Two at a Time 9 Patch Blocks 

What’s better than working on one block at a time? Making two at once!! Follow along as I show you the steps for making Two at A Time 9 Patch blocks. 

Getting Started

In order to make a pair of 9 Patch blocks (one with light coloured corners and one with dark coloured corners), you’ll need:

• 3 strips of dark fabric that measure 2.5” x 8”
• 3 strips of light fabric that measure 2.5” x 8”

Fabric Choices

There’s no limit to the types of fabric you could use for this project! Dive into your scrap bins, pull out a jelly roll, slice up a layer cake, or use your favourite fat quarters. 

I used fat quarters for this project, and because I was making a version of this quilt with a 10 x 12 block layout (measuring 60” x 72”), I used 12 light fat quarters and 12 dark fat quarters. That gave me enough fabric strips to make all 120 required blocks.

You’ll be able to use 15 strips of 2.5” x 8” from each fat quarter, and the cutting process went much faster with the use of my Stripology ruler. If you don’t have one of these, I can promise it’s worth the investment!

Creating Strip Sets

After cutting up your fabric, pair 3 light fabrics and 3 dark fabrics together. I had a lot of fun picking and choosing the combinations - so many cute ones!

Lay out the fabrics into two groups of three. The trios should alternate fabric like so:

• One trio: light-dark-light
• Second trio: dark-light-dark

Sew the trios together along the long edges using a scant ¼” seam. For my Juki sewing machine, I use a special foot with a guide that gives me perfect results every single time. You can find the magic foot here.

Press towards the dark fabric, being careful not to warp your seams. You want them to stay nice and crisp and straight!

Cutting sub-units

Being careful to be as accurate as possible, cut your strip sets into smaller sub-units that measure 2.5” x 6.5”. I like to use my Stripology ruler for this step in order to complete this task as quickly and as accurately as possible.

There will be a small amount of extra fabric that gets trimmed off each end of your strip sets. That was planned in order to get you really accurate 9 Patch blocks! 

You will now have six sub-units. 

Arrange them into two different blocks, alternating patterns so that one of your blocks has a dark fabric in the top left corner, and the other blocks has light fabric in the top left corner.

Creating 9 Patch Blocks

Sew these sub-units together along their long edges using a scant ¼” seam. 

Press the seams toward the sub-units that have two dark fabric squares. For one block, the seams will be pressed towards the outside, and the other block will have the seams pressed towards the center. 

Ta-da! You’ve made two 9 Patch blocks at once! 

Each block measures 6.5” x 6.5”, and will finish at 6” square when sewn into a quilt top. 

Simply make as many blocks as you’d like for your project. 

Quilty math

Some simple cutting math:

Take the number of blocks you’d like to make and multiply it by 3 to determine the number of 2.5” x 8” strips you’ll need. 

For example: I wanted to make a quilt with a 10 x 12 layout, so I wanted to make 120 blocks. 

120 x 3 = 360 strips TOTAL (180 light and 180 dark strips)

Easy peasy! 

If you’d like a quick reference sheet for making these blocks, you can grab my FREE download below. 

Or if you’d prefer to watch a step-by-step tutorial of this process, check out my YouTube tutorial!