Irish Chain Patch Quilt Block

It’s finally here, St. Patrick’s day will be in just a couple of day and you will see we’ve got a couple of St. Patrick’s day blocks, Irish chains of various sorts and today I’ve got a third one. Hi! This is Penny Halgren from QuiltBlockLibrary.com and QuiltBlockLibrary.tv thanks for joining us. Today I’m going to sew this Irish chain patch quilt block together and it’s got a lot of little patches in it and it could be really hard to sew but I’m going to use some shortcut methods and this is going to go really quick. So I’m ready to get started. I hope you are too. Let’s go to the sewing machine. I studied this block for really long time trying to figure out how I could shortcut a lot of the sewing and what I’ve decided to do is break it up into it’s little nine patch components and so this little pieces together. However, you’ll notice in this little patch in this corner, its got two little half squared triangles in the corner. And instead of piecing this and then sewing the rest of it together, what I’m going to do is use a strip piecing method to slow the entire little patch together and then I’m going to add this little patch squared triangles on after the patch is done. So what I figured is that I’ve got five of this. So I’ve got one in each corner and then actually I’ve got one in the center. So I cut enough fabric here so that I would be able to make strips and I’m going to make two different kinds of strips. I'm going to make a green-white-green strip and then I’m going to make a white-green-white strip. So I’m going to place these right sides together and I’m just going to sew them together. Now I have two of the strip sets sewn together and they're just two colors. One is green and one is white. And then on one of them, I’m going to attach a green strip. The other one, I’m going to attach a white strip. So that when I finish, I'm going to have it white-green-white and then this one will be green-white-green. This are ironed and now I’m ready to put them together and cut them off so that I can make square patches. Since my strips here were two and a half inches wide, I’m going to cut two and a half inch of sections off. And remember I need five of this and I’m going to leave them together as I cut them because I’m just going to carry this over to my sewing machine and sew them together exactly the way I cut them off. So I’ve got this center in pairs. I’m just going to settle this together. Now I’ve got the sets that have two rows in them and in order to complete the nine patch, I just need to add the bottom row. And we have little nine patches. This is what I want to create out of this. So in order to accomplish that, what I’m going to need to do is sew a half squared triangles onto the corners right here. Now I’ve got my little half squared triangles cut and I want to be sure that I’m getting them in the right place. So I need them on opposite corners there and there and then I’ll lay them down so that they’re right sides together, and stitch from seam to seam. Now for a final patches, we’ve got this little nine patch right here so that’s what that patch looks like. In order to sew this together, the first thing we need to do is attach this half squared triangles together. Now that we have my half-squared triangles together, I always like to check and make that it will fit my pattern and then I’m sewing them correctly. So the green goes in the upper corner then we just need to sew these three pieces together. Now that we have the components of that patch on, it’s time to just attach the three so I will start at the top and saw these two rows together. Now I’m ready to saw the bottom – the bottom row on. Finally, we have all of the patches sewn together and all we need to do is put the block together. So the first thing to do is just fold over the two columns of patches and I will chain saw this together. These sets of patches are sawn together so now I just need to add the third one now onto each row. Okay, the three rows sawn together, so I need to do is saw them together to complete the block. Now we’re ready for the final scene in this called block just the top fold it down. So that it’s facing right sides together and we’ll just saw this in. Our Irish chain patch coat lock is all sawn together. This one is quite large. Its 18 inches and I’ve used some short click cut methods to saw it together. They maybe a little more complicated and take a little more thought than just cutting up squares and half square triangles and sewing them together in rows like you would in a regular block. Whichever way you find easier to saw this block together is great, just saw it together. Happy St. Patrick’s day and thanks for joining me. This is Penny Halgren from QuiltBlockLibrary.com and QuiltBlockLibrary.tv. If you are not already there head on over to quiltblocklibrary.com and down load your free pattern of this Irish chain patch cope lock. Thanks again and peaceful piecing.