**Creating the Perfect Quilt Blocks: A Step-by-Step Guide**

When it comes to creating perfect quilt blocks, it's essential to have a solid foundation. To start, gather 16 identical blocks and trim them down to the same size. This ensures that your blocks are uniform and will lie flat when sewn together. Next, measure each block to determine the smallest one, which should be used as a reference point.

**Design Wall**

A design wall is a thin piece of polyester batting that can be thumbtacked into drywall. It serves as a surface for auditioning different blocks or quilt designs and layouts. The design wall is nothing fancy, with no adhesive to hold it in place, but the friction between the fabric and the batting keeps it secure. This makes it easy to remove and replace, allowing you to experiment with various block orientations and arrangements.

**Full Layout of the Design**

To create a full layout of the design, arrange the 16 blocks in the desired orientation. There are many ways to orient these blocks, and the possibilities are endless. The example provided shows how to create a symmetrical design, but feel free to experiment with different arrangements until you find one that resonates with you.

**Sewing the Blocks Together**

When sewing the blocks together, it's essential to maintain a scant quarter of an inch seam allowance. This ensures that the seams are nearly invisible and will not detract from the overall appearance of the quilt. When working with geometric shapes like the ones in this design, it's crucial to match the seams perfectly at intersecting points. If you're short on time or want to simplify the process, consider creating a more straightforward design.

**Tips for Simplifying the Design**

If you prefer not to deal with matching intersecting points, consider simplifying your design. In this case, each block would be oriented in an identical manner, eliminating the need to worry about point matching. To demonstrate this approach, try sewing together two rows of blocks, which will result in a simpler patchwork.

**Piecing the Quilt Top**

To assemble the quilt top, sew sections together using your scant quarter inch seam allowance. Since the entire quilt is only four blocks across, it's best to work in pairs. Sew two blocks together, then repeat the process on the other side of each block. Once you have all the pieces assembled, stitch them together down the center seam, and you'll be well on your way to completing the quilt top.

**Homework**

Before moving forward with piecing the quilt top, take some time to work on your own blocks or design. Practice sewing seams together using your scant quarter inch allowance, and experiment with different block orientations until you find one that suits your style. Don't forget to share your progress and ask for feedback in the comments section.

**The Next Video: Locally Grown Picnic Quilt Series**

The next installment of the locally grown picnic quilt series will be released on Thursday. In this video, we'll dive deeper into the process of piecing the quilt top and will cover more advanced techniques for combining blocks. If you enjoyed this video, please hit that thumbs up button below, share it across social media platforms, and don't forget to click the subscribe button to stay up-to-date on all future videos. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey it's Vanessa The Crafty Gemini I post weekly crafting cooking and organic gardening videos right here on my YouTube channel in this video it's part number three of my locally grown picnic quilt video series and I'm going to be talking about trimming down all our quilt blocks to size so they're all the same and then working on the design wall to place the different blocks where we want them to get the finished quilt design if you're coming across this tutorial randomly and you want to check out all the videos in the locally grown picnic quilt series make sure sure you click right there so I can take you to the full video playlist and you can watch all the videos in the series right in order but if you're here for this part three video let's get started okay so once your 16 blocks are complete you are going to need your cutting mat the rotary cutter a couple of rulers you can get away with one that's a little bit shorter but because these blocks measure 16 and 1/2 in it's preferable if we can do our two ruler trick using two rulers that are longer than the 16 and 1/2 that this requires then I want you to measure each one by one and find which one is your smallest block of the entire bunch of 16 so each one of these blocks was designed to be finished at 16 1/2 in squared right when the block is like this individually once it's inside the quilt it's going to measure 16 in by 16 and the reason for that is because we're using qu in seams to sew this in to write to other blocks and to sew it into the rows and columns on the quilt top now we have to trim all of these down to size by that what I mean is that you need to measure each one individually and take notes so this one measures 16 and 1/2 by 16 and 1 12 as well so I don't have a problem here what I do want you to do is continue to do that for every block in your stack and determine what the smallest one is say it's 16 and 1/4 in or 16 in square the smallest block then I want you to go back and trim every single one of them down to whatever that smallest block size is the reason for that is that before you start putting your quilt top together you can't sew these together if they're not the exact same size because they're all perfect squares they need to measure everything exactly so that all the rows and columns on the quilt top will come together nicely now once you've trimmed all 16 of your blocks down to the same size they're all identical measurements and you've trimmed them down to measure whatever the smallest one is then you should have 16 identical blocks and when all your blocks are trimmed down to size you can head on over to the design wall and a lot of you in previous Quil tongs have asked me what exactly this is and this is just a thin piece of polyester batting that I thumbtacked right into the drywall so it's nothing fancy and you can really use all kinds of different things there's no adhesive on this at all all it is is the friction that's created between the fabric and this fabric holds it up so it's totally uh removable you can replace the different things and so it's a great way for you to audition different blocks or whatever your quilt design and layout is so you can then stand back take a look at it and see if you want to move anything around which this is totally going to apply for this quilt along as well I'm going to put up here the blocks in the orientation to create the design that I came up with but feel free to do whatever you want with the 16 blocks that you ended up with so here is how the full layout of the design goes you can play around with it any which kind of way you want it doesn't have to be the same way I did it here here are some examples of other ways that you can Orient the same 16 blocks so those are just a few ideas to give you but there are definitely dozens and dozens of different ways to orient the block so feel free to play around with that until you get a design that you really love now for sewing these together we're still going to be using our scant quter of an inch seam allowance but this time I want you to note something in the design that I came up with here there's a lot of geometric shapes and so you can see that to create the look of all these four with the green towards the center all these seams here are going to have to match nice and perfect so that you get the illusion of that green Square in the center then the yellow on the outside the blue like that and so if you wanted to get it to look just like it's supposed to in the design then you definitely want to make sure that you're AB budding all all those points at all the intersecting points on the different block pieces okay but if you don't want to bother having to match up all these different intersecting points here on the multiple blocks and Patrick pieces then you may consider coming up with a more simple design like this one if we Orient each block in the exact same way I'll just do these top two rows so I can show you all but if you did all the blocks the same as this it's going to be real simple because there are no intersecting points in the patchwork you're always going to have the ones right here when we're combining Ling together the rows and the columns you're always going to have to match up those points right here but you're not going to have to match up anything like the previous design because as you can see the side that has the multiple pieces right here one two three seams is not going to be sewn to the another side with the same amount of seams instead we're sewing it just to a strip of fabric so for whatever design you end up going with remember we're going to be using our scant qu of an inch seam allowance and you're going to piece these together in sections so because the entire quilt is only four blocks across we're going to do this in twos so I would sew this one to this one this one to this one these two and these two so just keep it like in pairs and then repeat the same on this side those two then these two these two these two once I have them all done I can put them up here and then I'll start combining basically creating half of the quilt top first and then the other half so then I would sew together this to this to this to this so I can get half of the quilt as one long strip and then repeat the same thing on the other side once you have those two halves all you need to do is stitch them together down that Center seam and then you'll be all done with the quilt top so as you can see I have to get to piecing this quilt top you all have homework to do as well I'll meet you right back here next Thursday for video number four of the locally grown picnic quilt series if you enjoyed this video go ahead and hit it with that thumbs up below share it across the different social media sites and don't you forget to click that subscribe button right there so you won't miss out on any of my future videos thanks for watching go do your homework and I'll see you next time byehey it's Vanessa The Crafty Gemini I post weekly crafting cooking and organic gardening videos right here on my YouTube channel in this video it's part number three of my locally grown picnic quilt video series and I'm going to be talking about trimming down all our quilt blocks to size so they're all the same and then working on the design wall to place the different blocks where we want them to get the finished quilt design if you're coming across this tutorial randomly and you want to check out all the videos in the locally grown picnic quilt series make sure sure you click right there so I can take you to the full video playlist and you can watch all the videos in the series right in order but if you're here for this part three video let's get started okay so once your 16 blocks are complete you are going to need your cutting mat the rotary cutter a couple of rulers you can get away with one that's a little bit shorter but because these blocks measure 16 and 1/2 in it's preferable if we can do our two ruler trick using two rulers that are longer than the 16 and 1/2 that this requires then I want you to measure each one by one and find which one is your smallest block of the entire bunch of 16 so each one of these blocks was designed to be finished at 16 1/2 in squared right when the block is like this individually once it's inside the quilt it's going to measure 16 in by 16 and the reason for that is because we're using qu in seams to sew this in to write to other blocks and to sew it into the rows and columns on the quilt top now we have to trim all of these down to size by that what I mean is that you need to measure each one individually and take notes so this one measures 16 and 1/2 by 16 and 1 12 as well so I don't have a problem here what I do want you to do is continue to do that for every block in your stack and determine what the smallest one is say it's 16 and 1/4 in or 16 in square the smallest block then I want you to go back and trim every single one of them down to whatever that smallest block size is the reason for that is that before you start putting your quilt top together you can't sew these together if they're not the exact same size because they're all perfect squares they need to measure everything exactly so that all the rows and columns on the quilt top will come together nicely now once you've trimmed all 16 of your blocks down to the same size they're all identical measurements and you've trimmed them down to measure whatever the smallest one is then you should have 16 identical blocks and when all your blocks are trimmed down to size you can head on over to the design wall and a lot of you in previous Quil tongs have asked me what exactly this is and this is just a thin piece of polyester batting that I thumbtacked right into the drywall so it's nothing fancy and you can really use all kinds of different things there's no adhesive on this at all all it is is the friction that's created between the fabric and this fabric holds it up so it's totally uh removable you can replace the different things and so it's a great way for you to audition different blocks or whatever your quilt design and layout is so you can then stand back take a look at it and see if you want to move anything around which this is totally going to apply for this quilt along as well I'm going to put up here the blocks in the orientation to create the design that I came up with but feel free to do whatever you want with the 16 blocks that you ended up with so here is how the full layout of the design goes you can play around with it any which kind of way you want it doesn't have to be the same way I did it here here are some examples of other ways that you can Orient the same 16 blocks so those are just a few ideas to give you but there are definitely dozens and dozens of different ways to orient the block so feel free to play around with that until you get a design that you really love now for sewing these together we're still going to be using our scant quter of an inch seam allowance but this time I want you to note something in the design that I came up with here there's a lot of geometric shapes and so you can see that to create the look of all these four with the green towards the center all these seams here are going to have to match nice and perfect so that you get the illusion of that green Square in the center then the yellow on the outside the blue like that and so if you wanted to get it to look just like it's supposed to in the design then you definitely want to make sure that you're AB budding all all those points at all the intersecting points on the different block pieces okay but if you don't want to bother having to match up all these different intersecting points here on the multiple blocks and Patrick pieces then you may consider coming up with a more simple design like this one if we Orient each block in the exact same way I'll just do these top two rows so I can show you all but if you did all the blocks the same as this it's going to be real simple because there are no intersecting points in the patchwork you're always going to have the ones right here when we're combining Ling together the rows and the columns you're always going to have to match up those points right here but you're not going to have to match up anything like the previous design because as you can see the side that has the multiple pieces right here one two three seams is not going to be sewn to the another side with the same amount of seams instead we're sewing it just to a strip of fabric so for whatever design you end up going with remember we're going to be using our scant qu of an inch seam allowance and you're going to piece these together in sections so because the entire quilt is only four blocks across we're going to do this in twos so I would sew this one to this one this one to this one these two and these two so just keep it like in pairs and then repeat the same on this side those two then these two these two these two once I have them all done I can put them up here and then I'll start combining basically creating half of the quilt top first and then the other half so then I would sew together this to this to this to this so I can get half of the quilt as one long strip and then repeat the same thing on the other side once you have those two halves all you need to do is stitch them together down that Center seam and then you'll be all done with the quilt top so as you can see I have to get to piecing this quilt top you all have homework to do as well I'll meet you right back here next Thursday for video number four of the locally grown picnic quilt series if you enjoyed this video go ahead and hit it with that thumbs up below share it across the different social media sites and don't you forget to click that subscribe button right there so you won't miss out on any of my future videos thanks for watching go do your homework and I'll see you next time bye\n"