OK, I admit it, I jumped right in and probably don't know what I am doing. Can anyone help me figure this out? For the quilt I am working on, it was making a throw size, and I wanted to have a larger quilt. What I did was double the size of all the pieces I cut, thinking that thus my squares would be twice as big and my top would be twice as big. However, this worked fine on the 4 center squares, but when I went to add the 5th row, the pieces were at least 1/2 to 1" to short. The same is true of the 6th row. Why didn't doubling the size of all the pieces work?

I have no idea, could be your seam allowances. Consider adding a couple of "bars" of fabric, stragically placed. No one will know but you. Consider it a design decision and move on.

A Bar is a piece of fabric that runs all the way across the border.

Doubling the size of your pieces doesn't always work. Are all your blocks the same pattern? If they are, they should all turn out the same size. If they are different blocks, then it won't necessarily work, because there are more or fewer pieces, thus more or fewer seam allowances. Best way to resize blocks is to draw them out on graph paper, add seam allowances and then cut.

Enlarging a quilt is tricky. I agree you should just add bars as needed and don't tell anyone it was a mistake. There are really no mistakes in quilting just creative license. :-D Keep us posted on how it works.

I've made some blocks that for one reason or another (usually a loose nut on the controls) didn't come out the right size. I've put narrow borders on the individual blocks to make them the right size. No one knows that it isn't supposed to be like that. I posted a pix somewhere on here of my CW era quilt and there's several of those "a little too small" blocks that have their own borders.

i agree with Pam i do it often lol

What pattern are you using? If your pattern has triangles in it, I don't believe that just doubling the size of the pattern pieces is going to be accurate. This is primarily due to the fact that diagonals aren't just a 1/4" seam allowance addition due to the bias edge of the piece.

Let's try an example:

If you have a 4-patch center that starts with 2" squares, your finished 4-patch center will be 3-1/2". If you are adding a strip all around to "box in" the 4-patch, the next pieces need to be 3-1/2" long for the two opposite sides, however wide you need them. The other two sides will need to be 3-1/2" long PLUS the width of the two pieces you have added. These measurements can't just be doubled and still be accurate.

A better plan as stated before, is to draft your pattern larger, then make your blocks from the newly-sized pattern you have drafted.

Or your other option would have been to just make extra blocks and add them to the sides/ends of the central quilt until you reached the size you needed.

But to fix what you have done now, I agree that you can just add a strip at the ends of any rows that don't "agree" with the length of the rows you've got now. That will help "square up" your rows/quilt, and you can tell anyone who asks that you had intended to put those there to see if people will ask you about them. It gives you an opportunity to tell others about your wonderful hobby.

Good Luck.

enlarging blocks can be ok, but you have to remember a 4 1/2" unfinished block really needs to be doubled to 8 1/2 unfinished, not 9"...you do not want to double the seam allowances :wink: so you need to take that into consideration on each piece, other wise over all, you will come out too big on your blocks, some more than the others.

Example of doubling block sizes AND the seam allowances:
one 8 1/2" block with 6 pieces will end up smaller than another block that has 9+ pieces in it. There could be an inch difference between the two. A block with 12 pieces could be 2 inches bigger than a block with only 6 pieces to it.

Thanks so much for all your help. I see where my mistakes happened. My blocks are full of triangles. So bars here we come!!! It's great to have such knowlegable folks to turn to when these things happen!!

hope you get it to come out ok.