Inside Quilters Newsletter

My weekend quilt has taken me longer than a weekend to finish, but it’s still coming together faster than any quilt I’ve made before. I finished the top pretty quickly, according to my standards, so I was pretty motivated to keep going and I’m glad I did. I’m in the process of quilting, mostly in the evenings during the week, and I am excited to get it done already!

I had mentioned that I changed the original pattern to suit my fabric, in that I doubled the size of the blocks. I encouraged others to try the same. I later realized that if someone who is new to quilting followed my advice, they might double the wrong measurement and get frustrated when it didn’t work. So I’ll explain how I went about it. For this pattern, especially, and any pattern that just uses squares and rectangles, it’s pretty straightforward. It gets trickier when diagonals are introduced, and perhaps I’ll go into that in another post, but for now I’ll just cover the very basics. This may be obvious and redundant for some, but I hope it will help some people, too.

If you want to double the size of a block, you’ll have to double the size of the patches within the block. But you cannot just look at the rotary cutting diagrams and double the measurement you see there. That would cause all kinds of problems down the line. The measurement that must be doubled is the FINISHED size, not the cut size. So, you’ll need to do some simple arithmetic. It’ll be fun!

If a patch is cut at 4”, that means it finishes at 3 ½”. Do not double 4”! You need to double 3 ½”, which of course is 7. THEN add the seam allowance, which would make your new cut size 7 ½”.  It wouldn’t matter what measurement is doubled if every patch in the quilt is the same size, but that is rarely the case.  In my example, I demonstrate what will happen to a theoretical block if you double the cut size vs. double the finished size. And since the difference between cut and finish size is relatively small, you won’t notice it’s incorrect until a fair amount of work has already been done. You don’t want that.

Sad face happens when you double the cut size.

I was going to cut and sew some patches to demonstrate, but I think the information is clearer drawn on graph paper. Each of the squares on the paper equals 1″, so you can see the exact proportions of the patches.

This first example spells out what will happen if you double the cut size. I apologize if you can’t read my handwriting, but the pictures can explain my point pretty well. The joined A’s are now 1” longer than the B they are supposed to attach to! That would make me have a frowny face, too.

Doubling the finished size, then adding seam allowance is the way to go!

Now, here’s what happens when you double the finished size and add the seam allowance to the doubled finish size. It works out perfectly! Assuming that all your 1/4″ seam allowances are perfect. I’m sure they are.

So, hopefully some of you will attempt to make an existing quilt pattern all your own using the doubling technique. You could also multiply the finished measurement by any number, like .75 or 3, as long as it’s consistently applied to each patch in the pattern.

I like the way that the large blocks I made work with my loud and large-scale print, but that’s not the only reason to double block size. It also involves less cutting, fewer patches and simpler sewing because there are less pieces of fabric to keep track of. And it looks cool!

Like I said, diagonals are another can of worms, so if there is any interest I can go into that some other day. In the meantime, let’s meet up on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and our website to obsess over quilts. Have a great weekend!