Last week I posted about the challenges of using the lovely big prints that some designers produce in quilting cotton, and coincidentally this week the weather was finally nice enough to take a photo of a quilt I finished just before I went on holiday, which is a good candidate for a ‘big print’ pattern.

I used 2 bundles of Melody Miller’s first line for Cotton + Steel (which I picked up at Spring Quilt Market 2014 when they launched) and I mixed in a couple of the C+S basics to get enough blocks for a bed-sized quilt (as I like to actually sleep under my quilts!) plus a mixture of the C+S basics in natural for the background.

Each ‘block’ is 12″ x 12″ finished, and the effect is created by alternating a solid block with a 9-patch, where the corner and centre pieces are of a background fabric, and the other 4 squares match the solid block they are immediately adjacent to.  It’s a quick make, the only time consuming part is arranging the fabric for the 9-patches, and it finishes at 84″ x 96″

If you want to make one of your own, you’ll need:

• 28 FQs ‘feature’ fabric
• 2 yds ‘background’ fabric
• 3 yds extra wide backing or 9 yds regular quilting cotton (you will end up with a fair amount of leftover, but it’s just too wide for 6 yds)
• 3/4 yd binding fabric (although you can also use leftovers from the backing)

You will need to cut:

From the feature fabric:

• 1 x 12″ square
• 4 x 4 1/2″ squares

From the background fabric:

• 140 x 4 1/2″ squares (you can get 9 out of one 4 1/2″ WOF strip)

From the binding fabric:

• 9 x 2 1/2″ WOF strips

This is my favourite of the 9 patches in my quilt, the only one that was a little bit different:

I also utilised a border print that came in my FQ bundles to widen the backing, so I only needed 6 yds of backing fabric:

I love that there are sparkly bits in it too, gotta love metallic prints!