Block · Nine-patches
Nine Patch
Three by three squares: one of the oldest and simplest blocks in American quilts and the building block of many others.
- Other names
- Nifelts
- Known from
- USA, from about 1800
- First known print
- The name is in Marie Webster's list of quilt names of 1915, but the block is much older than the name in print.
- Origin
- Unknown, as for most traditional blocks
- Family
- Nine-patches
- Difficulty
- Easy · Squares and rectangles only
- Grid
- 3 × 3 cells
History
The nine patch is among the first blocks sewn in rows in American quilts. Barbara Brackman gives dated examples from 1802 (Maine), 1806 (Charlotte Roe's child's quilt, New York) and 1808; a quilt with 1786 on its back is less certain. Among 69 British quilts from before 1840 she found none set together block by block like this.
Nobody knows who sewed the first. It almost makes itself when squares are sewn together, so its origin is generations of quiltmakers.
How it is used
Classic settings alternate the nine patch with a plain square, straight or on point. When the corners and the centre share a fabric, they meet diagonally across the quilt, and that is close to Irish Chain.
A nine patch of nine patches is Double Nine Patch, and a nine patch cut in four with the pieces turned is Disappearing Nine Patch.
Quilts with the block
Snowballs and nine-patches
5 × 7 blocks · 51" × 69"
Related blocks
Sources
The text is our own, written from the sources below. Photos of old quilts with the block are in the museums' collections.
- Article Barbara Brackman: The Classic Early American Quilt (2017)
- Book Marie D. Webster: Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (1915)