Broken Dishes Quilt Pattern

Hello, hello! I’m back with a great little Broken Dishes Quilt Pattern tutorial for you.

This tutorial will show you how to sew up a Broken Dishes baby quilt that finishes at 40½” x 48½”. The Broken Dishes quilt block is such a well known, traditional quilt block, but I think it can make a quite modern looking quilt. The key to the modern look here is using solids for the dark fabrics, and a scrappy mix of low volume fabrics for the light.

This pattern is fat quarter friendly and can also be made completely with scraps. Just make sure you cut out the total number of squares required from your scrap fabrics.

For those of you who love this pattern and would like the PDF version, there’s a copy in my shop for US$6. It has the instructions for 5 sizes – baby (seen here), throw, twin, queen and king. There’s also bonus table runner instructions, too.

OK, let’s get sewing!

Fabric Requirements for the baby size Broken Dishes Quilt Pattern

The Broken Dishes quilt pattern relies on good contrast between light and darker fabrics, so choose your colours accordingly. This version uses only solids for the dark fabrics and print fabrics for the light. I also went a step further and kept all my solids in the one vague colour family – blue/greens. As I have a rather large collection of low volume fabrics *ahem* I was also able to choose light fabrics with patterns in blues, greens and greys.

Here’s what you’ll need to sew this pattern from FQs:

• 5 dark, solid fabric FQs
• 5 light, low volume FQs
• Binding: 2 FQs or a half yard (or 200″ of scrappy binding)

Cutting Your Fabrics for the Broken Dishes Quilt Pattern

When I’m using FQs I really like to stack 3 of them together and cut them at the same time. I know some people will stack even more, but 3 or 4 is generally my comfort level.

Cutting Your Dark Fabrics.

Take your 5 dark FQs and cut 3 strips, 5″ x 21″ from each one. Then subcut each strip to give you (4) 5″ squares per strip.

5 FQs x 3 strips x 4 squares per strip = (60) 5″ dark fabric squares in total.

Cutting Your Light Fabrics.

Take your 5 light FQs and do the exact same thing as for the dark FQs to get (60) 5″ light fabric squares in total.

Now you’re ready to sew some half-square triangles (HSTs)!

Sew Your HSTs for Your Broken Dishes Quilt

Take one of the 5″ light fabric squares and draw a diagonal line (corner to corner) on the wrong side with a pencil. (Don’t use a pen because the ink will melt and run when you iron it, staining your fabric.)

Match this light square with a dark 5″ square, right sides together, and sew a scant quarter inch seam on both sides of the pencil line. (Scant just means a bit less than – so think of it as a miserly quarter inch.)

Cut on the pencil line to separate the two HST units, then press them open with the seam toward the dark fabric. If you prefer to press your seams open you can certainly do that too. For those who prefer side pressing – pressing toward the dark triangles will ensure all your seams nest nicely.

Once pressed, trim your HSTs to 4½” square. Congratulations, you’ve just made 2 HSTs. Now go back and do the same with the other 59 light and dark 5″ fabric squares to sew a total of 120 HSTs.

Lay Out Your Broken Dishes Baby Quilt

Now it’s time to lay out your 120 HSTs in the very distinctive light/dark pattern of Broken Dishes. Just remember that light should always be touching dark, dark should always be touching light and you’ll have no problems. It’s a simple pattern that’s very effective!

Here’s the 10 x 12 layout for your blocks:

Sew Your Broken Dishes Quilt Together

This is the fun part – sewing your beautiful quilt all together.

Firstly, sew all the HST units in each row together (with a quarter inch seam allowance). Press the first row’s seams to the right. Then press the second row’s seams to the left, and so on as you go down the rows. Alternating your seam directions will make sure they nest together nicely once you sew the rows together. Speaking of which…

Sew all the rows together (again, quarter inch seam allowance) and press your seams open to reduce bulk.

If you are really conscientious you could swirl the seams at the intersections where the 4 HST diagonals meet. I am not conscientious. I could not be bothered doing this for 49 junction points. I just pressed my seams open and called it a day.

Quilt Your Broken Dishes Quilt

This quilt is a great candidate for some straight line quilting as there are plenty of seams and corners to use as reference points. There’s a comprehensive blog post on straight line quilting here, if you need some inspiration.

I decided to sew a checkerboard type quilt design consisting of a line of quilting each side of every seam. I used the edge of my walking foot, lined up with the quilt top seams, so I didn’t have to draw any guide lines. The added bonus of this quilting design is that it didn’t require me to sew over any of those bulky HST intersections. I also like how the quilting pattern boxes in those intersection points, giving them a bit of extra strength.

You can see my quilting either side of the seams in the photo below:

Backing and Binding

I had a run of really nice low volume yardage in my stash, gifted to me by a friend. It was the perfect backing for this quilt.

Because this quilt top finishes at 40½” wide, if you’re having it long-arm quilted then you will have to piece a backing. Sorry about that. But if you’re quilting it yourself, you’ll be able to get away with using a run of yardage, like I did. Just make sure it’s the standard 44″ wide and take care with the side edges, as there’s less than 2″ overhang. But very doable, as you can see here!

Binding

As mentioned in the fabric requirements, you’ll need 200″ total of binding for this baby quilt. You can sew that from 5 WOF strips cut from a half yard of fabric, or 10 strips cut from 2 FQs. You could also go totally scrappy – just keep adding fabric until you reach 200″.

I was initially going to go scrappy until I found a half yard of lovely deep sea green in my stash.

I used my faithful zigzag machine stitch binding tutorial to sew on the binding. It’s not very noticeable, but my top and bobbin threads were different as I didn’t have enough of either one of them. (One is more green than the other.) I love being able to use up thread spools this way.

That’s a Wrap!

There you have it, a Broken Dishes baby quilt all sewn up. A somewhat modern take on a traditional quilt block. Not to mention a handy stash and scrap busting pattern too.

If you’d like this Broken Dishes quilt pattern in PDF format for your files, you can purchase a copy in the shop for US$6. The pattern contains instructions for baby, throw, twin, queen and king sizes, as well as how to sew a table runner.

Enjoy, and happy sewing!

Kirsty

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