If your quilt isn't completely square, start by pinning the layers together in the exact middle. Then pin the quilt on each end. From there you can ease the fabric together by pinning the rest of it together like crazy!! For me, I would use more pins then you have in your picture, but then I'm a pinning fool. :wink: A lot of times you can gently ease any excess fabric into the quilt by doing it this way.

And if nothing works, sometimes you just have to give in and rip it apart. It doesn't look like you need to do this though. I'd definitely try to ease the fabric together by pinning first before doing anything so drastic as ripping it apart.

Clear as mud?

oh- now I see what you mean by strips - I thought you had just cut long strips of fabric - -

how do you have these pressed? that makes a difference in how well they go together.

I would straighten/square up the sides of your strips to make them straight. The easiest way is to get some string. Safety pin it to the carpet, stretch it out just longer than the strips. Slide the edge of the strips under the string and mark along the string line. Then straighten up the ends the same way once they are all sewn together. In this pattern, trimming a little here or there is not going to matter. Your border pieces (if any) will just have to be readjusted, but we can help you with that step too :D :D :D

I started with a 9.5 x 9.5 block of 4 blocks like bricks (unfinished, each 3.5 x 6.5), and one 3.5 sq block in the middle. I kind of ran out of fabric to have enough blocks to make the quilt the size I wanted... lol~ didn't want to go back to buy 1/16 yd of each color... so started to get creative and added the 3.5 x 9.5 white blocks. I just started laying it out... somehow came up with this pattern, but then realized I couldn't sew them into blocks like I wanted because there were no obvious 'seams', so I ended up with the strips like I have above.

I now have them sewn together, had a few extra 9 x 9 blocks that I had extra (the orientation was wrong), so I'm making a quilted pillow sham as well- going to try out the batting/binding/pinning on that first. We'll see how it goes... I'll put a picture up once I get that done. It shouldn't take me long... but we'll see! I have the top and bottom started and tumbling in the dryer right now.

ah... Always a work in progress.

I'm having so much fun though- I LOVE this! Thanks everyone who's helped to get me addicted. :)

Bearis- I just pressed them sideways however it made sense.

I did just this- thank you! I started pinning in the middle and worked my way to the sides... I have a little extra but at this point... whatevs. I'm not doing any border- just the yellow binding... I hope it works!!!

You are quite welcome! Anything we can do to suck, er, I mean encourage others to join our obsession. :lol:

Glad you are having fun!And all the advice above is great! Love the binding you have chosen!

The one thing I see that you're doing is sewing really long seams. Any time you sew really long seams any tiny differences in block sizes will amplify and you'll be way off at the ends. Put your blocks together into fours and then put those together in fours until you have four quarters and then put the top half together and the bottom half together and then you'll only have one full width seam.

Great advice! I hadn't even thought about this, which is sad since this is how I put my quilts together.

I've put blocks together in long strips and had no problems.

But I've been sewing for a long time - one learns when to sew 'em - and one learns when to unsew 'em