Sunday, October 2, 2011

Squaring up blocks - tips please??!!

Okay, I'm looking for feedback here, from all you crafty types that have so graciously been visiting my little blog. I am looking for tips on squaring up large quilt blocks (a.k.a. 24" Swoon giants!) I am good with smaller blocks. I can square up 8", 12", 4", whatever, but 24". . . . how do I go about this while still maintaining the points around the edge and the overall straight setting of this block??? The largest ruler I have is a 12-1/2" square. Any tips you could give, or links to point me in the right direction, would be greatly appreciated!

By the way, check out the great giveaway at Canadian Abroad. Really nice fabric on the line!

3 comments:

Krista Schneider said...

HMM. Ok, coming from someone who has not made a swoon block or anything close to that in size... your block seems pretty square to me... My advice would be to lay them out on your cutting mat. Try and get it dead centered on there, in line with the grids, and see how square it is. If it isn't horrible I wouldn't bother squaring them. Otherwise get a big ruler, (I have one that is 6.5in x 24.5in)and simply line it up with the grid lines on your cutting mat and trim the edges of your block to where you'll have 1/4in past all your points. I would pay close attention when pinning the blocks together, and then again when sewing them together, to make sure you're stitching right over the points. Am I making sense? Let me know if that helped at all. I'm a noob too, so this is obviously all to the best of MY knowledge and not necessarily the best advice, LOL.

Jackie's Stitches said...

Your blocks look really square to me - beautifully pieced! I'd probably measure over from the center (maybe mark the center lines each way somehow; maybe with a Hera marker) to square them up.

Rebecca Lynne said...

Hey chica...when I read this an annoying tick tick tick went off in the back of my head having remembered somewhere in the dim that I had read a tutorial for this over the summer. After some searching: voila. http://r0ssie.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-square-up-huge-blocks.html

Good luck!