How to Assemble a Quilt Block

Barbara Black: Hi, my name is Barbara Black and I am a professional quilt maker and teacher. Today I am showing you how to make a quilt and now it's time to assemble the block. You take the units that you have made and ruler check them to make sure that they were accurate, you have trimmed them out to three and a half inch squares and you lay your block out making sure you get the units in the right direction.

We have laid the two corner squares on the top row, two corner squares on the bottom row and then we have placed the quarter square triangle units with the blue, your accent color in towards the middle around the center block and the point on the outside edges. When you get the nine units placed in place you would begin to sew them together. I joined to this triangle and this square to the center and the square on this side to the other side and we have got those together right in the middle. You will repeat the same with the bottom row and with the middle row, we have joined the two outside quarter square triangles to the center square. Now we have to join the rows together. I have pressed the top and the bottom rows out and I have pressed the middle row in. This will make joining the seams more accurate. Take the pieces together and you want to work from the center first, because you want those joints to be just right because of the way we have pressed the seam allowances are a budding of each other. One is going up and one is going down and I have used two pins there. The same is true on the outside edge, so I am going to put a pin there and to get you started you might want a pin right at the very beginning as well just to hold it. This is where you really want to sew an accurate quarter of an inch seam. All of the math that we have done trimming those blocks to three and a half is based on your sewing an accurate quarter of an inch seam allowance. I am using a quarter inch foot and so I am trimming following right along the edge of the fabric. Some people don't like the stitch over pins. If you go slowly and are using a fine pin it's not a problem. You don't want to go real fast and stitch over again. When I get to the end I will put my thread kitty in place and remove the pins. Cut that from the end off and you open and look to make sure that your joints are accurate the way you would like them to be. You will repeat with the bottom row and there you have your block. Now it's time to add borders to the quilt and talk about basting.