When The Squares Are Not Square….

For those of you that have been following my quilting journey, I want to share some of the challenges I encountered after I finished sewing my blocks and when I started sewing the strips together. If anyone else is a quilter and has encountered any of the same problems or has any idea on how to overcome them, I would love it if you would share your wisdom in the comments below! Thanks in advance.

The biggest problem that I found was when I went to square up some of my blocks, they were too short to actually cut to 11 inches by 11 inches. I was glad to find out that this is not a problem that only beginner quilters have. That gave me a lot of reassurance that I had not failed and there was still hope that my quilt would still turn out okay. Apparently to prevent the blocks form turning out to small I should have been measuring and ironing them along the way after each seam. One of the solutions that I found was to iron them again to try to get the seams even tighter and stretch the fabric out a little bit. Luckily that has worked so far. Some of the blocks were right at 11 inches so I did not have to cut anything off. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not because I found that when I could cut the edges of I was able to make sure the block edges were straight. Even when the edges of the blocks were not straight or a teeny tiny bit to small I was able to adjust the seam allowance when sewing the strips to make it work. Another cool solution I found was you can iron freezer paper onto the back of the block. This will give you a little bit of extra length in the seam allowance. Of course, you can’t add to much length using this method because you don’t want to see the freezer paper but you can use it to add a bit of length so you have more ‘fabric’ to create the seam. Luckily, I have not had to use this method yet because my blocks were not that far off. But, I have only squared off twelve blocks and sewn two strips so far. I will keep it in mind in case I encounter a real problem.

The other problem I encountered was once I had four or five blocks attached together, I had a tough time maneuvering the fabric. I found that if I let the other fabric hang over the edge of my sewing desk, it was easier then having all the fabric bunched up on the machine. I was better able to keep the seam straight because I could actually see what I was doing.

Adding the 6th block

The final problem I encountered was when I was finished sewing six blocks together the bottom of the strip is not straight. Like I said in the above blog post, I am not sure if I am suppose to square off the strips or if I just adjust the seam allowance when sewing the strips together.

Can you tell the edge is not straight?