Lining Up Sashing Strips

This is an excerpt from an old blog of mine. That blog is no longer active, so I thought I'd bring a couple of its posts to this blog:




"This tip is probably something a lot of you already do, so I hesitate to even share it. But it's one I figured out on my own and I'm kind of excited about that!

I've always struggled with sashing when it's used horizontally and vertically around each block. I get the short strips on one direction. But then when I add the long strips the opposite way, things stretch or my blocks are off a little and when I'm finished, I have nice straight sashing one way and a jagged line of sashing the other! I'm always ripping out sections, repinning and trying to "ease" them in where they should have been.

I solved that this morning! Here's how:

I sewed my blocks into rows with a short sashing strip between each block. Then, I added the long strip of sashing to the first row. Before I added the next row, I folded the sashing back down (right sides together) onto the blocks. Here I marked where each seam is so I can line up the seams in the next row.

Then when I pinned the next row, I had these little marks to line up with those sashing seams. When it was all done, all the sashing strips lined up straight in both directions!"