How to Change the Size of Quilt Blocks

Many times when you're playing with blocks, you want a different size than what was given in the original pattern. I've got Sweet Garden designed by Karla Eisenach, that's found in "Quiltmaker's 100 blocks volume one" and this block was designed and patterned as a 12-inch block. But if you were to take this block and resize it into a nine-inch and 12-inch and start putting them together, you can create more interesting designs than if you only repeat the 12-inch. So with some simple tools, a calculator and some graph paper, we're going to take a look at how to resize blocks and I'm going to give you some formulas and also on your disc is a worksheet and this you can use to resize any block, after we work through today's lesson, you'll be a pro at resizing blocks. So the first thing I'm going to do is take a look at the block and dissect it a little bit.

This particular block, I'm starting with a very simple one, is laid out in a two-by-two grid. And it's very easy to see that when you lay the grid on top of it. When you're looking at an actual pattern, you can be drawing on top of it or make a photocopy and draw on top of it if you don't want to do your original pattern, but look for what the grid is. And we'll look at other grid sizes later. But right now we'll start with the two-by-two.

So we have some graph paper here and I have the worksheet for Summer Garden. Where I started with on this one is trying to figure out what size do I want to want to make this? This was patterned as a 12-inch block. So let's take it smaller and make a total size of nine inches. And this doesn't have to be real precise.

You're just playing with it for yourself. So half of nine is going to be four and a half. So that's the finished size of these patches when you reduce this and make a smaller block. The formula for resizing squares and rectangles is to always add a quarter inch seam allowance on all sides of the patch. So for a simple one like this, where you're just doing squares, you're going to add half an inch.

So in the pattern these are all called As, the squares in the background. So they're finishing at six in the original, you cut at six and a half by six and a half for the original. So if you want to do a nine-inch block, each patch has now four-and-a-half-inch, you want to remember four and a half there. You're going to add half an inch to both of those. And you're going to cut at five inches by five inches.

And that would resize this to a nine-by-nine-inch block. Now these two patches, this has applique on top of it. So now you need to know what proportion you're going so that you can take your applique designs to a copy machine and change the proportion of the applique. The way you get to the proportion of it is the new block size, nine inches divided by the original block size, 12 inches, and multiply it by 100 to get 75%. So now you can take your applique design.

The original applique design at 100%, take it to a copy machine and reduce it by 75%. And this will now fit on top of your nine-inch block when you cut these sizes. If you want to make your block bigger, you do the same thing in reverse. So now let's take the 12-inch block and we're going to make it 16 inches. So we can go to a different color rather than redraw that.

So if I want this to be 16 inches, now my finished size here is going to be half of that, because it's a two-by-two grid, so I'm dividing this by two. And this is going to become eight inches. So now I want to cut, my finished size I want to be eight-inch by eight-inch. Because it's a square I'm adding half an inch, eight and a half by eight and a half will be the cut size, and to find the proportion for the applique, now I have a new block size of 16, divided by 12 is going to equal 133%. So when I take this one to the copy machine, I have to enlarge it and you probably will need in many cases to copy it more than once so that you can tape together and finish filling out the pattern when you're enlarging.

When you are looking at an applique design and you're trying to enlarge or reduce it, you want to be very aware of how the pattern was presented to you. I know for Quiltmaker turned edge applique, we give you the final dimensions of what the sizes are going to be and give you the instructions to add a 3/16th-inch turned edge allowance. If somebody already has the turn under allowance in their pattern, you're going to want to take that off before you do your resizing on the applique. So that's a simple one, a two-by-two grid, just squares and some simple applique. Next, we're going to take a look at some different grid sizes.

Now we're going to look at Camille Roskelley's block called Ups and Downs. This is also a 12-inch block. And when you dig into it and decipher it, you'll see that it is a four-by-four grid. And transfer that over to graph paper and you'll see that all of this is made from triangles. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about half-square triangles.

For squares and rectangles, it's easy to add a quarter inch to all sides, for triangles, if you know the formula, you'll be just fine. And by the way, the formula, there's a formula sheet on the disc as well. So I'll be referring to this but you know that it's available for you to print out. So a half-square triangle is one where you cut a square and then you're cutting it in half. Your straight of grain is going to be along the side edges, your bias edge will be along the center.

So this is the edge that will stretch. So you will keep these on the outside edges. And I'm going to show you why you add. So you want to find your finished size, where you want the triangle to be on the outside edge. And you're going to add 7/8ths of an inch for the cutting and I'm going to show you why.

If you have your triangle that's cut in half from a square, and if you fold up, and I'm using paper 'cause it's easy to hold the folds and easy to see what's going on, rather than fabric, and line it up in a quarter inch all the way around on all three sides. Like that. Fold in your quarter inch seam allowances. And on the corner, it's easy 'cause it works the same way for squares and rectangles. When you fold in your quarter-inch along the stretchy edge, you'll see you have all this leftover fabric here.

And so when you're looking at what the finished patch size is, if this is your finish size here, by the time you add this amount, and this amount of fabric, it's 7/8ths of an inch. So the formula for a half-square triangle is your finished size plus 7/8ths of an inch. And anytime you run into trouble with triangles, my recommendation is to cut the patches out of paper and fold them up so you can see what's going on. It's a whole lot faster and easier than trying to cut it out of a fabric, sew it together and see what's working, is to use paper. So let's go back to Camille's block Ups and Downs and let's resize this one.

So again, with the worksheet, in this case I'm going to make it a little bit smaller and I'm going to make this an eight-inch block. So eight divided by four for the grid. These are going to finish at two inches. So I want each of these patches to be two inches. And again, this block has one patch, one size patch throughout it, so it's pretty easy to convert.

It starts out at a three-inch. To convert it to an eight-by-eight, we now want our finished size to be two inch by two inch. So we're going to add 7/8ths of an inch to that and we're going to cut two and 7/8ths by two and 7/8ths. If you want to make it larger, in this case, taking it up to a 15-inch block, you might look at that and say, now, wait a minute, how does 15 go into that? If you divide 15-by-12, it's 125%.

And on your grid, 15 divided by four is going to give you three and three quarter inch. So now my finished size is three and three quarters by three and three quarters. I'm going to add 7/8ths of an inch. And if you refer back to the formula, you'll see that 7/8ths is 0.875. So three and three quarters plus 0.875 is going to be a cut size of 4.625.

And again, refer back to the formula chart. .625 is 5/8ths. So four and 5/8ths by four and 5/8ths. So, couple simple formulas, refer to the formula chart, and you can resize half-square triangles to any size you need to. Okay, now that you know how to resize squares and triangles and half-square triangles, I'm going to go to a couple of blocks that are a little more interesting.

This first one is called little boxes and it was designed by Brenda Groelz. And this one, initially it looks like a two-by-two grid, but when you really dig in and look at the patches in the little boxes, you'll see that it's a six-by-six grid. And so I'm going to take my graph paper and as I draw this on graph paper, I want to show the individual patches, I don't want to see the whole six-by-six grid. So I know I've gone in half here and then I have this block and then I have a half-square triangle, another square, another half-square triangle, another square and another half-square triangle. And down here, it's the same thing.

We've got the four-by-four patch, square, half-square triangle. And so now, but now I do know that this is a six-by-six grid. Two, three. And so as I try to decide how I want to resize this one, I want to make sure that these numbers here are going to be easily rotary-cuttable, and that this is going to have that 7/8ths of an inch added to it. But the eighth-inch lines should be pretty easy to follow on just about any cutting ruler.

So for Brenda's block, I'm going to start by making it half size. So a six-by-six finished size. So I want to look at the finished sizes of all of these patches, and this stuff is all copied down from the pattern. And by the way, the patterns for these blocks are all on the disc as well for the original 12-inch sizes. So from the original pattern, I want to transfer my letters here as well, so that I know...

And these these are half-square triangles made from the As. So as I'm looking at this over here, I'm going to a six-inch block. So on my grid, six divided by six is one so I know that this grid is going to equal one inch. So my As now I want to finish at one-by-one, and these are half-square triangles. So I'm going to add 7/8ths.

So one and 7/8ths by one and 7/8ths. My B is a two, this one is a square this time. It still wants to finish at one-by-one, but now I'm going to cut these at one and a half by one and a half. The C is the four-by-four patch. And this time, because it's on this grid, it's a two-by-two.

For the finished size I will add two and a half by two and a half. And the D on this scale now is a three-by-three finish. And that will be a cut size of three and a half by three and a half. So again, simple formulas, draw it out, figure out your new grid size. And then from there, your finished size of each patch.

And from that, use the formulas to determine what the cut size is. So I'm gonna do one more that's a six-by-six grid just for practice. And this is a block designed by me in the hundred blocks volume one issue. And again, just to show you that it's a six-by-six grid. So some of these, sometimes they're very obvious to look at it and see what the six-by-six grid is.

Sometimes you have to look more closely to see that it is indeed a six-by-six grid. So for this one, again I want to draw my patches so that I can use that to determine what the new patch sizes are going to be. And then I need to add my patch letters so I know where things are coming. So this half-square triangle unit comes from the As. This one comes from the Bs.

And again, the patterns are on your disc. This is also a D. This ones the E and this one's an F. And then point out the worksheet. So let's resize this one to a nine-inch block.

And again, knowing where the six-by-six grid is. Nine divided by six, it's going to mean that this is one and a half inches. So the A is going to be two of those. So that's going to finish at a three-inch by three-inch. And again, this is a half-square triangle, so three and 7/8ths by three and 7/8ths.

And this one's a little tricky because we have two different sizes of half-square triangles this time. So now this, on the one-and-a-half-inch scale grid, you're going to have one and a half, three, four and a half. This one will finish at four and a half by four and a half. And so now your cut size is going to be 4.5 plus 0.875 It's five and 3/8ths. And again, the eighth decimal fraction conversion is on your worksheet.

The C is a two-by-four originally, and now it's at a scale of one and a half. So now it's three by one and a half or one and a half by three. It's a rectangle so you're going to add half an inch to both patches, and you're going to cut at two by three and a half. The Ds are going to be three by four and a half, for the finished size. So your cut size is three and a half by five.

Your E is going to be one and a half by four and a half. And again, add half an inch to both sizes for the cut size. So two-by-five. And finally your F is going to be one and a half by nine because that's the height of the block now. And so you'll cut two inches by nine and a half inches.

So it's as simple as breaking it down to the patch sizes, seeing what the grid is, finding the size you're looking for and doing a little bit of simple math to convert your squares and rectangles and your half-square triangles to create a new size block. And we have one more thing to take a look at and that's going to be quarter-square triangles. And finally, we're going to take a look at Daisy's a 12-inch block by Dodi Lee Poulson. This one is also a four-by-four grid. And this time it's going to have half-square triangles.

It has the applique and we're going to add quarter-square triangles to the list of formulas that you're learning. So I have already drawn this out on my graph paper, and transferred the patch information here from the pattern. And first, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about quarter-square triangles and show you how that formula works. So quarter-square triangle is a square cut on both diagonals and your finished edge shown on your graph paper corresponds to the outside edge of the square. So your bias stretchy seams are along the diagonals.

Your straight of grain is on the outside edges all the way around. And so the formula you need to learn and this has the quarter inch seam allowances drawn in in red. So you can see this is your finished size here, which would correspond in scale to the finished size here on this triangle. And you're going to add one and a half. No, you're going to add one and a quarter inches to your finished size to know what size square you're going to cut to do the quarter-square triangle.

And I'm going to pull in the worksheet and the pattern. One of the things I've been doing so far as I've shown you this is just kind of jumping into it. I want to show you that all of the information that I've had on this side corresponding to the original block is information that I deciphered from the pattern here. And so my patch letters come from here and the cut size comes from here but then I'm using the scale on the grid to figure out what this finished size is. So when I know this is a 12-inch block, I know that this is six inches.

And so I take the six inches and that's my finished size here that I've already added in. And normally this would jump then to half an inch to six and a half by six and a half. But as you see, this one also has applique in the center. And one of the things you want to learn about applique is that sometimes it can pull in your edges. So we always give you a little bit more.

So the formula here, because this is applique is to go up by half an inch and then add another inch. So we cut this one seven and a half by seven and a half and then trim to six and a half by six and a half for after the applique. And that would be your final size as you put it in. So you have to decipher in the pattern what's happening so that you can get to your final cut size here. And as you look at this, that's where you see this as a quarter-square triangle as you as you're deciphering the pattern.

So the quarter-square triangle, with the six inches here becomes seven and a quarter 'cause you had quarter inch to quarter-square triangles. And your Fs that make your half-square triangles here are three inches at the original size, and you add the 7/8th of an inch for the half-square triangle. So what I want to do now though is take this block and make it larger. And as I'm trying to figure out what, how much larger I want to make it, I actually want to jump back a little bit and talk about the grid and why I've been showing you what the grid is and how the grid works. So this is a six-by-six grid.

This one was a four-by-four grid. Now sometimes you know what size block you're trying to make and then you just have to see and make sure that the grid is gonna work. What you want is that when you're doing this scale here, you want to make sure that these patches are easily rotary cuttable, and that's going to be the fractions you're most familiar with as a quilter, half inch, quarter inch, eighth of an inch. If you get much smaller than that, you can still cut smaller dimensions, smaller fractions, but they do become a little bit fussier to try to get to. So you want to make sure that you're getting in your grid a fraction that's easily rotary-cuttable.

And so, for example, if I was trying to make this bigger and I know it's a six-by-six grid and I went to 18 inches, I would take 18 divided by six and that would give me three. So three inches, I can easily cut that with a rotary. If I was trying to make a 15-inch block and I'm dividing that by six, that's two and a half, again I can easily do that because I can add half an inch for squares and rectangles, 7/8ths of an inch for triangles or one and a quarter for triangles. If I really was trying to aim for a 13-inch block, divide that by six, that would mean these have to be able to be cut 2.166 and that's not easily cuttable. So you're using the grid to find a good dimension that's gonna work.

So if you needed a 13-inch block, and you're playing with the six-by-six grid, that one's not going to work easily, I'd suggest finding a different block. The good thing with the four-by-four block grid is that most of those dimensions are gonna always be easily cuttable, rotary-cuttable. Because when you divide by four, you're going to get a quarter, a half or three quarters all the way through. And so we're going to take, we're going to take this and we're going to blow this up even bigger to make a crib size quilt. So our final dimension, what we're aiming for is a 36-by-36-inch block because there is applique involved, I need to know the proportion, and again, that's the final size divided by the original, and you're gonna multiply by a hundred and you're going to see that that's 300%.

And so when you take your original applique design, take it to a copy machine, blow it up to 300%. And in this case, the pedals on the B are all the same. So I don't need to tape it together to make it all fit. I can just keep repeating this B when I'm doing my fusible applique and I can gently or I can turn my pattern around on the fusible to finish out the circle for the C. So use the proportions to see how to resize your applique.

And we'll just do a quick run through on this. So now with the grid, again, I'm aiming for a 36-inch block. 36 divided by four because it's a four-by-four grid is nine inches. That means every section in my four-inch grid is going to be nine inches. And I can use this grid now in this graph paper to determine what my finished sizes are going to be.

So A is two of those. So it's going to finish at 18-by-18. If I don't have any applique, I would cut this at 18 and a half by 18 and a half. But because I'm adding an applique, which can shrink the fabric in a little bit, I'm going to cut 19 and a half by 19 and a half. And after the applique, then I will trim it down to the 18 and a half by 18 and a half.

B and C are the applique patches, so I'm going to change those on a photocopier. And then D is the quarter-square triangle. It's nine-inch or 18 inches across on the outside edge of the triangle. So I'm going to add one and a quarter inches to that, 19 and a quarter by 19 and a quarter. And I'll cut that in half twice diagonally to get these D patches.

And then E is a triangle. And again, it's finishing at, the finished edge is going to be nine inches. So I'm going to add 7/8ths to it and cut it in half diagonally. And the F is the same size. It finishes at nine.

And because it's a triangle, nine and 7/8ths nine and 7/8ths. So the difference here between the E and the F is that on the E I'm going to cut my square, cut in half diagonally, and I'm going to take that E patch and sew it to my D patch. And so I'm actually cutting the triangle. The F when you decipher the pattern, you're cutting the square and you're leaving it as two squares that you'll sew together to form a triangle square unit. So you're going to cut first.

You're going to cut your square, you're going to sew your squares together along the diagonal, and then you're going to cut. So the math is the same, it's just a matter of where you do your cutting for those. And so that is how you would resize this to a 36-inch block. And then by adding a few borders to the outside edge, you would have a nice sized baby quilt. So, learning how to resize blocks gives you a whole new arsenal of things to play with when you're looking at a block magazine or a block book.

And just to go back at the ones we looked at earlier with Summer Garden, this was a 12-inch block here. And by resizing it to a nine-inch block, you can play with a lot of fun ways to create a multi-size block from the same one. And then with the Ups and Downs block, if this is your 12-inch block inside, you can resize to a six inch block. And all of a sudden you can play with making that block into a really fun border. And again, because you've just learned how to form a grid on this, you would easily be able to figure the dimensions of what you need to turn the corner from here to here on this kind of a block.

So I hope you spend some time with the worksheets and playing with blocks. It's drawing on graph paper and learning the formulas and the formulas are what leads you to be able to easily resize blocks.