When I’m in a stash-busting mood I always look for a quick and easy yet effective quilt pattern. The Disappearing Four Patch is a handy pattern to keep on hand, as you can easily alter the size of the starting blocks to suit both the scale of the pattern on the fabric, and the amount of fabric that you want to use up. It also sews up quickly and doesn’t have any fiddly pieces, so it could easily come together in a day (oh the luxury of having a full and uninterrupted day of sewing - one day it will happen!)

I had some layer cakes of English Summer by Anna Maria Horner arrive recently (I’d forgotten I’d ordered them!) and as soon as I saw them my fingers started itching with anticipation and my mind started running through potential sewing patterns that would leave the gorgeous large-scale prints mostly intact. There was loads of inspiration on Pinterest (here’s my boards if you would like to see allllll the quilts I want to make one day!)

I used a tutorial by Jen Eskridge of Reanna Lily Designs and you can find the step-by-step tutorial here. The tutorial uses two layer cakes (10” squares) but I only wanted to use one layer cake so my finished quilt is smaller than the tutorial. I also had to cut a couple of co-ordinating Anna Maria Horner fat quarters into 10” squares so that I would have enough blocks to finish the quilt. If you don’t have a layer cake to use up, you could easily cut some fat eighths or fat quarters into 10” squares to make your quilt.

The blocks are large which means that everything sews up very quickly! I sewed this together over the course of a few days and it was very easy to pick up and put down again. I tried to pair up fabrics that contrasted so that the pattern would show through when all the blocks were joined together. The hardest part was arranging the final blocks and trying not to place the same fabrics next to each other.

The quilt is backed with a dark grey fabric that is printed with chicken-feed logos (I felt the quilt needed a quiet backing to contrast with the bright front) and I quilted it myself on my Janome Memory Craft 6500 with the walking foot. I traced a quarter-circle at the bottom right hand corner of the quilt using a dinner plate and my Hera marker, and then followed this line leaving about 2” between each row. I used a dark purple thread to quilt with. The quilt is bound using this fabric from Tambourine by Anna Maria Horner as I felt it complemented all the colours in the quilt, even though it is from a different fabric range. I love how different fabric ranges work together!

The finished size of this quilt is 52” x 72” (1.3m x 1.82m) so it’s perfect for use on a single bed or for use on the couch while watching a movie.

Emma x