How to Sew an On-Point Quilt

[Music] hi it's sheri from a quilting life and i'm here today to share with you how to put an on point quilt together an on point quilt might be a daunting project for some but it really is simple you just have to know the steps and follow them in a particular order so today i'm going to walk you through setting together an on point quilt i'm going to show you how to add the sashing and posts if your on point quilt includes those and we're going to talk about setting triangles for the side parts of the quilt and for the corner parts of the quilt and we're also going to talk about how to even up your quilt before you begin to add your borders i hope that you'll enjoy this video it's a little bit longer than some of my other videos but i feel like it's one that you might want to bookmark and come back to again and again when you work on this type of quilt for the first few times so let's get started putting together an on point quilt [Music] [Music] okay i'm going to walk you through making an on point quilt and i'm actually going to use the smallest setting that we can use and but the technique is the same for any size quilt you're using so i'm going to show you step by step how to go about setting these blocks on point and sometimes beginner or newer quilters are afraid to try this but it's it's really not difficult and i'll walk you through it and hopefully you can now have fun making on point quilts i have chosen five different quilt blocks that i love i'm going to make a table topper with this the size quilt that we're going to be making would also be a great wall hanging but i've chosen five six inch finished blocks from my quilting life 2020 block of the month and i've cut my sashing pieces i'm going to use this little low volume floral print and the posts i'm going to use are just this little polka dot on navy and i'm also going to do the inner border with the same floral that i'm using for the sashing and i'll walk you step by step how to put this together i've got these solid squares for the corner and setting triangles and i'll show you what those are very soon and i'll also have a pdf with all of the measurements so that if you're putting together a quilt like this using six inch finish blocks you will know what size sashing and posts and setting triangle fabrics that you'll need to cut so the first thing i like to do is figure out the layout for my blocks and i've kind of played around with this and came up with this little layout and so when you're making an on point quilt what it means is that the the blocks will be sewn together on the diagonal whereas a straight set quilt they would be sung together like this so the the blocks as you look at them are going to be on point so that's kind of what that term refers to and we are going to have sashing now you can do an on point quilt without sashing but since it's it's really almost this the same technique and put it together putting it together i thought i'd show it to you with the sashing so that you would know how to to put together a quilt with sashing the only difference is that if there isn't any sashing you're just sewing the block to the block and you're not having a sashing strip in between but i like to go ahead and lay this all out before i start sewing that way i can compare you know that the amount of strips that the pattern told me to cut is is good with what i have and then sometimes i can find out that if i have a strip left over i can notice a mistake that i might have made before it happens so i really do like to lay all of this out we'll save this inner border for later and i like to put the little posts out as well right at the beginning okay i've got all of my blocks all of my sashing all of my posts laid out and now we're going to actually use cut these squares into triangles and place them where they're going to go in the quilt okay i'm going to go ahead and cut the corner and the side setting triangles right now when you're sewing an on point quilt the pattern should tell you to cut two squares that you will use for the corner setting triangles and a number of squares anywhere from one up on up for the side setting triangles it just depends on how many side setting triangles there are in your quilt for ours we're only going to need four and so we're just going to use one square cut twice diagonally but first we'll cut the corner setting triangles and those are cut once diagonally and your pattern will tell you what size of square to cut and that you cut it once diagonally and that means that you just cut it in half on the diagonal one time and that will give you your four corner setting triangles so now that we have those cut we will set those aside they will actually be added to our quilt center last now this is the fabric square for the side setting triangles and your pattern will tell you how many squares to cut and it will tell you to cut this these squares twice diagonally and so we're gonna we're gonna actually do the same thing that we did with the corner we're going to cut it on the diagonal once next you'll want to turn your mat if it's easy for you to kind of walk on the other side of the table you can do that too but i like to keep these in place when i cut so the cutting is more accurate and then we're going to cut it on the diagonal again okay so now we have cut these twice on the diagonal and as i mentioned if you're making a bigger quilt you might have to do this with several different squares to get enough side setting triangles be sure to keep your side sitting triangles kind of separated from your corner triangles they're often similar in size but these side setting triangles are always going to be a bit larger so just keep them separate don't get them in the same pile okay we're going to go back i'm going to put our quilt blocks back on the table and i'll show you where to place these triangles okay now that we've cut the side setting triangles and the corner triangles i like to lay them out where they're going to go in my quilt again this really helps you to know that you have the right number of pieces and that everything is placed where it needs to be placed before you sew your quilt together okay so these are the side setting triangles they go on this four sides and then as i mentioned the corner pieces will go on the four corners and they'll actually be sewn last okay so this is really what i like to do i like to you know lay this all out and make sure that i've got everything as it should be before i start sewing i feel like this really helps prevent some simple mistakes from happening the next step we're going to do is we are going to sew with this quilt we have three rows we have the row with the first block we have the row with these three blocks and we have a row with this block and i'm not counting these kind of sashing post rows right now we're just going to sew together the block rows so what we're going to do is we're going to sew sashing block sashing for this row same thing for this row first sashing block sashing and for this row sashing block sashing block sashing block sashing and we're going to press all of our seams to the sashing strips so that really helps you keep the points on your quilt blocks and make everything the same so i will go to the sewing machine and i will do the sewing of these three rows blocks and sashing strips and come back and show you the next step okay i went over to the sewing machine and i sewed my block and sashing pieces together and as i mentioned i pressed the seams out toward the sashing pieces so i did this for the top row the center row and the bottom row and while i was there i also sewed together the sashing post pieces and we have four of those for this quilt and i also pressed toward the sashing we want to do all our pressing toward the sashing when you have sashing if you don't have sashing let me just put this in right now what you would do is you would you would press one row one direction and the row above it you would press the seams the other direction so the seams could nest okay so we had two of these long rows and the final piece okay so the next thing we're going to do is we are going to add these sashing post rows to our block rows and we will do that before we add any of these triangles the triangles are all going to be added last so to this top row we're just going to add this piece to the top of it same thing down here we're going to add this piece to the bottom of that block but our center row is going to get a sashing post strip shown sewn to the top and the bottom now one thing that might be different when you do a different size on point quilt is sometimes the center row only has a strip sewn to one side just depends on how many rows you're doing and how long the rows are but as long as you lay everything all of the pieces that you've been told to cut out as long as you lay them all out before you start sewing you shouldn't get confused and you might have to lay it out on a bed or a floor when you're working on a larger quilt but it's just really helpful if you just lay everything out it prevents a lot of mistakes okay so i'm going to go over to the sewing machine now i'm going to sew the post rows to the top and bottom blocks and the two post rows on either side of my center row and then i'll come back and we'll talk about adding the triangles okay i'm back from the sewing machine and i added the sashing strip post rows to my block rows and i've got the one row added to the top row and the one to the bottom row and then the two rows added to the center section and you can tell that since everything was pressed to the sashing all the seams just nested really well when i put everything together so the next step that you're going to do is we are going to add the side setting triangles and i think this is a place where sometimes people get confused they want to add those side setting triangles before these post and sashing strip rows have been added but that is not the way it works you add the post and sashing strip rows first and then you add the side triangles so the side triangles have been cut and they do have bias edges so you want to be really careful with them what i generally do is i just flip it over gently and i will stick just a single pin to keep it together and i'll kind of do that to the other side as well and just use a pin now these these four triangles for the corners are going to go on last so we're not going to sew anything there but we are going to add these and i do like to pin them so i get them going it's really easy to get these triangle pieces turned around in the wrong direction so by by using just a pin you can make sure that you don't flip them the wrong flip the triangles the wrong way and if you want to use more pins you can as well that the point of the triangle will extend beyond the block there but it will line up evenly the 90 degree angle of the triangle will line up evenly with one side of the block and and it's the opposite as the top and the bottom so up here it's extending beyond the top and the 90 degree part of the triangle is matching up at the bottom of this block so i'm going to go to the sewing machine i'm going to sew these triangles together and these triangles together with this black row and then we will be back to actually start sewing our rows together okay i've sewn the side setting triangles where they need to go and let me just show you again i pressed to the sashing that's one thing you want to remember when you're doing an on point quilt with sashing or really even a straight set quilt with press with sashing you're always going to press towards the sashing so i've pressed those towards the sashing and now i'm ready to sew my three rows together and again we're going to add these last at this point i really do like to use more pins to make sure that all of the posts match up and i will generally put a pin at each place where the where the post is and i'll put one at the end of the row and one kind of in the middle of the block and so again i'm going to pin right here where our sashing post is and i usually take that pin and have it on i stick the pin in on one side of the seam and put it back through on the other side of the seam and then at the end the middle and i'm going to grab the middle of this block and stick a pin in it as well okay so i'm going to go to the machine i'm going to sew this together i'm going to press toward the sashing and then i will also sew this side together so that when i come back i'll have the center section all sewn together except for the four outer triangles okay back from the sewing machine again and our quilt center is complete everything is sewn together except for our four corner setting triangles and i've pressed everything towards these sashing rows so all of the seams matched up the you'll notice that the triangle edges will extend and that's fine we will be trimming this up at the end after we get these four setting triangle corner setting triangles on but what what i do next is i actually just kind of fold my corner setting triangle in half and do a finger press and so that i have a real you know tiny little line and i take a ruler and i find the center point of my block just go right down the middle and i make sure and line that little finger press up with that center point and i'll just just use one pin and that really helps me keep the corner pieces centered just going to the center of the block okay and we'll do the last one and then when i come back from the sewing machine i will show you how we trim it and at that point you add the borders just like you would for a regular quilt a straight set quilt okay so i'm going to take it over i'm going to sew the four corner triangles on i actually will also press these toward the sashing i feel like in the past sometimes i have just pressed them out depending on your particular quilt and you know look at it and see what you want to do it doesn't matter so much at this point which direction you press it so i'll go sew that press it bring it back and we'll talk about adding the borders okay i'm back from the sewing machine i just wanted to show you i did end up pressing these the seams on the corner triangles out i just realized it there was it was going to create a lot less bulk so i did press all of those four seams out okay now you'll notice that our piece doesn't look exactly square and that's normal at this point for an on point quilt we've we've used all of these different triangle pieces in an introduced bias into our quilt and so what i love to do is kind of square up my quilt before i add the borders and if you have a long ruler this one at this point is about 21 and a half inches square and so i'll be able to use this 24 inch 24 and a half inch ruler to square up my edges when i have a larger quilt sometimes i will actually get multiple rulers and use them and with a larger quilt it's also really helpful to have a square ruler so that you can square up both sides at once okay i am actually going to grab a large square ruler and show you with that ruler and with this ruler how you can square up your quilt so i grabbed i grabbed this large square ruler just to kind of show you what you can do you want to make sure that you have a quarter of an inch beyond the point of each post and so what i like to do is line it up so i've got a quarter of an inch here i've got a quarter of an inch here and then i also make sure the top on both of those seams that i have a quarter of an inch and i will also look at the other lines on the ruler i've got a diagonal line right here and it's really lining up well with the block so i feel like this is really square and really straight and i will kind of start back here i'm not going to start all the way back here because i'm going to trim this when i move the ruler down to this section so i'm going to trim just this portion of the quilt right now and then i'll i'll flip it and do the rest so i'm going to go up and i'm going to come over okay so now i am going to flip my quilt and i'm going to do the next corner section the same way i'm going to make sure that i've got quarter of an inch a quarter of an inch quarter of an inch this one still this had already been trimmed down here so i'm going to move that up just a bit and sometimes you're not trimming very much off sometimes you are so just you know flip it and just make sure that you because you don't want to cut off any of these points when you're sewing your border and so i making sure i've got it here here move it up then we're going to be able to flip it and this will be our final corner you can tell that this is where i started and this is where i started so we'll be doing our final corner again the quarter inch quarter inch i'm going to look at that diagonal line and it is just really looking good right there just make sure okay okay just some simple trimming and now we've got a a nicely trimmed quilt center at this point like i mentioned the adding the borders is going to be the same as for a square set quilt the only thing that you might notice is that you have some odd measurements with an on point quilt so i like to take a measurement of all four sides before i begin adding the borders so this one is about twenty one and five eighths twenty one and five eighths yep 21 and a half let's see so they're all all of my sides are either 21 and a half 21 and 5 8 and so that's the size that i'm going to use for my my first two side border pieces if there were a bigger variation in that i would i would check these two sides first and make sure but mine are just really really close so that means my quilt is pretty i'm going to take my border strips now and i am going to cut the two side pieces and then i'm going to sew those on press them measure and cut the two pieces and what i like to do for this is i'm just going to measure one more time okay actually just a tiny bit bigger than i noticed before and what i like to do is i'm not going to cut these that measurement first i'm going to use a pin and mark my measurement this will allow me to be more accurate i'm going to trim the left side and then i'm going to put a pin in my border piece i'm going to measure it with a ruler just to make sure because but the ruler is always going to be more accurate than your mat okay and like i said i'm going to use pins right here and put a pin in each piece okay and then i'm just going to cut this a little bit past and i will be trimming that later but then what i do is i will lay this on top of my quilt with my pin at the bottom edge i will pin that and sew it and i will do the same thing over here and after we've sewn we'll press and then we'll trim these edges okay i actually went ahead and added the side borders pressed and trimmed and then i added the top and bottom borders and i just want to show you quickly how i trim those it's really kind of the same method that i used when i was squaring up a quilt so i just take a square ruler and make sure that it's straight on both the side and the top and i just kind of cut that little piece off there and then i'm going to do the same thing where i added the other border just gonna get the large ruler and again just trim that off okay so a lot of times with these points i i kind of wait till this point to pick my outer border fabric and with this one i've decided to use this navy print for my outer border it will kind of pick up the navy in the center block and in the sashing posts and i will go ahead and add this and we'll pop up a picture of the video after i get it added if you want even more detailed instructions about adding borders to a quilt we do have a previous video on that that we'll put a link to so that you can go and look at that for step by step but basically this video has walked you through all the steps that you need to do to do any on-point quilt not just a small one a large one all of the steps are the same and if you haven't made an on point quilt before i hope you'll have a lot of fun putting one together soon so there we have the how to put together an on point quilt tutorial i know it was a little bit longer than normal but there there really are quite a few steps to this and they need to be followed in a specific order i hope that you'll come back to this video again and again as you work on these types of quilts and if you enjoyed the video we would love for you to hit the like button and share with a friend and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already thanks so much for stopping by

Channel: A Quilting Life

Views: 28,142

Rating: 4.967063 out of 5

Keywords: A Quilting Life, Moda Fabrics, Sherri McConnell, Quilting, Sewing, Quilt Projects, Quilt Pattern, Sewing Projects, Fun Projects, Quilt Decor, Table Runners, Free Tutorial, Table Runner Tutorial, Quilt Tutorial, On-Point Quilt Tutorial, On-Point Quilts, Quilt Borders, Mini Quilt, Mini Quilt Tutorial

Id: pEFekuJIP5k

Length: 31min 13sec (1873 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020