A tangram is a Chinese puzzle that consists of seven polygons, which are put together to form shapes. Found in puzzle books, the objective is to replicate a pattern, given only an outline, using the seven pieces without overlap. There are countless possibilities of combinations.

Tangrams are believed to have originated from China during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and were not introduced to the Western world until the 19th century when they were brought to Europe by trading ships. They are used when teaching spatial visualization/spatial reasoning. And, they are a great way to exercise your brain.

Earlier this year, I saw an image of a tangram cats quilt and thought it would be nice to try to make one myself. Using my Powerpoint program, I designed a quilt with 20 cats. Originally, I thought these would be easy blocks to sew – they are just different sized triangles, a square, and a parallelogram. However, once I started sewing, I realized that the designs involved a lot of Y-seams. To help with the piecing accuracy, I printed out each design and used a modified paper piecing approach to making the blocks. Each of the blocks are 14″ square and pieced with a 2″ sashing. (Photo has some streaks of sun from the light shining through the window when I was taking the photos).

While I was piecing the cats quilt, I was looking up information on other tangram puzzles. I saw some boats that I thought would be fun to make. So, of course, another quilt needed to be made.

These quilts were really fun to make. And, the fabrics were already in my stash, so I did not need to purchase any additional.