How to Hand-Piece Quilt Blocks
With the popularity of rotary cutting and speed machine piecing, hand-piecing skills seem a thing of the past. While it is not as fast as other methods, hand-piecing allows you more control over your stitches -- especially on smaller projects, curves, very elaborate pieces or finely detailed blocks. Hand-piecing lets you take your quilting project anywhere, such as in a car or train, without the need for your machine or a source of electricity. Try hand-piecing as a way to slow down, connect with your project and enjoy quilting the way it has been done for hundreds of years.
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Instructions
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Cut out all pieces for the block. Use finished-size templates and place them on the wrong side of fabric, leaving at least a 1/2 inch between pieces. Mark around the edges of the template and cut them out, allowing a 1/4 inch of extra fabric on all sides for seam allowance.
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Lay out all the pieces for the block, right-sides up. Assembly of a hand-pieced block is done by piecing together the smallest units into larger units or squares, depending on the pattern you are using. Then join these together to form larger units.
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Take the first two pieces to be joined and place them right-sides together. Line up the corners or raw edges. Insert a pin into the corner of one piece along the stitching line, and check to make sure it comes out on the stitching line of the other piece. This is called pin-matching. If the sewing lines do not match, realign the pieces and pin into place before stitching. Pins should be positioned perpendicular to the stitching lines.
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Knot the thread before before starting to sew. Hold the needle in your right hand and the fabric in your left. Insert the needle into the corner, and make a backstitch over your first stitch.
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Push the tip of the needle through both layers of fabric, and take small stitches of about 1/8 inch. Turn the work over to be sure you remain on the stitching line of both pieces. If you miss the line, take out the stitching and resew the seam, or your entire block may not fit together correctly.
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Lock the final stitch with a backstitch, then loop and pull the thread through. Finger press the seam allowance toward the darker piece.
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Sew smaller finished units together by pin-matching seamlines and stitching as you did smaller components. Check each section against the template, to be sure you have the correct size before connecting. If your block design has rows, sew all the pieces of one row of the block first, then join the rows for a finished block.
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Press the seam allowances with an iron when the block is finished. Measure your finished piece against the block template. If your piece is off by more than 1/8 inch from the required size, you should remake the block. Over the entire quilt, any variance in individual blocks will be magnified, and you may find the finished quilt top one or more inches off the expected measurements.
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Tips & Warnings
Use thread that is slightly darker than the darkest material you are using for each set of pieces you sew together.
Once you get the hang of hand-piecing, you can pick up speed on larger pieces. With a rocking motion of your left hand, push the fabric onto the needle one stitch at a time -- forming an accordion-type gather -- until the needle is full. Then pull the needle through all stitches at once.
Keep the tension even as you stitch for best results, says Jinny Beyer, fabric designer and author of numerous books on quilting. Pull your hands slightly away from each other to keep tension on the thread, and gather several stitches onto the needle before pulling through.
References
- Quilter's Complete Guide; Marianne Fons and Liz Porter
- JinnyBeyer.com: Tips & Lessons > Hand Piecing and Even Stitches
- Photo Credit Michael Blann/Photodisc/Getty Images
