Circle the Intersection for Perfect Results

UPDATE JUNE 2024
Should we change the name from “circling the intersection” to “going roundabout” now? It is almost like “going walkabout”—taking a break from work and refreshing our spirits.

Whatever you call it, we have a wonderful technique for getting beautiful intersections in hundreds of designs with Hexagons & More 1.375-inch shape collection PDF and those shapes are still at a LOW sale price. (Act fast!)

Circle the Intersection

Every intersection in your quilt blocks can be PERFECT when you use a simple hand piecing technique to “circle the intersection.”

It allows you to brag about your precise results as much as you like and be confident that your friends will be impressed.

I circle intersections routinely (above) when I’m hand piecing but <gasp> you can use this technique to tighten up machine pieced intersections after the fact too. Cool, eh?

We love crosshairs printed with Inklingo!

Circling the Intersection highlights the advantages of having crosshairs to mark the seam endings on all our Inklingo shapes.

I demonstrate “circling the intersection” in this short video. (4 minutes, 2012)

According to Johnny Cash (music below):
Thread is a lovely thing
And it makes a nice tight ring
‘Round on lines desired
I sew into a star admired

As the video shows, when you get to an intersection pass the needle through the crosshairs one pair of seam allowances at a time, all the way around, and then continue along the seam as usual.

This technique is illustrated in The Inklingo Handbook too.

I demonstrated how to circle the intersection on The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims in 2021. Alex said she had never seen it before.

If you are not a member of The Quilt Show, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial to watch this one-hour show, # 2911, and any others.

I have been teaching this technique for more than 20 years, since at least 1999, and it is illustrated in detail in my Quilted Diamonds books (2002 and 2004) and in the Quilted Diamonds 2 hand piecing lesson DVD. It works. (Both Quilted Diamonds books are available today.)

Quilted Diamonds is “pre-Inklingo” so in those days we marked the crosshairs manually. It’s even better when we print them precisely with Inklingo.

This same technique works for any intersection like the 6-pointed Stars in the video and also 8-pointed stars, Castle Wall, Cleopatra’s Fan, and many, many others, thanks to Inklingo’s precision crosshairs.

As I told Alex, I wish there was a catchier name than “circling the intersection” for such a wonderful sewing method. The Pieced Hexagons I’ve been sewing lately got me thinking about it again. Do you like “going roundabout?”

Should we call Circling the Intersection “Going Roundabout” or the “Ring of Thread?”

Sing along with me and The Man in Black, okay?

Thread is a lovely thing
And it makes a nice tight ring
‘Round on lines desired
I sew into a star admired

I sew into a lovely ring of thread
I go round, round, round and the points get tighter
And it works, works, works
The ring of thread, the ring of thread

(instrumental break, time to take a few stitches)

I sew into a lovely ring of thread
I go round, round, round and the points get tighter
And it works, works, works
The ring of thread, the ring of thread

Nice tight stars are sweet
When points like ours meet
It’s easy with Inklingo lines
Oh, and the points are fine

I sew into a lovely ring of thread
I go round, round, round and the points get tighter
And it works, works, works
The ring of thread, the ring of thread

I sew into a lovely ring of thread
I go round, round, round and the points get tighter
And it works, works, works
The ring of thread, the ring of thread

And it works, works, works
The ring of thread, the ring of thread
The ring of thread, the ring of thread…

5-Pointed Stars are perfect for this and there is an illustration in the PDF showing which intersections I circle to get perfect points on the stars under a tab on that page.

I have made dozens of Pieced Hexagons lately with the new Hexagons & More 1.375-inch shape collection PDF so I’ve been going roundabout a lot lately.

Try going roundabout now with the 8-pointed stars and other variations in the FREE Diamond Triangle Square shape collection.

Longtime Inklingoists have been circling the intersection for decades. Is it too late to start calling it going roundabout instead? You tell me, okay?

Whatever you call it, it is a wonderful technique for getting beautiful intersections in hundreds of designs with Hexagons & More 1.375-inch shape collection PDF.

Monkey extended the sale price, so you can save if you act fast.

Let me know what you think of the new name—after you place your order—okay?

I’m going to find something Russ and I can watch on TV so I can go roundabout tonight.

Love the lines. Quilt more!