Aligning Blocks by Folding

A lot of times in quilt patterns, you're gonna see something that says, "Align centers and ends," and that can be either if you are constructing a larger block, maybe if you're putting a border onto a block, putting a border onto a finished quilt center, that can be something that's in the instructions, and there are a couple different ways that you can use folding to your advantage to mark both your blocks, your units, and your quilts. So, say you're putting together some kind of block or unit that has a curved edge, but you need to put a pin in the center, or you somehow need to mark the centers. So this is a very common block, if you've done any kind of curved piecing, and this Drunkards Path block. This is something where you want to align the centers and the ends, and then pin in between. Now generally, if you are working with a square or rectangle, you can just measure, say it's a four-inch square, you can measure over two inches and mark the center, and then match your pin marks, but it's gonna be really hard to try and measure in this curve, and mark the center, and measure in this curve and mark the center, and get them actually in the center. So an easier way to mark the center is to just fold it. Now any time you are folding, and using the fold as your mark of two pieces that need to go together, you wanna make sure you're folding them in opposite directions, so that the folds nest together. So by that I mean if you fold one one way, and this is your little folded piece of fabric, and you fold the other one the opposite way, your folds are gonna nest together. If you fold them the same direction, then you're gonna have two folds that are trying to sit on top of each other like this, and it's gonna be harder to stitch them, and that's especially important with small pieces like this. So, always fold one one way, and one the other, so one one way would be right sides together to fold and find the center. Either use your fingernail to give it a finger press mark, or bring in your iron, but so that's right sides together. The next one you would fold wrong sides together, so when you do this, you're getting that crease, or you're creating that little mountain or valley, depending on how you're looking at it, and when you actually go to line up those pieces, they actually fit one right inside the other, or sort of nestle together and fit together, as opposed to fighting against each other. So that's how you can fold and mark your center if you have to put your pieces together to align the centers and the ends, then of course you'd put a pin, align your ends, and go ahead and stitch, and you'd have your little unit. Another time you're gonna see, "mark the centers and ends," is when you are applying a border. So this is gonna be for, maybe you're making a medallion-style quilt, and you have blocks in the middle, and borders, and then more blocks, more borders, and they're getting bigger and bigger as they go, or if you're putting a large border on, say, your finished quilt, once you're done, you're gonna have a very, very long strip, and a very big quilt. I have a smaller sample here, but the idea is that you don't wanna just put your strip on, right sides together, align it at one side, and just start stitching, because the longer your border or your quilt is, the odds are by the time you get down to the end, it's not actually going to be aligned at that end. So that's why it's important to find your centers and your ends, but also mark in between. So to do that, you want to, whatever you mark on your border, also mark on your quilt. So we're gonna pretend that this is a much larger quilt sample, but the same practice applies, so you wanna mark in multiple places. So of course you wanna find your center first, so you would fold this in half, go ahead and find your center. Now this is just a piece of fabric, so I can obviously use my fingernail, and create my little crease, or my fold mark, but if this was my entire quilt, even though I'm folding it in half, I'm pretty sure I cannot create a crease through my quilt top, by batting, and my backing, so I'd actually be marking with pins. So there's my center, and of course I have my ends, and I have a lot of space in between, again, small sample, but if we're thinking large-scale quilt, you have a lot of space in between. The next thing you would do is make more marks, so you would take your ends, and actually fold them into the center, again, creating your mark, or placing a pin as your mark. Whatever you do on one side, you wanna do to the other, so I'm gonna bring my other end into the center, make my little fold mark, or place my pin, and I would keep doing that, depending on how big my quilt was, so if this was a much larger quilt, I would keep taking my quilts, and I would take my end, and I would fold it into the next mark that I just made, and into the next, and I would keep making marks all the way down. Whatever marks you make on your quilt, you also need to make on your border, so you would do the exact same thing, you would fold your border in half, and you're gonna find that center mark, and go ahead and place a pin, right, like so. Exact same things you do to the quilt, you have to do to your border, so bring your sides into the center, fold, make your mark, place a pin, do the same thing on the other edge as well, bring your edge into the center, you're gonna fold it, make your mark, put in a pin, and then once you have your quilt marked, once you have your border marked, then you can put your pieces right sides together, and of course, all of your pins should line up one right on top of the other as you stitch in place. So if you're going to use this method, and have your pin marks, since you already have your pins in either piece, you can either take them out, and then pin your layers together, or if you're someone who likes to leave your borders, or your bindings, or whatever it is you're putting on, sort of free floating, and adjust them as you go, now you know that you have to have your pins aligned, so if you start stitching and you notice that you're getting off, so your pins, say, aren't lining up, you can see this one here is just a little bit lower, you know you need to make that adjustment to make sure that your border lines up with your quilt. So a good way to do that is, of course, always to just pin them together first, but if you need to make any little adjustments as you go, you now only have to do that in small sections, as opposed to getting done with your entire border that you're putting on your quilt, and get all the way to the end, and either your border's too long by an inch, or too short by an inch. So using this folding method to match your borders up to your quilt is gonna make your borders lay flat, make sure everything is nice and even, and then of course using the folding method to find the centers on maybe blocks that you can't measure and find the centers is gonna make lining everything up much easier. So next time you need to find the center of something, fold it instead of measure it.