Card Trick Quilt Block Made with My Methods

This quilt block is a common block and has many tutorials out there telling you how to cut out the pieces carefully and piecing them together.

Well with my Cut Down Method it reduces the pattern to a 9 patch. My method uses 4 Boston Blocks / 4 HSTs cut out my way and the center is a Combo 4 patch cut out my way.

I used a 3 1/2" template and the finished size is 9 1/2". If you want to make a 12 1/2" quilt block use a 4 1/2" template.
Hope this tutorial helps make this block easier to make.

I prefer to rough cut. Lay the template on your fabric and cut out about a 1/2" more all the way around

Cut with scissors or a rotary cutter

Rough cut block

You will need to cut out 3 white blocks. Cut two of them into two triangles. The third one cut into 4 triangles. For each of the colored fabrics you will need to cut 1 full block and then cut it into two triangles. Use one triangle to measure with and cut out one more triangle. This 3rd triangle cut it into two smaller triangles.

This is a Boston Block layout. You can see one small white triangle on the left and a small pink triangle on the right with a blue large triangle at the bottom

Sew the two small triangles together

Trim the bottom of the two triangles even. Place them face down onto the blue triangle, You can trim the large triangle if you like but I don't bother as you can use the trimmed edge of the joined triangles as a sewing guide. So now sew the pieced tris to the large tri.

Here are your joined triangles ready to cut.

Lay your template on the joined tris and make sure the corners of your template is on the seams. Hold the template in place and cut out around the template. This is the place to be as accurate as you can. The more accurate you are here the more problems you will prevent later on

Here is your first Boston Block

Here is the next layout for the next Boston Block. Follow the directions above to make your second Boston

Third layout for your third Boston

Fourth layout for the fourth Boston

Now the remaining small triangles go into the middle block. Lay them out and sew two sets of two triangles together, After you get the two sets sewn then sew them together the same way you did the Bostons. Since you have two seams in the middle I like to match them and then put a tack(sew a stitch across the seams) so the seams won't move. Then I pin the ends and sew them together

See the tack? I think it holds better than pins do. Sorry I was using white thread and it doesn't show up real well.

After you get all 4 small triangles sewn into the joined fabrics ready to cut you now need to cut out the Combo 4 patch square. But be careful that the corners of your template stay on the seams as you cut. This is what happens when the template moves when you cut. Look at the top left corner and the top right corners. The seam should come up evenly through the fabric, These two corners have more fabric on the left of the seam than on the right side. So I had to gently trim it even.

The way the block should look. The corners are all even. When you do this tho make sure your square is still close enough to the size block you need or you may have to do it over.

Now repeat the steps to make the HSTs. Using the large white triangles and the large colored triangles sew them together into joined fabrics. Then use your template to cut out the HST from the center. You should now have 4 HSTs that are half white and half color(one for each color)

Here is the layout of all the Bostons and HSTs and the one Combo block you just made.

Sew two blocks together as shown here. Sorry about the shadow! LOL it was the only good photo out of 3.

Sew two sets of two together

Now sew on the third set of twos together and the third block to the bottom of the other set of two. I prefer this method of joining instead of sewing them into rows, I feel I have better control of keeping the blocks straight and not crooked when I join them this way

And Ta Da! You now have a Card Trick Quilt Block. If you take time to make sure each block is accurate as you cut it out of the joined fabrics and you check each time you sew two blocks together to make sure they are straight and not crooked then your quilt block should come out square and need little to no trimming to make it a true square. Prevention is soooo much better than having to redo.