Need some help - sewing "checker board"
 

Hello everyone,

I have four different colours that I want to make into a checkerboard like border.

They are one inch strips and I am wracking my brain trying to figure out the easiest way to make it look like a checkerboard with four different colours. I really don't want to sew them individually LOL as I want to use this as a border around one of my wall hangings.

Does anyone have any ideas? Or can point me to a video / link?

Thanks so much,

Marion

I'm having a problem understanding how you would fashion a checkerboard out of 4 different fabrics. I can only see one made out of 2. Do you have a picture or can you provide a link?

As paperprincess said, checkerboards have only 2 colors normally black and red. Figure out what color you want where and sew in strips in that order. I would do them in pairs of two color, then whack and sew them together.

My vision of what you're asking would be checkerboards of 2 colors but with sashing in between each checker board. Like yellow and green then sashing, red and black then sashing, etc. sashing would separate the checker boards. Or you could do checkerboard or 2 colors on top and bottom sides and 2 other colors of checkerboard on right and left sides. This would allow them to join at the corners.

If you've got two light colors and two darks then you could do a strip set that alternates a light and a dark, light and dark, then slice them up into one inch segments, turn half so dark is at top and stitch those to the ones with light at top. If you want it to read clearly as a checkerboard then you will want to make sure that your lights are a similar value and intensity to each other and your darks are similar value and intensity to each other. That's still going to require a lot of matching up of intersections with small pieces.

Have you you looked into the stabilizers that have a grid on them? My understanding is that you fuse your squares to the grid, then going row by row flip right sides together sewing with 1/4" seam allowance. After sewing all rows, you then do same with columns. I'm trying to remember where I saw this, maybe in one of Joan Ford's books.


Rob

Amazon sells Pellon's quilters grid with 1" squares. You can buy it by the yard. To do that technique you'd have to cut all those strips into 1" squares and fuse them, but you'd end doing a lot less sewing.

Rob

Sew a lighter and a darker strip together (2 different sets), cut into 1 inch pieces. sew together alternating colors to make it as long as your border needs to be. Or make 4 patches and sew them together.

Or you could just sew all 4 1" strips together, cut that into 1" segments, and sew those together, alternating direction.

Bernanmom and Dunster - perfect, thank you ... that is what I was looking for!!! LOL ... I had an image in my head, but couldn't figure it out! Those moments ya know!

I have the quilter's grid, but really didn't want to start cutting up all those squares and laying them out!!!!

Thanks for the tips everyone, greatly appreciated!

Sewing the strips together is the answer. Begin by sewing 2 strips together, for a length of about half yard. Iron it flat, cut perfect pieces to sew into 4-Patch squares. Do you like it? Try sewing all four strips together, then iron flat, and cut squares. BE SURE TO ALLOW Quarter-inch FOR YOUR SEAM Allowances on BOTH SIDES. Are you happy with these new squares? If you want RANDOM CHECKERBOARD, then sew two colors together in strips, and keep changing the pairs, or lay 6 to 8 strips together to sew, iron, and cut squares, depending on how WIDE you want the finished border. If you post a photo of your project and show your colors, you might get some specific suggestions that will be more useful to you. Good luck, and Enjoy every moment of your creative process.