How to Create Unique Pieced Quilt Blocks

Many quilts are created with pieced quilt blocks being the main focal points of a design. Heather Thomas shows you a fun technique to use to create pieced quilt blocks that can be used as background blocks in a design.

Fabric

For this freestyle quilt block Heather explains how many different colors, types and textures of fabric can be used and shows samples of several. She then discusses how the fabric needs to be prepared before making the pieced quilt blocks. This includes cutting or ripping the fabric into strips of varying widths. The long strips of fabric can then be cut down to smaller sizes depending on the desired finished block size.

Piecing

Once the strips of fabric have been prepared, Heather shows how to stitch them together. While she is still using a ¼ inch seam allowance for this technique it does not need to be exact as she shows how to trim them down after stitching. Heather shows how to lay the fabric strips at slight angles to each other when stitching them in place in order to create a pieced quilt block with more interest. The angles create strip widths that are wider and narrower in areas, rather than just straight strips. Once a large enough block has been created with the strips, Heather shows how to then cut apart the block into pieced strips. These pieced strips will then be stitched back together to create the pieced quilt block. Heather shows how to audition the strips before sewing to ensure similar sizes and colors are not right next to each other. She then demonstrates how to stitch the pieced strips together to create a finished block giving tips on how to keep the seams straight and deal with all of the seam allowances that will be stitched over in the process.