Nine-Patch Square Dance Quilt-Along: Week 6

This week, we're assembling our A blocks. As our blocks come together, we really want to keep our pieces aligned, straight, and keep the bulk of the seams down. So it's important to nest our seams – here's how to do it!

Nesting seams refers to layering the pressed seams so they abut each other without overlapping. This evenly distributes the seam allowance and makes sure that your pieces fit together perfectly. As you can see in the video, the units we're sewing together each have two seams and they lock together almost like puzzle pieces. Once you have them held together, it's a good idea to put one or two pins close to the seams to hold things in place. You can even do this in advance with multiple units, so you can chain piece things together.

You can do this when sewing units together – or even rows of the blocks together. We like to pull the pins out right before I sew over them to avoid breaking a needle.

All our diagrams include pressing arrows, so you know which direction to press your seams in every step of the process. And this will help eliminate any bulk of those block's seams, especially as we get closer to the quilting process!