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Here’s how I made my ‘Heart of Glass’ wall hanging that I posted recently. I’ve been playing with Quilt As You Go and wanted to come up with a method where you didn’t have to hand sew the strips down on the back. This method has sashing between the blocks on the front – I’m planning to try a way with no sashing at some stage but for now, here goes with the sashed version! There are lots of pictures so I hope you’ll bear with me while I post. This is my first tute so I hope it’s clear enough ! Feel free to ask questions at the end, otherwise.

Tools and materials :

Backing fabric and batting – enough to cut background squares for your project. This can be done from big enough scraps !
Fabric – I used scraps and FQs from my stash, a rough estimate is about a yard and a half for a hanging this size (33 inches x 26 inches approx.) - and some fabric for the sashing (I used black).
Steam a seam or similar ¾ inch wide.
Sewing machine with a walking foot.
Square template in the size of your unfinished block – I used 6 ½ inches.
Rotary cutter and mat, scissors, pins.
Iron and board.



1. Decide on your block size (mine are 6 ½ inches unfinished) and cut squares of batting and backing fabric a good inch bigger all round. You don’t have to be that accurate as you’ll be trimming the blocks later. Cut enough squares for your project – mine is 5 x 4 so 20 blocks.

2. I used fusible batting as I happened to have some leftovers so I pressed the backing square to the batting (putting down a cloth so it didn’t leave a sticky mess on the ironing board !) You could use regular batting and put a pin across each corner to hold the squares together until you’ve sewn on the first few strips.

3. Here’s my stack of prepared block foundations – you can see that I didn’t cut them very accurately ! Doesn’t matter.

4. I’m doing string blocks so I cut some 1 1/2" inch wide strips of fabric. These are cut from scraps and FQ. Obviously, yours will depend on your planned layout. It’s kind of make it up as you go so I cut a few and later on cut a few more in the fabrics I wanted.

5. Pin your first strip to the foundation square. Notice I put the pins over to one side, away from where I’ll be sewing. This block will have vertical strips but you could go diagonal or what ever direction takes you fancy!

6. Lay the second strip on top of the first, right sides together. It doesn’t matter if the strips are too long as we’ll be trimming later but they must at least reach the edge of the block.

7. Sew the two strips together with a ¼ inch seam. I used my walking foot as we’re sewing through three layers of fabric plus batting.

8. Finger press the seam open.

9. Keep adding strips until you get to one edge then turn the block round (you can take the pins out at this stage) and add strips until you get up to the other edge.

10. Here’s the block covered in strips. Put your square template over the block and line up the centre of the block with the centre of the strip. By eye is fine – here the centre is on the 3 ¼ inch line as my block is 6 ½ inches unfinished. Then trim all around the edge. You can rip off the larger excess strips for using in other blocks.