Free Cathedral Window Quilt Pattern

Making the blocks

From the background fabric cut 36 x 19in squares. Using the card and background fabric squares, prepare 36 Cathedral Window blocks, following Steps 1–6 from our How to make Cathedral Blocks guide

Once two blocks are prepared, lay the next block alongside and pin and sew as before. You now have a strip of three blocks. Make two more strips of three blocks. Lay two of the strips side by side, open out adjacent flaps, pin and sew along the length of the rows using the folded line as a guide. Press the flaps open.

Sew the remaining strip to the previous two, so that you have a square made up of nine blocks.

Using matching thread, hand sew the corners of the folded-out flaps together. Don’t sew the flaps at the edge as you will need to attach more blocks later, but keep the pins in and add an extra pin closer to the intersection.

Place one of the batting squares on the wrong side of a charm square. Gently press the edges of the fabric around the batting but don’t press at the corners. Prepare twelve charm squares in this way.

Place one of these, right side up, on one of the pressed-open flaps on top of the seam and pin through all the layers (background, batting and charm square). Begin to turn the edges of the flaps around the charm square, pinning through all layers to secure it in the window. Fill all twelve windows.

Using matching thread neatly topstitch the flap edges down, overlapping at the corner points and working from one window to the next. Now make three more nine-block squares following the preceding steps.

Lay two of the nine-block squares side by side and open out adjacent flaps. Pin together and sew along the fold line. Press open flaps and hand sew the corners of the flaps together. Leave one flap unsewn but still pinned so it can be attached to the other half of the quilt later.

Prepare three more charm squares and fill the available windows. Pin and sew as before.

Repeat this process with the two remaining nine-block squares.

You now have two halves of the quilt completed. Lay these side by side with the still-pinned flaps next to each other. Open these out and pin and sew together along fold line. Remove pins and press open.

Now hand sew all the corner intersections (and so remove all flap pins) and fill the remaining windows as before. It can be quite hard manhandling the quilt through the machine for these last few windows, but persevere because you are almost finished!

Turn over and sew down remaining flap edges around all sides of the quilt. Pin and sew as above but with empty windows.

Add some hand quilting now if desired. The quilt shown was hand quilted in straight lines around each window, using either pink, orange, turquoise or green perle thread. Bind your quilt to finish.