How to make your own 10 inch squares

Welcome! This post will show you how to cut fat quarters into 10" squares to use in a quilt project.


One of my quilting goals recently was to make a quilt for my brother using my Churn, Baby, Churn quilt pattern.

                                 Click HERE to go to pattern at my online shop

Of course, this quilt is too small a size for my brother so my plan was to make my own 10 inch squares from a fat quarter bundle and just add more blocks to make it bigger. The fabric I chose was Tula Pink's Holiday Homies.

This post goes through the cutting steps I did to get the most 10 inch squares possible out of this line. I only realized later on that I would still have to play with my leftovers to make enough blocks, but that's the fun thing about this pattern - it does make leftovers!

Let's get started.

Save the selvages

First things first: I always save the selvages! I usually cut a generous inch off the edge of the fabric - sometimes more if I really want to feature the fabric design in my selvage project. 

How to Make Selvage Fabric tutorial 

Make the first cut

Then I determined that cutting the long way would give me two 10 inch squares and leave a little leftover edge (instead of cutting the opposite way and only getting one 10 inch square.)

Make the second cut

For the second cut I laid the fabric out full and used the measurements on my cutting mat as well as my 18" ruler to make sure I was cutting 10 inch squares.

Organizing your new fabric cuts

To keep track of the pieces I had a small plastic bin for the leftover strips and selvages and two plastic scrapbooking cases for the 10 inch squares. 

Notice at this point that I thought I would have enough squares for 2 projects, but in reality I only had enough for one because there were only 14 fabrics in the line. 

Keep this in mind when you are looking to make your own stack of 10 inch squares -

 the more fabrics in the line,

 the more squares you will be able to cut!

I'm happy to report that even with a few cutting errors while making the blocks (mostly due to direction of the prints and cutting late at night!) I had enough squares to make 20 - 12" blocks.

instructions to the larger size quilt is included with the Churn Baby Churn pattern

The next time you're planning a project that uses 10" squares I hope you'll consider using these tips and cutting your own! 

I made a second quilt this size using my own 10' squares, All Churned UP! here

See another Churn Baby Churn quilt made with 'homemade' 10' squares

Click to see my Quilt along

With Joy,

Sarah V.

THIS Pattern is part of my SHOW Special for theDesigners Quilt Show April 13 -19, 2020

instructions to the larger size quilt is included with the Churn Baby Churn pattern

For $10 you can purchase this pack of patterns and try out a few of my patterns

Only available during the Designers Quilt Show week

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