The thread about the jacob's ladder quilt got me to wondering something, but first I will talk about something that I got to wondering while thinking about that.
Suppose you are making a quilt for a bigtime Nascar fan. The most obvious and perhaps easiest is to make a checkerboard of black and white squares to make a quilt that looks like a great big starter's flag.
However, there are lots of flags used in Nascar and auto racing in general
There are also actual sets of flags available online (and perhaps at local stores if you prefer that, so one could make a quilt with actual flags, but it would be quite expensive quilt based on what I have found.
For instance, I estimate that it would take at least 4 sets (perhaps it could be done with 3 or even 2 depending on the size of the quilt) of this flag
However, there are 7 flags, and 5 of them are just solid blocks of fabric
Now to ask the question that I originally thought of. The typical size of a "patch" in a 4-patch quilt is probably 1"(2.5 cm) for a small
4-patch and as high as 4" to 6" (10-15 cm) for a "large" 4-patch block.I suppose you could make it as big as you wanted. For instance, you could make each "patch" 22" (55cm) by 22", the size of a fat quarter, or perhaps even bigger if you wanted.
However, what is the smallest (finished) size possible. I would say that the smallest "practical" size is 1/2" (~1cm), and the smallest that you could go at all is 1/4" (~.5cm).
You could even go smaller, but you would have to use a smaller seam allowance than 1/4".
That is the smallest you could go on a machine, it might be possible to go even smaller if hand-piecing, I don't really like hand-sewing so I really avoid it when possible, and could not really say.
Someone that does miniatures might have some insight on this question that I don't.
Brian Christiansen