Best Friends Pattern

Donna asked me in her comment if I had a pattern for my latest scrap quilt posted here. I got my inspiration from on old Trudie Hughes book and I kind of made it my own. I drew up the block and quilt in EQ5 and I will give you the dimensions I used, but it is a block that is easily convertible to different sizes.


Here is the block. In my quilt, this block finished at 8". That means the small halves of the block finished at 4". I used yellow as my accent throughout the blocks, but you could certainly use red or black or anything that will contrast next to both the dark side and the light side of the block.

The squares in the small section were cut 1-1/2". The rectangles were cut 1-1/2" by 2-1/2". Build your center 4-patch first. Add a light rectangle to the top of the 4-patch and a dark rectangle to the bottom. Make the 2 square-rectangle-square units (one light and one dark - each with an accent square at the end) and sew them to the sides of the 4-patch/rectangle unit. You need 2 of these small blocks, a 4-1/2" dark square and a 4-1/2" light square to make the finished block. You have basically built a "log cabin" type block - with a light half and a dark half.

For a 10" block, the small squares would be cut 1-3/4" , the rectangles would be 1-3/4" by 3", and the large squares would be cut 5-1/2".

For a 12" block, the small squares would be cut 2", the rectangles would be cut 2" x 3-1/2", and the large squares would be cut 6-1/2".


This is the barn-raising set I used in my quilt. I challenge you to play with your layout - the sky's the limit!


As I said before, this was a leaders/enders project with little bits of dedicated sewing thrown in when I had a couple of minutes to sew. Of course, you could be like my friend Lisa who made one in 5 days. That is, if you're obsessive/compulsive.....

I hope this answers your questions, Donna. Have fun!

Susan