How to Square-up a Quilt Block

The next thing I want to do is trim them to make sure that I have all the excess off. Some of these are less perfect than others and this is probably a pretty good example because you can see; this is about a quarter of an inch off and I’m not really sure why that happens but that is the way it is.

So, what I wanted to do is take one that was most off and figure out which size square it is and then, I’ll trim all the other ones to that same size. So in looking at this, what I did was line my square ruler up with two sides. So, I got these two sides and then this is sticking out because I know I want to trim this off. So now, when I’ve got this lined up, I can look up here to see where this is because if I look over here, I know that’s going to need to get trimmed off too and because this is my half inch mark, I am guessing that this is about 9.25-inches.

So, I will trim this off and I am going to trim this off measuring 9.25-inches. And now, in order to make this square, I need to trim off something from here. Now, I could just trim it all up one side but that usually ends up not being such a good idea because you’ve got your seam allowances, you want to watch them up with blocks that are right alongside. So, what I am going to do is shave an eighth of an inch off of each side because this is 9.5-inches. I want it to be 9.25-inches.

So if take an eighth of an inch off here and eighth of an inch off here, it will be 9.25-inches square. Once I finish trimming it, then I’ll put it back on my square and actually, this ended up being 9 1/8, so I’ve got a choice. I can cut it all down to 9 inches or I can just leave it 9 1/8.

So at this point, I am just going to go through and I cut all my blocks, so they’re 9 and an eighth inch square. Then, I’ll be ready to lay them out and arrange them like I want in a quilt.