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Patch work quilts are timeless, are they not? Patch work quilts have been manufactured for hundreds of years, because basically a patch work quilt is manufactured from off-cuts of cloth. A housewife would make a set of curtains and keep the off-cuts. Then she would make some clothes and keep the off-cuts. And so on and so on until she had enough off-cuts to create a quilt, if she required one for her household.

This old-style of constructing bedspreads or quilts always manages to look conventional and contemporary at the same time. A specialist variety of this old-style is the American tradition of women embroidering off-cuts of cloth in order to create a quilt as an excuse for a social life. These days there is more money floating about in society and the patches on the quilt can be more personal and more complicated.

There is also a great deal more choice of fabric about than there ever was, so it is not always necessary to embellish a swatch of cloth to make it one’s own. Someone may always use blue and white stripes as a signature or green and black squares for instance. Most individuals make a patch work quilt of uniform squares, but others will use squares with curved corners and even rectangles, rhombuses, circles and triangles.

Some patch work quilters like to select a theme whilst others are happy to let numerous participants sew in any patch that they like. There are also patch block schemes. The four patch scheme is almost certainly the most common, but the nine patch scheme is also pretty common.

A four patch scheme is achieved by dividing the quilt into equal squares and then bisecting each square across the top and down the sides. Every block of four squares can then have a theme. The same goes for a nine patch scheme, but divide every large block on the quilt with two vertical and two horizontal lines constructing nine small squares in every large square.

You can design your quilt pattern on graph paper if you like. To do this, first consider how large you would like your quilt to be. Then draw that on graph paper and divide your graph into the number of that you would like. Novices may be better off using larger squares in the beginning and then increasing the number of squares by reducing their size.

Begin with a four block scheme and move up to a nine and then twelve block scheme. You can repeat the swatches of cloth at regular or irregular intervals and you can change the orientation of the swatch in your patch work quilt too. A patch work quilt can be well planned or completely random. Well planned quilts can be quite stunning, but even random quilts look fantastic.

Owen Jones, the author of that piece, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with the chenille throw blankets. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Woollen Blankets.

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