that for the medium and dark fabrics.

Option 2: uses 3" strips. Example, if you were to make a twin size quilt, you would need 9 different light fabrics that measure 13" x WOF. From that 13", you will cut 4 strips that measure 3", and you would repeat that for the medium and dark fabrics.

Option 3: uses 3" strips. Example, if you were to make a twin size quilt, you would need 3 different light fabrics that measure 40" x WOF. From that 40", you will cut 13 strips that measure 3", and you would repeat that for the medium and dark fabrics.

I've based my tutorial on 2.5" strips, using 27 different fabrics (I had 4 jelly rolls at my disposal - 2 green print rolls and 2 "salt n pepper" print rolls), but this tutorial is interchangeable with any size strip, but I don't recommend anything smaller than a 1.5" strip.

First of all, starch your fabric before you cut. Diamonds with a 60° angle have biased edges and will stretch without the starch.

Cut out your strips of fabric based on the chart above.
Group together the lights - at random - in stripsets of 3. Repeat with the medium and dark fabrics.

Assemble the dark nine patch diamond:

Now, to minimize our fabric waste, we want to sew these strips together offset by a little bit. To see about how much, lay your 3 strips for one stripset out. Use your 60° triangle ruler and draw a line on each of the 3 strips near the selvage edge. When you place right sides together, you want to offset the strips to about that line. After you sew one strip set, you can kinda guess on how much to offset the rest. Make sure you offset all of them in the same direction.

Remember to sew in alternating directions to avoid the curvy shape. Sew til you have 3 stripsets with 3 strips each stripset.

Press seams in the direction you are most comfortable with - open, to one direction, alternating direction... However.

Now, back at the cutting mat with one strip set and place your 60° ruler up close to the edge of your offset end. Line up the lines on the ruler with your seam lines. Trim off the selvage.

Flip the whole strip set over to where the fresh cut side is on your left. Use your regular ruler and line up the line on your ruler with the freshly cut edge of your stripset and cut off a strip of 3 diamonds.

What line on my ruler?!?!? Got your attention now...

If your strips are 2.5" wide, then use the 2.5" line on your ruler. If your strips are 3" wide, use the 3" line on your ruler. If your strips are 5" wide, use the 5" line on your ruler.

Cut off a strip of three diamonds from each of your 3 stripsets.

Now, as I was working on taking pictures for my tutorial, I realized that my strips are cut with pinking shears, which would make it hard to visually explain the next step. So, with that, I grabbed 2 diamonds from a previous project to explain. The process is the same.

Stitching 2 rows of diamonds together. First, you need to know where your stitch is. The easiest way for me to tell where my stitch, is to stitch 4 or 5 stitches down where the seam would fall. You can always rip out the stitches later.

Now, look at this image. I have flipped one diamond onto the other. Do you see the 'V' created by the top and bottom diamond?

We want to offset our diamonds to where our stitch starts and ends directly in the 'V'. For the first couple of seams, I pinned my intersecting seams so they wouldn't stretch.

By doing this, you will be able line up all your diamonds and achieve 'perfect points'.

Repeat with the 3rd strip of diamonds until you have a complete dark nine patch diamond. Press your seams how you see fit.

Now you've made a nine patch diamond, you are able to repeat the steps above with your medium and light fabrics and make a medium and light nine patch diamond.

Progress!

Piece the diamonds together using the Easy Y Seam method. If you are unsure of Easy Y Seams, check out Joining the 3 Sections in this Easy Y Seam tutorial.