Brick by Brick: Favorite Sizes

Written by Diane Harris on April 13, 2024. Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas, Inspiration

I love to make quilts from bricks! A brick is a rectangular quilt patch that finishes twice as long as wide.

My favorite brick sizes are listed below as finished size first, followed by the dimensions you’ll need to cut the patches.

Finished size: 1″ x 2″…..Cut 1-1/2″ x 2-1/2″

Finished size: 1-1/2″ x 3″…..Cut 2″ x 3-1/2″

Finished size: 2″ x 4″…..Cut 2-1/2″ x 4-1/2″

The tiniest patch above is cut 1″ x 1-1/2″ to finish at 1/2″ x 1″. It is little!!

The largest patch above is cut 4-1/2″ x 8-1/2″. The largest brick I have ever used was cut 6-1/2″ x 12-1/2″. It was used in a 24″ block.

To figure out your own custom brick sizes, first think about the finished dimensions you want, for instance, you want a brick that’s 9″ long. Since it has to be twice as long as wide, half of 9 is 4-1/2.

So you know the brick will finish 4-1/2″ x 9″. NOW add 1/2″ to each of those numbers to get the cut size. In this case the cut size would be 5″ x 9-1/2″.

One of the first bricks quilt I ever made featured Baby Windmill blocks. I created darker windmills to get the effect of “borders” for this design I call Framework.

Somehow this helps to organize all the scrappy chaos and the quilt is more pleasing to the eye than it would be without the false borders.

When the patchwork is very small like this, you can use all types of cotton quilt fabric together: reproductions, batiks, florals, novelty and so on.

I use contrast in most of the blocks so that the windmill is easily visible. Most blocks outside of the border areas have a windmill that is darker than the background.

The windmills in Framework are made from patches cut 1-1/2″ x 2-1/2″. Each block finishes at 4″. You can find instructions for these little blocks in my Baby Windmills basic tutorial post.

Here’s another small quilt made from Baby Windmills. It’s called Christmas Dance. I went scrappy within a limited palette. This is a very entertaining kind of sewing!

Please follow and like me!

Tags: bricks, how-tos, make extraordinary scrap quilts, quilt design, rectangles, scrap quilts