Fort Worth Fabric Studio: How to Make a Quilt {Part 5} Chain Piecing

Hi there! I am just coming back from a very long weekend of sewing! I was able to finish up this quilt as well as a few other projects I can't wait to share with you!

Welcome back to the next installment of "How to Make a Quilt!"

You can find the other parts of the series here.

Today we are going to learn how to make the square in a square block:

This is any easy block, but what makes it even easier is assembling this using the chain piecing method.

Chain piecing is something that you will use time and time again when piecing blocks together. It is a great time saver and I would recommend piecing your square in a square blocks this way!

To start, get your 1.5" x WOF strips and your 5" x 5" aqua squares.

Put your strip right side facing up and place it in your sewing machine like this:

Place your block right side facing down and line up the right side of the block with the right side of the strip:

Sew a 1/4" seam down to the end of the block. Before you come to the very end, place your next block on the strip and line it up the same way.

I like to leave about a 1/4" in between the blocks, and then sew down the next block. Keep adding more blocks until you don't have any room left on your strip of fabric.

Your chain will have a lot more than just two blocks on it--I just did two on this strip. You will then carefully cut the strips apart using your ruler and rotary cutter:

Here are your blocks all trimmed apart:

Now you are going to do the exact same thing to the opposite side. So that you have your two opposite sides sewn on.

Now press your block so that you can add the other two strips on.

You are now going to add your other two sides on your block by doing the exact same chain piecing method:

Now you have all four sides on, you will press your block again:

Notice your block is 7" square now, well I decided to make the blocks a bit bigger so that we could trim them down to the exact 6.5" square size we need. I like to do this because sometimes after you sew your strips on your strips can get a little wonky, or maybe you weren't perfect at your 1/4" seam, and so your block isn't perfectly square. So in order to make it that way, we trim each side so that we get a completely square block. I ended up cutting about 1/4" off of each side on all my blocks.