HSTs and Squares -- good enough, or start over?
 

I’m needing a push in one direction or another. I’m working on a quilt top made up of HSTs and squares. This is my first time using HSTs, and only my second quilt. I read through and watched several tutorials explaining how to do HSTs with matching corners, avoiding buried and floating points, etc. And I’ve been doing my best to be as accurate as possible in cutting, pressing, squaring, and sewing the top. Until yesterday, it was “so far so good” – all the blocks were made and all the horizontal rows were sewn together, with just a couple of points slightly buried, and a couple of corners slightly off, but nothing that the perfectionist in me couldn’t live with.

But yesterday I started putting my 8 finished rows together vertically. I used all the information I’d used up to that point to try to get the points and seams to line up. So far I’ve sewn 3 of the 8 rows together, but try as I might, I’m finding it impossible to get them all to line up. The mismatched areas are off by up to 1/8th of an inch. A fair number of them are exact matches, or close enough. But there are also a fair number of those larger mismatches, and they are bugging me.

I’m now wondering whether I should rip them apart and try again. I wouldn’t really mind doing that, but I have no reason to believe that my next attempts would be any more successful than the first ones, since I’ve done everything I can think of to pin them together and sew them properly to get the points and corners to line up, but without success. Or maybe I should just accept my limitations as a new quilter and keep moving forward.

What would you do?

I've been sewing a long time. Corners don't always match up. Usually, mine are because some of squares or HST's are slightly smaller than others. I realized that I didn't always have my rulers in exactly the same place when I cut every time. Also, if you are using two different rulers, some times that is a small difference in the measurement. What to do now? You can ease in 1/8". I know that the better way to ease in is to have the oversized piece on the bottom and let the machine help. I don't trust this method. I would rather have the bit extra on the top so I can see if I am going to sew in a pleat or pucker. This is a good video that may help you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh7_zvHcIio

Edited to add: if you sew over the pins, sew very slowly. Hitting a pin at speed can cause your needle to break and you never know where the point is going to go.

Personally, as a new quilter, I would probably suggest easing them in as Barb suggested, and chalk it up to a learning experience. Oversizing the HST, then trimming them to size is a common practice. Another thing would be to make all your HSTs, (make a few extra). Find very smallest & discard, then cut the rest down to the smallest ones left THEN cut your squares to match. This obviously will only work if the quilt top is made from squares & hsts.

I would not take everything apart. It's a little difficult to be sure of what's happening. There are usually ways to ease and stretch to work in 1/8" differences, but it depends in part on how far apart the mis-matches are. For example, it's much harder to fix 1/8" difference if you have to do it within 2" instead of 4".

What I would probably do is glue baste instead of pin. It's takes more time, but it's more accurate for me. Basically you have to work at the ironing board with a hot iron and some Elmer's white washable school glue. Use pins straight up and down to pin the intersections together straight into the ironing board (you may have to add some padding to your board so you can do this). The seams should be facing you. Once you have pinned a section of seams together, lift up the top seam at each intersection, place a tiny drop of glue there, finger press the seam down, and seal the seam with the hot iron (dries out the glue quickly). If you see an intersection where there is a *huge* bubble of excess fabric on one side or the other, I would skip the glue there.

After gluing the entire rows together, I would look at those bubble areas and see how I could reduce the excess. It might require re-sewing one of the seams to take up a little more of the fabric (just a 1/16th" increase in the width of the seam at the edge will take up 1/8" of excess, and normally you don't have to take up *all* the excess -- just enough so you can ease in the rest). Or, it might require un-sewing the other seam and re-sewing so that seam is a little more scant than it was.

Once you have fixed the areas that were way off, go back to the ironing board and glue those intersections.

When sewing, you may need to sew in portions. For example, sew the portions of the seam that have excessive fabric on the underside first, then flip the whole thing over and sew the other sections. Keeping the excess near the feed dogs helps ease in fabric.

An alternative would be to add sashing strips. How you would do this depends entirely on the specific pattern you are making. A photo or link to the pattern would help determine if sashing strips would work for you.

I do think it's better to do your best and move forward. Most non-quilters don't even notice all the glaring errors we quilters see in our quilt tops, plus many piecing errors become less noticeable when quilted. A certain irregularity in piecing also often adds considerable charm to a quilt. So I would advise not getting obsessed with perfection here; just do what it takes to "make it work".

I have a personal rule. I rip out mismatches up to 3 times and then I give up and live with it or if it is just a block maybe make a new one. Every project is a learning experience.

I have never 'glued' a seam and wonder how easy it would be for a new(ish) quilter. I have, on occasion, used a basting stitch on the over large piece and very gently gathered it to fit the space. After stitching the seam, I then removed the basting stitch and after pressing (NOT ironing) no one was ever the wiser. Most fabric has a bit of give so I would pin the intersections, keep the larger side to the bottom, and sew, stretching the top as needed, and then press. If the seam is a little puckered, dampen with a spray of water and let sit overnight. The dampening should help the over stretched areas return to their original shape. Once the pieces are all put together, you will probably find that you don't even notice the trouble spots.

Congrats on trying to find a solution and not getting discouraged. I really want to see your top. I'll bet it is amazing!

Many thanks to each of you! I have just done another row, taking extra extra care to pin it well at the intersections and to ease any over-large sections as has been suggested here. Maybe it was just good luck this time, but this row came out much better!

I'm not sure how to post a photo, but I will try. In the meantime, if someone wants to know, it's the "Out of Step" pattern by Libs Elliott -- I'm making it with Kona cottons for my decidedly-geometric and computer-oriented son.

Sometimes HSTs are not "square" after you've sewn them and the diagonal isn't exactly ON the diagonal, so this will cause loss of points when blocks are sewn together.
For this reason I almost always make my HSTs slightly larger than I actually need them and then trim them down to the required size.

Here's how I do that with two graphics I've drawn with instructions - one with a blue and yellow block, one with a gray block; one may be more clear to you than the other so I include both.

Jan in VA

HSTs, since they're cut on the bias, do tend to get distorted with steam and handling. So keep that to a minimum. Also if the pattern says cut a square to a size such as 4 7/8, many of us simply round up 1/8 for wiggle room. My HSTs turn out better that way.

I have been known to make several too small, by the way. Instead of redoing, I just cut the squares to same size as the HST. I wasn't following a pattern so as long as my blocks were the same size, everything was going to be fine in the end.

You'll also find that once it's quilted and washed, the points won't be so noticeable. You'll like the thing so much it won't matter, and can simply look forward to getting better with practice. I tell myself I'm not as good as I want to be, but better than I was a year (or two months or whatever) ago. It's gratifying to see one's own work improve with each quilt.

Jan and zozee, thanks so much for your help. Thanks to you and everyone else who've commented I'm doing better now and will do much better next time. But I will live with this one "as is," and be happy with it now as an accurate reflection of my best work to date!