How to make a SQUARE ON POINT block - **Kaye's Korner with KAYE ENGLAND**

in today's video we are going to break down that elusive square on point let's get started [Music] [Applause] this is one little unit that is used loads in pat's work it becomes the center of many blocks it becomes borders and i am more often asked in class as how on earth can i change that size without a math degree because regardless of the math that you use which is what perplexes most people i want to give you a little bit of history and talk about the block and some optional methods that you may use to execute it first of all the element as you can see this is just one big square that lives inside another square in essence and in doing a little history research when i want to know how a block got its name or what its real history is my go-to is most often barbara brackman's encyclopedia of piste blocks it is one of the best references it is a book that i think might be out of print but i'm betting you can find it and when i researched this element in that i found that barbara cited many references where this block dates back where we can identify who printed and called it something in the early part of the 20th century so like from 1920 to 1930 or 40 we have evidence that this block was called a triangle design broken sag dutch aisle friendship album diamond in a square you may have heard this referenced as another square living inside a square so there are many ways to execute this there are specialty rulers in the industry that do this job you know i have no preference on the method you use my goal is always do you know how to do it in other words if you found a tool that did one size and you couldn't you didn't want that size can you do another so i want to show you how to break it down in and do your math and for this purpose i just called it square on point i don't care if you call it chicken here's what it is and here's how we're going to break it down your first job when you decide you want this element is how large is the entire thing going to be it has to be done on finished math so don't say it's going to be three and that'll be three and a half no what's it going to be when it's all done let's choose a number i drew this with my little four inch square so i just laid my little four inch square down and i drew a square not real well but i agree anyhow so that is a so what's my whole square i don't care if it's three four or five i don't care if it's two and a quarter or two and three quarters you have to make that decision so mine is four so i made my a whole thing four that's a b is half of a if b is four or if a is four excuse me you already know what b is don't you b is half of a so the b would become a two now these are all finished sizes c that little square that lives in the center is merely the diagonal of b so it is from this point to this point right here and there is no way in the world you can give me a size that i can't execute in about 12 seconds because the only thing i have to do is pick up my rectangle ruler and my square ruler because all the square rulers have a diagonal line so if here's 2 and i want to know what the diagonal of 2 i just measure that that little diagonal right there [Applause] i just drew a 90 degree corner because i think it's easier for you to see this with the ruler laying on a piece of white fabric if i go to the three inch square you can see this right here i'm on the three now the important thing to look at when you're picking a ruler here's three and a quarter here's three and a half that little mark in the middle is the three and three eighths so i've got a three and three eighths at the top and i've got a three and three eighths on this box so a square ruler is your best bet anytime you're going to cut a square so let's go back now like we were going to cut but pretend here's my three here's my three and a half i need this line in between the two so there it is now here's three and three eighths coming down and there's three and three eighths coming across if you cut these precise then when you start to assemble you don't have to do any repair work but your tool has got to have eighth inch markings for you to pull this off so now that we've found three and three-eighths and obviously if i needed a bunch of these i would have cut the strip a precise three and three-eighths but i just grabbed a piece i'm going to cut a square out of it so your decision will be made on how many you need i'm just going to cut up and now i'm going to have to cut across so i'm going to be in the camera a little bit here and now i have my three and three-eighths inch piece cut for the center of my unit that could have been any size we predetermined but we've chosen this from our previous conversation okay now i have pre-cut my strip two and a half inches for the corners of this unit and i'm going to do this with the half square ruler so as you can see i cut the two and a half if it had not been a ruler i would have cut it to a 7 8 inch square and cut it in half so when i lay my ruler down what i'm looking for is that upper left hand corner the corn the 90 degree corner of this white fabric has got to nestle in that corner if you're using this brand now there are other brands of half square rulers that may not read this way but that's what i'm looking for so i need four half square triangles to finish this unit so let's cut this one so there's my set one and i'm a right hander so then my set two the only thing i'm going to do is turn this ruler over and now you can see where two and a half lives and you can see this little pointy end so i have to position this at the two and a half on the top with this little nose hanging off and there's my second cut now let's pretend that this fabric was two and seven eighths if it was and i'm going to just pretend i would have cut a square and then i would have simply cut that square in half if i had cut this traditional i'd have two points because i would have cut a square and cut it in half when i use the tool it does it leaves a flat top and a tip when i'm working with this tool so just so that you understand if you didn't have the tool all you had to do was cut a two and seven eighths inch or a predetermined size and cut it in half and you'd have what it needs to finish this unit the very first thing that i do is and this will certainly save your life when it comes to positioning these is i fold that center square in half and i'm you can see i'm just finger pressing it and then i'm going to turn it the other way and i'm going to do the exact same thing this will also help you prove that you have cut a square because if it sits up wonky like that then you maybe didn't get your square so i'm going ahead and i'm finger pressing now from the back side you can clearly see my little cross marks those are real important for me when i get ready to add this half square triangle so let's lay it down now regardless of the method you use to cut this triangle look at this if i pretend that this corner has got to be in that mark so let's don't look at the outside right now let's look at this this has got to be in one of these folds and just make a decision of which one you're going to put on first now my job is to just align this do you see how from this point you're accustomed to knowing where to start and stop sewing what's so complex about this is it's not got a clear picture of where do i go into the machine which is why this is my solution now i'm at the machine and for those of you who've watched me so you know that first of all i have a quarter of an inch foot that i know precisely where everything lives my needle is in the center position and my needle is in the down position in a piece of fabric because now it's ready to make a stitch and i have less likelihood of eating that first piece even though my machine doesn't like to do that it can so i'm going to now go to the needle and at this point i double check that that tip is still in the center where i put it now i'm just going to sew this first unit and i'm going to pick up another piece and put it in cut finger press this as tight as i can and i do not go to the iron here i find it it more trouble than it's worth so there's the first corner so this is the way it was so now i'm going to put the opposing corner on so let's do the same thing let me position this first see that point now is in that center fold which is precisely where it needs to be i'm aligning the edges now i'm going to go back to my machine every time you move your fabric double check that center so now i'm going to go back to the machine so i'm going to fold that back again now if you cut your triangles with a ruler when you pick up the third one that flat top actually look where it puts this see how the flat top because of the nature of the way we cut these it almost always aligns itself so at this point if if you look at this as long as my flat top is aligned then i'm on the money i if i had cut traditional and i had two points i would still adhere to this point right here now i want you to notice how this v right here is exactly in line with my needle and then that i have kept my nose in the right spot so now all i've got to do is just start sewing and now i'm just going to sew through this pretty slow so that you can see that i'm using my stiletto now in the event that i cut poorly my triangle might not have fit but if i look at this point always trusting that this can be fixed the center of this cannot and with nothing in my machine do you see how easy it is for you to see when the needle hits this v that tells me that i am a smack-on quarter of an inch so by by pulling that piece of fabric out it showed you this is what you're going to shoot for regardless of what your foot looks like as i'm sewing i always want to make sure that i keep my alignment as i sew because in case your machine is a little aggressive in feeding you can override that the very first thing i do is take off my points i just kind of take those off like that and if you cut with a ruler even where your flat top is you're always going to have a little point there and i'm a real fuss budget on cleaning this up [Music] here is our unit ready for the center of our block now i don't care what size these are and don't get caught up in this people go well it's eights and i don't do aids well then if you don't do age you better have somebody do this for you and certainly years ago we did this element in a mary ellen hopkins technique where i started out with the entire base size of a and then i put connector corners on it and if you're if you have any of my earlier books you very likely would find this segment that we did that way and i'm going to be honest with you and tell you that when we did it that way i truly didn't intellectually i suppose i knew that that's probably what i would do but it just seemed too complicated to try to achieve but what i've learned is if my rulers are accurate and i have good markings on them and i can find eighths of an inch and that's center square is almost always going to be that it is going to be a weird size i can build borders with this for quilts i can sew with this for a long long time and as you see it's also the center of my little star so it becomes something that instead of just putting a plain square in there i could drop this little square on point in there and completely change the look of my block enjoy putting this in your new quilt design we'll see you on the next video

Channel: Kaye England

Views: 1,301

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: quilting, patchwork, square in square, quilt instruction

Id: tHMBqDNNeGY

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021