So you finished your first quilting project, you cut everything out, sewed it all up, and find that NONE of the points you had in your blocks matched up.

One’s lower than the other, theres gaps between them, or they are cut off entirely!

If you cut all your pieces out perfectly shouldn’t you get perfect points and seams automatically?

Unfortunately no, not necessarily.

Depending on how consistent you are with your seam allowances, little differences across your quilt blocks can change your block dimensions slightly.

This makes it inevitable that you will not be able to just sew two blocks together and things just fall into place. 

It’s not a hard thing to do or really even take that much time which is the good part about it. 

You just have to take a second to intentionally aim to match up those points before you ever go to the sewing machine.

With a little practice aiming, you’ll be making perfect points in your quilts like a pro in no time. 

Pinning the points perfectly

Take a pin and find one of the points you want to match up. 

Push your pin through the back of the block right at the tip of the point and double check the right side to make sure you’ve got the pin coming out the other side at the right spot.

Once you have the first point, put that same pin right through the tip of the point of the second block.

You want the two blocks pinned so your one pin is perfectly lining up those two points, right sides together. 

With the two points you want pinned exactly together it should be much easier to sew them so they are matched up nicely in your quilt top.

Once you have all of your points pinned together, you can go ahead and pin the rest of the seam as needed. 

Use a Basting Stitch 

While this step is not 100% necessary as you get more comfortable, when you are first learning how to match up points, its literally the best trick in the book. 

Take your pinned block to the sewing machine and crank up your stitch length to at least a 4. 

You want this stitch length HUGE. 

We are going to baste the seam before we sew the seam. 

You can either just do a few stitches right where your points are or you can baste the whole seam, either one is fine.

Do not back stitch or reinforce your stitches.

When you get to the point where a pin is, be sure to manipulate your block under the sewing machine so that needle sinks into the block exactly where the pin enters the fabric where it is pinning those points together. 

We are aiming to have a stitch exactly in the spot where you want those two points matched up.

When you are done, gently open up your quilt blocks and see how good your aim was!

Why do this?

This is a trial run. 

This is you aiming, and getting a second shot to fix it if you need/want to. 

When you pull the blocks out of the sewing machine you will have stitching holding the points in place instead of pins. 

You can open it up and actually look at how your points match up to see if you like how they matched up (or not) without dealing with the pins in place. 

If you didn’t get as perfect of points as you were hoping for, the large stitch length makes it SUPER easy to quickly rip out and try again. 

You can do this over and over until you get them matching up the way you want them. 

Hopefully you don’t need to do it over and over again.

But you could if you really wanted to. 

Sew it

Once you are happy with how your points matched up, set your stitch length back down to 2.5 or 3 ish and sew the seam for good. 

If you sew right on top of your basting stitching you should be perfect when you finish the seam. 

Once you are finished with the seam, double check your work and head to the ironing table!

The nice thing is that you really don’t even need to take out the basting stitch once you are done. 

It can just live in the quilt forever just like any other seam. 

And that’s it! You now have beautifully matched up points in your quilt!

Troubleshooting Those Perfect Points

Think you’ve got your pin at the perfect point and it seems like you are still cutting the point off? 

Try aiming slightly above where your block point is. 

When multiple seams are converging at one spot to make the point in your block, the turn of the seam when you open it up might be bulkier than you expected. 

This will end up hiding part of the point when you open the blocks.

Aiming slightly above your point will give you the opportunity to compensate for the extra bulk and still keep those perfect points in the design. 

What does this strategy work for?

This strategy works for anything you might be trying to make a point to do perfectly in your quilt top. 

Matching up seams instead of points is also a great common application of this technique.

I love using this technique when sewing together blocks like in my hourglass quilt, it helps me get all those blocks to meet at perfect intersections.

Related:
Minimalist Hourglass Baby Quilt

The applications are endless so keep an eye out for them and be sure to keep this technique in your quilting tool box for next time.

Ready for your next project to try this out on?

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