Today’s quilt block might look complicated, but it’s easy! Put a bunch of them together to make a chain link look. Download the free block guide below, and watch the video to see how simple it is!
Video transcript:
Hi everyone I’m Paulette Morrissey from Tulip Square and this week I’m going to show you a cool block to make looks kind of tricky but it’s not tricky at all we call it the chain link block it’s got a lot of names I’ve seen it a lot of different ways and but this one is we’re calling it the chain link block for because it kind of looks like chain link fence especially if I put it this way yes anyway it’s not difficult to make it just takes a few steps and it’s not a lot of pieces it’s not a lot of fancy sewing at all the most complicated thing you’re going to make is flying flying geese which you know are very easy to make so we’re going to head over to the sewing machine and get started on this and remember there is a PDF for it in the download in the link below you know in the download stuff there’s a there’s a PDF for it which will give you the sizes and quantities and everything that you need so let’s go make this cool block okay to make this block which is actually a lot easier to make than it looks you’re going to need three colors you’re going to need a white or a very light background and you’re going to need two contrasting colors and I’m using red and blue
In the description below you’ll find a PDF that you can download anytime you want it it is got all of the sizes and the quantities for the pieces you’re going to need so to start with we’re going to use some two inch squares so you’re going to take the white two inch squares and two of the blue two inch squares and the two red two inch squares and you’re just going to sew these together in little strips like this you have two red ones
and two blue ones like this and make sure you do nice accurate quarter inch seams because we want everything to fit together real nicely later so just sew those and then press them towards the color in the center
now you’ve got two of these
red and white and two of these blue and white okay now you’re going to set those aside for a second and you’re going to take your three and a half inch pieces you get you’ll do two red ones and two blue ones and you’re going to sew a white square to the corner like if you were going to be making flying geese
but you’re only going to do one end
on this end only I’m going to put
just like this
I’m going to do it the same direction for the blue and the white
you’re going to have two blues and two whites
and they’re each just going to be sewn like this now you can draw a line on here
some people just like to fold
this very accurately
make a nice crisp crease
and sew along that crease line
I don’t usually be able to see that crease line once I get it under my machine but you can also draw a line or like I do I have a
I have a line on my sewing machine that I follow I just line up my points
like this
put that end in under the under the needle and this end lines up with this side of the this little black line and when I sew and keep it following that black line when it’s done it’s a nice neatt seam like that also when you’re sewing onto points it’s easier it’s easier to sew from an edge that has another edge on it rather than sewing from this point that kind of gets chewed up by the machine so it’s easier if you sew from this end
now what you’re going to do is take these pieces we’re going to cut off this corner with both layers
leave a quarter inch seam allowance
and then you’re just going to press these towards the corner and do that with all four pieces now you’ve got four pieces two blue and two red and what you’re going to do is take a white square and sew it to the white end of each one just like this make sure you have nice accurate quarter inch seams and just sew all those and then press them towards the white press them towards the white square actually okay so now you have two of these red and two of these blue we’ll set those aside for a second okay so now you’re going to take your longer pieces you’ve got two reds and two blues and you’re going to take a white square and you’re going to sew them to the left end
of each of these four pieces
you’re going to sew them the same way you sewed before
just like this on all four pieces and then trim them and press them just like you did the smaller pieces
now you got two pieces like this and two pieces like this so now what you’re going to do is you’re going to take those first pieces you made like this
let’s move some of these out of the way you’re going to take your pieces like this your red one and your blue one
I’m going to show you how to do each one they’re done the same but in opposite colors
You’re going to take the red one
then you’re going to take this blue piece
and sew right here like this
I press them both nicely and then you’re going to take these two pieces with the red and the triangle and you’re going to sew them
to here
like this
okay so now you have two pieces like this and we’re going to do the same thing with the blue pieces and the red parts we’re just going to do the same thing only with opposite colors we’re going to take
this piece sew it to the red one like this
and then sew
one of those to the bottom so they’re going to look the same only opposite so I’m going to go ahead and assemble these two squares like that
I’ll be right back now you have two of these and two of these and we’re going to set those aside for a minute and you’re going to take your white blocks you need you’ve got five of them but you need four of them for this and you’re just going to sew a blue strip or red strip to one edge of each okay now you’ve got two of those and two of those so what you’re going to do to put this all together you’re going to start with want to start with one of these pieces with the blue in the middle and you’re going to take one of these pieces with the red stripe and sew that to that let’s get all these other ones out of the way
You’re going to do that and you’re going to do that with the other one just like it okay now you got two pieces like this but the same
Now you’re going to take your pieces with the big red stripe and you’re going to turn them and sew them like so we’re going to put one on each of these two pieces
I have two pieces like this we’re going to set those aside for just a minute and you’re going to take your last little square and you’re going to sew
one of these pieces on each side of it so you’ve got a strip like this nice accurate quarter inch seams
now you’ve got a piece like this now all that’s left to do is sew these three pieces together oops
sew these pieces together like this and like this
I’m going to sew those up and we will be done okay this is how not to sew the last piece on I’ll be right there
little tip for you ever notice that when you’re ripping out a seam and you got all those little threads if you take a hard eraser and just rub it like this they all come out pretty nice
Ok going to go sew this the right way and there it is the finished block sewn together the correct way
kind of cool huh
and now you know how to make the chain link block
kind of cool huh surprising how easy some of these blocks are when they’re broken down into simple steps isn’t it this is a very neat block to make looks really pretty if you put three or four of them in a row to make a table runner
and
the size is 12 inches when it’s you know plus its seam allowances so that’s how big it is
so I hope you enjoyed this video and please hit the like button if you did and hit the Subscribe button and hit the little notify bell if you want to be notified when we put up a new video which is every Saturday don’t forget it’s every Saturday uh morning and that’s about all
we hope you have a good week sewing and we’ll see you again next week bye-bye