Tumbling Blocks Purse Tutorial

One of the most iconic perspective designs is the tumbling blocks. It´s fairly easy once you get the trick and makes such a cool visual effect! Plus, you´ll be able to use all those long strips of fabric that most of us keep and don´t know what to do with. The effect is created by weaving the strips and thus it´s like creating your own fabric block.

You´ll need strips of 3 different colors, I went with white, grey and black. I´ve cut mine from remnants of other projects and it doesn´t have to be on the bias. I decided on 4cm of width so I could fold in the long edges by 1cm on each side, ending up with 2cm wide strips with the folded edges hidden, but you can go narrower or wider. You can also glue or add a bit of interfacing to the strips to give it more sturdiness and avoid fraying. I didn´t bother about lenght because I was gonna cut my block later and just use a piece of it.

I started by placing the white strips all aligned over a piece of fabric and everything placed on cardboard, which is good should you decide to pin the strips or just tape like i did to secure. Next we´ll start the weaving: I started from right to left by placing the grey strips a little under a 45 degree angle and the pattern for weaving them with the white ones is two under, one over, two under one over, get it?

The grey strips go under two of the white, then up over just one white, then down under two again. You then just have to repeat it and start the next row by moving one step to the left. And when you end a row fix it, either by pining or taping.

Now for the black strips: you´ll start from left to right, at the same angle, but with an opposite pattern: two over, one under, two over, one under. This is related to the white strips, your black ones (or other color) will go over two whites and under one and then repeat. Now the tricky bit is that by this time you´ll already have the grey ones weaved in place, so when you go under the white one, you´ll also go under the adjacent greys. Here´s a zoom in:

And that´s all! Once you get the hang of it you´ll do it in a blink! I also found it helpful to use a bodkin (or a safety pin) to get the strips thru, your weaving will get tight and this will help. Once you´re happy with your panel you can use it for whatever you decide, depending on the lenght you started with!

I just used a small rectangle of my block to make a little cool purse. I carefully pined the edges to the under layer of fabric I had placed first, transfered it to the sewing machine and sewed a rectangle, then cut the remnant all around, just remember to leave some seam allowance if you´re gonna sew it.

I used mine to make a simple zipper purse, one can never have too many purses right? Well, actually that´s not very sustainable but at least it´s all made with scraps, ha! And it´s one of a kind, that´s for sure.