Single Irish Chains

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Single Irish Chains

You call an Irish Chain a single, double, or triple for the number of diagonal rows of squares in the dominant color, the one that contrasts most with the background. That's only a rule of thumb. Still, after you get a good look at the designs below, you'll probably use that terminology too.

Single Irish Chain

Country Lanes

Criss Cross Quilt

Burgoyne Surrounded

Burgoyne's Surrender

Beautiful Mosaic

Dublin Chain

Village Green

9-patch Plaid

Double 9 Patch

Penn-sylvania

Nine Patch

Sheep Fold

Puss in the Corner

eep Fold

Single Irish Chain

Single Irish Chain for the rest of us

Single Irish Chain made by a purist

Single Irish Chain design

This design has probably been around since the invention of thread. It's made up of nine-patch

checkerboards alternated with plain blocks (far right). At least that's how we would make it: A purist might use small blocks from top to bottom (middle right).

The simpler construction is merciful to newbies. The isolated nine-patches keep mistakes from multiplying the way they would in, say, a Trip Around the World. Nine-patches are also straightforward if you make them with standard rotary cutter techniques. Click on the "Make It!" icon for a tutorial.

Country Lanes

Country Lanes construction
Country Lanes designFive-patch blocks with alternating plain blocks make up Country Lanes, which got its name from a Mountain Mist quilt-pattern booklet in 1935.

It's almost the same design as the Single Irish Chain above except that there are two more squares between each intersection. It's still made with the same rotary-cutter techniques as Single Irish Chain, above.

A three-color variation with rectangles is called Cross in a Square:

Why isn't a 5 x 5 block called a 25-patch, the way a 3 x 3 block is called a 9-patch? Because your grandmother said so.

Criss-Cross Quilt

Criss-Cross
Nancy Page, 1933

Criss Cross QuiltSingle Irish Chain

This design is Country Lanes without the plain blocks. Nancy Page, the syndicated columnist, published it as Criss Cross in 1933.

When she published it again in 1939, she called it Single Irish Chain.

Burgoyne Surrounded and Burgoyne's Surrender once had a patriotic resonance that is now lost, along with our memories of the turning point in the War of Independence that inspired the block's name: In 1777, in the Battles of Saratoga, the British General Burgoyne and his troops were surrounded in Albany, New York and forced to surrender. It's believed that the block was designed about two centuries ago.

Burgoyne Surrounded

Burgoyne Surrounded (Havig)

Burgoyne Surrounded
Havig, 1999The block at left shows what all the Burgoyne designs have in common: the cloverleaf of four 4-square blocks, the ragged circle with four 9-patch checkerboards, and the diagonal rows of small squares leading into the corners.

Originally, Carrie Hall published the design in The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America. We based our graphic on the block in Carrie Hall Blocks (1999) by Bettina Havig.

The "Make It!" icon above links to a page of Quilter's Cache. Marcia Hohn's recommendation is to build the block strip by strip.

The block in our graphic is 15 squares by 15. Marcia Hohn's block is 17 squares by 17. Yvonne Khin's variation, below, is 20 x 20. The difference is entirely in the number of small squares leading from corner to a large square in the center section. Havig's has five small squares, Hohn's has six, and Khin's has seven in three of the corners and eight in the last corner.

Being precision-challenged, we believe that constructing the block strip by strip would leave us with a block dissimilar to a square. We've posted our own diagram for the variation of Burgoyne's Surrender below. You can use it to make this variation as well.

Burgoyne Surrounded

Burgoyne Surrounded (Khin)

Burgoyne Surrounded
Khin, 1988Burgoyne's Surrender/Wheel of Fortune/The Road to California

This Burgoyne variation is from Yvonne Khin's The Collector's Dictionary of Quilt Names and Patterns. Khin cites The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America (Hall, 1935), dating the first two names to the early 19th century and Wheel of Fortune to about 1850. Khin writes, "The early settlers took the pattern to the West where it came to be known as "Road to California."

We're not sure why both Khin and Havig cite Hall's book.

Khin's block was in three colors, as we've shown it in the mockup. The third color is in the center block and the four nine-patches that touch it. We used just two colors in the left-side graphics so the blocks would be easier to compare.

Burgoyne's Surrender

Burgoyne's Surrender

Burgoyne's Surrender
Cabot, 1933Nancy Cabot came up with this block, the only block with Burgoyne's Surrender as its sole name, in the Chicago Tribune in 1933. As it is reconstructed in Jinny Beyer's Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns, each of the large squares in the corners (each patch of the 9-patches) is half again the size of the squares that make up the rest of the design. It makes for an interesting whole-quilt design.

Newbies, here's a little eye training: The nine-patches are in the block's corners and are laid out on a 3x3 grid, so all the squares are the same size. The center design is not a nine-patch. It's a five-patch, laid out on the equivalent of a 5x5 grid so that the center square is half the size of the others.

Beautiful Mosaic

Beautiful Mosaic
Farm Journal, ca. 1934 It wasn't billed as a variation of Burgoyne Surrounded, but this Farm Journal block does look a bit like the Burgoynes.

It appeared in the booklet "Farm Journal Quilt Patterns Old and New" under the byline Mabel Hoffecker Collins. The booklet's name suggests it was published before 1935, when Farm Journal merged with Farmer's Wife. It was also published in Farm Journal in 1937.

Take a good look at our mockup. Do the designs between the diagonal rows make the whole thing seem off-kilter? Does the whole thing seem a little odd to you?

It does to us. We would guess that the block was intended to form nine-patches at the top and sides. That is, a couple of rows need to be removed from the block.

How could a designer make such a mistake (if it is a mistake)? Easy: deadlines.

At right is the quilt we got when we removed the right and bottom rows of each block.

Beautiful Mosaic with Trimmed Block

Beautiful Mosaic
With right and bottom rows removed

We have to wonder how many women made multiple blocks of the Farm Journal pattern, started to sew them together, and said "Something's wrong with this!"

Imagine each quilter puzzling it out and then going back to remove two rows of each block.

She'd have to recalculate her borders after that. She'd need to add an inch to all four sides of the quilt for every two blocks she fixed, or she'd wind up with a smaller quilt than she'd planned.

Then what to do with the block edges that were removed? That, dear friend, is why we have shams and decorative pillows. Perhaps, contrary to all we know of history, they were both invented on the Plains.

Dublin Chain

Dublin Chain
Cabot, 1938

Dublin Chain Dublin Square/Rocky Road to Dublin

This block and its names are all from a 1938 Chicago Tribune, and were the creation of designer Nancy Cabot. The colors in our graphic are based on Yvonne Khin's Collector's Dictionary of Quilt Names and Patterns.

Village Green

Village Green
Page, 1939The Birmingham News published this block by designer Nancy Page in 1939.

Nine-patch Plaid

Nine-patch Plaid

Nine-patch Plaid
Khin, 1988Yvonne Khin, in her Collector's Dictionary of Quilt Names and Patterns (1980), presents this block without citation. It makes a beautiful whole-quilt pattern reminiscent of an Irish Chain.

Double 9 Patch

Double 9 Patch

Double 9 Patch
Webster, 1915Golden Steps/Green Springs/Nine Patch Variation/Child's Crib Quilt

Naming rights to this block of alternating nine-patches went to Marie Webster, who wrote Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (1915), arguably the most boring book ever published. Webster is celebrated for being the first American quilt historian.

In 1941, Nancy Page, in the Birmingham News, added patterned quilting to the plain squares and named it Child's Crib Quilt.

Pennsylvania

Double 9 Patch

Pennsylvania
Page, 1936The Simple Cross/Easy Four Patch

This block from Nancy Page (Florence La Ganke) was published in the Birmingham News in 1936. The block goes by a few other names, including The Simple Cross (from a 1972 book, Quilts of Appalachia, by Martha Marshall) and Easy Four Patch (Laura Wheeler, 1967). We thank Barbara Brackman for the former and Jinny Beyer for the latter. Then there are two more names when the block is set with alternating plain squares: Criss Cross Quilt (Nancy Cabot, 1933) and Single Irish Chain (Nancy Page).

The three blocks below use an oddity, a block on a 4x4 grid that's called "Nine Patch." Take a look at what block designers did with it.

Nine Patch

Nine Patch
Finley, 1929

Nine Patch

Nine Patch on pointThis design came to light in 1929, in Finley's Old Patchwork Quilts. It is not a nine-patch at all; it is drawn on a 4x4 grid.

The block creates a plain checkerboard when it is set in groups (far right).

Mixing up the colors helps. The middle mockup has a different color in half the block corners, placed catty-cornered.

The quilt Finley found and photographed was set on point with alternating plain blocks, per our near-right mockup, and was a scrap quilt.

Sheep Fold

Sheep Fold

Sheep Fold
Page, 1941Golden Steps/Green Springs/Nine Patch Variation/Child's Crib Quilt

Naming rights to this block of alternating 9-patches went to Marie Webster, who wrote Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them (1915), arguably the most boring book ever published. Webster is celebrated for being the first American quilt historian.

In 1941, Nancy Page, in the Birmingham News, added patterned quilting to the plain squares and named it Child's Crib Quilt.

There is a resemblance to a Single Irish Chain, and even more of a resemblance to Pennsylvania, above.

Puss in the Corner

Puss in the Corner

Puss in the Corner
Webster, 1915Golden Steps/Green Springs/Nine Patch Variation/Child's Crib Quilt

This Puss in the Corner is a grouping of Nine Patch blocks that Marie Webster published in 1915 in Quilts, which is said to be the earliest book of prose specifically about quilting.

In a quilt made about 1855, five Nine Patch blocks are joined in a single block, turned on point, and then set alternating with plain blocks. The result is a whispery, spare design with room for beautiful quilting.

If it were not on point, this would be similar to a Single Irish Chain with embellishments. Turned either way, it's one of our favorites.