Buzz Saw

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A friend wants to have a quilt for her sofa. She loves the batic-fabrics and chose the buzz-saw-pattern.

I thought that pattern would be easy - make 4 identical blocks, sew them together and be done with it.

Oh no.

Each block should be square. I had found a lot of tutorials at Pinterest and they all said: Make a square of half-square-triangles. Easy. Then cut that square in 4 identical stripes. add a 5th stripe turn them all and sew them together.

But - the finished block with 5 stripes is not square!

Let's take a square with 10 x 10 inch. The 4 stripes are 2,5inch wide. Add the 5th stripe with 2,5 inch.

All stripes are 10 inches long.

The block has 4 seams for the 5 stripes, so 4 x 0,5 = 2 inches are the seamallowance. The result will be 10 inch + 2,5 inch = 12,5 inch minus 2 inch seamallowance = 10,5 inch wide.

But the block is only 10 inches high. The result will be a rectangle, not a square.

I searched again in the internet - and I found one tutorial that said 'you have to trim the stripes at both ends to make a square out of the rectangle.

What's that? then the width of the 5 stripes is different!!

I understood: I have to start the cutting-process with a rectangle, not with a square. The rectangle should be 10,5 inch high and 10 inch wide.

Then I cut 4 stripes with 2,5 inch wide and 10,5 inch long, the 5th stripe also with 2,5 inch x 10,5 inch.

Then I sewed the 5 stripes together, the result is a square of 10,5 x 10,5 inch!

Ok - that problem was solved. But how to make rectangles with 2 diagonal triangles?

I made the first block like a square - I laid two rectangles on top of each other, drew a line with a pen and sewed on both sides of the line, then cut apart und opened.

Surprise: the result was not 2 rectangles, but 2 trapezoids.

Oh. I realized I had to stack the two rectangles alternated to each other.

the result: left the trapezoids, right the perfect rectangles

Only after I had understood the rectangle-thing, made all the little blocks and took fotos for this page, I found a tutorial with fotos at Pinterest...

Here are the final blocks.

For myself for the statistics: I cut the the rectangles 11 x 11,5 inch, trimmed the triangle-rectangles down to 10 x 10,5 inch. The 5th stripe measures 2,5 x 10,5 inch.

The finished block is 10 x 10 inch.

my help-paper, to trim the rectangles the right way

This is the finished block (one of fifty):

These are the finished blocks, always made by 4 small blocks:

This quilt will be that huge, I had to piece the batting as well.

And another technique I found in the interet: Baste the back with tape to the floor. Then baste the batting and the top with 505-spray.

I will never make a quilt in another way from now on!!! I managed to quilt this huge huge quilt without any creases. And it is much easier to handle that huge quilt (it finished 105 x 63 inch) without pins.

And of course - at the end 15 cm of the bobbin-thread were missing to finish the quilt. I had to use a new bobbin for this small area.