How to Make Flawless Blocks from Strip Sets
It’s So Easy Once You Understand Where Things Can Go Wrong!
Quilts are often designed around strip sets, largely because they’re easy to make and speed up construction. Plus, many design variations can be created with blocks produced from them.
The process is a simple one. Stitch strips of fabric together and then cut the resulting panel to lengths, such as for blocks in a Rail Fence quilt.
Image from “Sew a Simple Rail Fence Quilt Block With Pre-Cuts” (no longer available).
However, there are places that this simple process can go wrong. For example, inexact seam allowances can produce blocks that are slightly off in size (which will multiply over the span of a quilt). It’s also easy to produce curved strip sets rather than straight ones.
Kathy Patterson demonstrates the process of creating accurate strip sets in the following video. It’s an excellent one that will show you how to avoid many of the potential pitfalls.
Click here to watch the video at YouTube if it doesn’t play on your device.
If you’d like to see how strip sets become blocks, watch the following video. It demonstrates the creation of strip sets and cutting them apart for 9-patch blocks.
Click here to watch the video at YouTube if it doesn’t play on your device.
