Make a "Card Trick" Quilt with Jenny!

Hello everyone, I'm Jenny from MSQC. And today I have a very fun project for you. I'm really excited to show you this because people have been asking me for a long time, is there an easy way to do Card Trick blocking? This is an old block called the Card Trick block and I think we came up with it. So let's take a look at this

quilt

behind me. Isn't this wonderful? It is so beautiful. We've added a little more shine with this secondary block right here. And I just love it. I can't wait to show it to you.

So to

make

this

quilt

, what you will need is a roll of 2 ½ strips. And we used Twilight Tones by Nancy Ring for Marcus Fabrics. And you will also need some background fabric. This is white fabric. And for that you will need 4 yards. And then your outside border here, it's 1 ¾ yards and it's a little five inch border. For your backing we used 108 backings and we used 2 ¾ yards. And you can see it's just a nice part of the line of fabrics that we've used here. Now this

make

s a really large quilt because of the amount of background fabric and the set of strips, it makes an 83 by 94 quilt.

So it's a pretty good sized quilt. And I love a big quilt. I love a bed spread. Let me show you how to do this. The first thing we are going to do is get our strips. And I have some strips here. And these have obviously already been cut. But from each strip you will want to cut six 4 ½-inch blocks and six 2 ½-inch blocks. Now you're going to get out of each strip, you're actually going to get six blocks. But it's actually a quarter block. So this is the block we're talking about here. Let me get this one right here.

And here you have your 4 ½ inch piece and your 2 ½ inch piece. And you need four of those to make a block. So again from each strip we are going to cut four, sorry, six 4 ½ inch pieces. And six 2 ½ inch pieces. And I'm going to put some of these together and cut out a set so I can show you how to make a block. And I'm actually going to get enough for two because they're all folded in half. But that's okay. Alright, here we go. We're counting, one, two, three, 4 ½. And we're going to cut right here. And I'll set them aside and then we'll cut a set of 2 ½.

And this is just for me to make this block to show you. You'll want to go ahead and cut all the strips. Alright, I'm going to place them here. Now you want to match each strip, each 4 ½ inch rectangle with a 2 ½ inch square. You want to keep them together so that when you are ready to put the quilt together you don't have to go out and look for the pieces. So I'm going to put them together, one of these together like this and then we have this one here. Alright, now I would normally go through my entire stack and make that happen.

In fact, I think I'm going to look for a green one around here and see if I can find a nice green block. Instead of three blues, I'll put a little more color here. Alright, here we go. Alright, I'm going to pull that one out and I'll have these four right here. Okay, now the first thing we're going to do is create a four patch. So you're going to take your four squares, your four 2 ½ inch squares. You will decide how you want them. And I'm going to mix mine like this. And we are going to sew them together.

So let's go to the sewing machine and do that. And I just, you just lay them right sides together and sew them a quarter inch down the side. And I'm going to take these other two, fold them over and sew a quarter inch. Now I'm going to open them up, leave them connected, open them up and just put them on top of each other. And make my means match. Have one seam go in one direction and the other in the other. Okay, now we're going to press this to open it. You want your center to be pretty good because this is one of those blocks that is an illusion block.

And then, you know, the final look is a little different than what it is. Now what you're going to do is take two of your outer pieces and join them together here. So I put the red here and the green here. So. Alright? And we are going to sew them into our square. And I'm going to line this up here, sew it down the side. And one more here. Very good. Now I'm going to press them open. And I'm just going to reverse them. Alright, now what we're going to do is take these two pieces and we're going to put them here.

But before we sew them together, we'll add a 2 ½ inch square of the white background to each side. So you'll need four 2 ½ inch squares for each block we're making. So we have one here and one here like this. And we're going to sew these two pieces together like this. So let's sew this one here. And we're just going to put a white square on each side of our 4 ½ inch rectangle. And I'm going to take this one as well and just chain them together. And then I'm going to sew a blank on the other side. Alright, once you've made them, you're going to press them open.

And I'm just going to reverse that and reverse this one and do the same thing with this other piece. And then we're going to add it, this one on this side and that one on that side, like this. So you will place them and join the seams. And we're going to sew that together. Very good. So when you're going to add this, make sure that the little seam in the corner fits really well. And now I'll put it on the other side. Again I like to make those little anchor points and then make sure my seams line up.

And when you push a seam one way and then the other, I can feel with my finger that there is no space in between. Alright, let me press this. Here we go. Nice apartment block. Now this is the Card Trick block. Traditionally, the Card Trick block is made with half square triangles and quarter square triangles. And it really is quite a bit of work. But the

trick

is that we have to spin this to really make it look like the

card

trick

. So what we're going to do is take our background fabric and we're going to cut it into seven inch squares because now we're going to place this block on point.

Which means it will now sit at the top of your block. So what I want to do is take a seven inch square and I'm going to snowball the corners with my other 2 ½ inch block. So let me do that. You can draw the line like this or you can iron it and sew from side to side. I'm going to put one in each corner, two diagonal corners, just two corners. Not every corner but just two corners. So let's sew right here. Side to side, then I'll turn it over to the other side and sew it side to side.

You're going to need two of these for each, for each square, two of these blocks because what we're going to do is cut them out like this. Let's file them here, press them. And press them. And then we're going to cut ours, excuse me. We're going to cut our block diagonally like this. So place the ruler from corner to corner and cut like this. You will need four of these and we will attach them to the four sides. So I have another one here that I already made. And I'm going to go ahead and cut that out.

Now, what I like to do to have a little bit of precision is to fold them over and make a little crease here so I know exactly where the middle is. And I'm going to do that with all four of them and with this one here. And then you have to do the same to your block as well. So fold it in half. And with your nail you can fold both sides. And then this one too. You just need a small mark so you can see where the center is. Alright, now what we're going to do is align our core brands.

And we're going to put one on all four sides of our block like this. So. So how are we going to do that? The first thing we are going to do is join the two sides. And we'll go to the sewing machine and do that. And once the sides are attached, we'll attach the top and bottom. So I'm going to line up, make sure my marks match up here. And then I look over here too and make sure there are equal amounts sticking out of the block on each side. We're going to sew down a quarter inch.

And we're also going to add one on this side. And this is going to give us that secondary block. So let me look over here. Pretty even. Okay, now let's iron them open. Be careful though, don't press the little folds you made on the small center blocks. Okay, now we're going to attach them to the sides, the other sides to finish our block. And now you should notice that your squares, let me show you here. You should notice that there isn't much hangover in those squares. So we're going to sew a quarter of an inch down on this side.

And we're going to add this one too. Alright, now I'm going to press them back. And you have some pretty good bunny ears in those corners, so if you want to trim them, you can. What I usually do is take a look at my block and it's usually a little crooked here on the sides. So I'm just going to crop it out. I'm not really squaring it. I'm just lining up my ruler with my corner blocks and trimming that little bit that, you know, will keep it from being absolutely perfect. And you can square your block to whatever size you want.

But I like this method. You know when you're going to set a block at a point, there are all kinds of formulas and it's a lot of work to figure it out. I must have cut it out already. Oh, here's the one I didn't cut out. It's a lot of work to determine what size block you need. And basically what I did was look at my block size. And I'll show it to you here in just a second. So I looked at my block size right here. And it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and a half.

And I went down an inch or an inch and a half to seven. So whatever the size of your block is, I just subtracted an inch and a half and went down to seven and that's the size that I cut diagonally for my blocks because this is the block that you get when you're done, snowball shaped in the corners and us. We're ready to put it together. Now let me show you how that happens. Let's put four of these together so you can see how it lines up here in the middle. And it gives you this little secondary block right there.

So you'll just sew them block by block. Wow, let's change that one. We don't want the same fabric there. You're just going to sew them block by block together like this and then together like this. And you're going to do that with your entire quilt. So let's take a look at how many blocks we have here. We have one, two, three, four, five, six and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, down. So we've created 42 of these great blocks that are just amazing. And we hope we've made the Card Trick block a little easier for you.

We hope you enjoyed this MSQC tutorial.