Basic Crazy Quilt Piecing By Hand

hello and welcome to ivory blush roses crazy quilting and beyond my name is Lisa Boni and today we're going to create something beautiful stay tuned to see how we can take a few basic crazy quilting supplies and create a beautiful block with them to make our block we are going to use the supplies we covered in our basic crazy quilting supplies episode you'll want some muslin fabric scraps thread needle scissors you're also going to want a ruler a pencil and a 6 inch template that you can either make out of paper or you can use a plastic quilting ruler such as I've shown here this omni grid ruler I will be showing you how to make the six inch template in a later episode so let's make a simple block we're gonna make probably a six inch block and I'm gonna use some of those scrap fabrics we had out I have a piece of scrap muslin one of the reasons I like simple unbleached muslin is it has a looser weave and you can see how you can actually see through it a little bit which means that it's gonna be a little easier to get the needle through so when I'm when I'm sewing with my needle I'm not worrying about fighting that background fabric since we're going to be going through multiple layers of fabrics so I just want to square this is just a scrap from something I'm not even going to measure it it's roughly rectangular so to make a square I'm simply going to I'm a bawling a square folding it diagonally and I'm gonna just trim along with my scissors that scrap I'll save for something else so now I have a rough square look at this fun piece of birds that's gonna work really well with that assortment of embroidery thread that we had out earlier and I could choose to use this in just one spot or I could use it in two or three spots so when I look at this I see we have this pair of bluebirds there's a wren there's some finches maybe another brand I think I'd like these bluebirds to sort of be the center and so if I want to save these birds as much as possible I'm going to cut evenly in between them and I'm going to do the same up here although I'm gonna leave a little more room around the bluebirds I think will go like so so now I have this nice multi-sided block I can put my bird sitting up straight which works great but you notice all my angles are not square so I'm not gonna cut the other birds until I get to a spot where I think maybe I would use them so now I want to look what other fabric did I have in this pile of scraps that would go well this looks just going to be a very simple block using the Cotton's out of the scrap bin so here I'm just sorting fabrics trying to figure out which ones look like they're going to go and I'm also sorting them out by color groups which makes it easier for me to decide which pieces I want to include on this particular project so I'm going to start in I'm gonna piece this one by hand I'm not going to use the sewing machine I do have my little iron set up you don't need a fancy iron and to be truthful I have have used my fingers to piece quite a bit and I'll show you how I do that here in just a minute but we have our kind of centerpiece down that we're going to use as our focal point and now I think what I would like to do I will often lay a piece down let's see how that goes and the idea is is that we're gonna build from this we're gonna just bring things out one at a time and see where we can go with it so I'm gonna start with this green one I like the way it's going so far I like how bright it is and I'm gonna put it down there and I'm going to lay it it's not ironed I'm not gonna worry about that I have picked a needle out it's one is just a standard embroidery needle and I'm just pulling off a length of thread so I'm just using one strand of thread and I'm going to pick it up now and I see where my edge is I'm just gonna do a running stitch I don't pin it or anything because it doesn't matter I'm gonna separate it out so I like to do a a seam width that's anywhere from 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch and I'm just doing a little running stitch along here and the more thread more stitches you put on your needle at a time the straighter your seam will be and if you have a hard time figuring out how to stay in a straight line and not crooked then all you need to do is take a pencil and a ruler or the edge of a book and all you need to do is draw a little line you're gonna be on the inside it's not gonna matter I would not use pen you don't want to have it leaking through but pencil marks never come off no matter how many times you wash it they'll fade but they never really quite go away so that's the only time I ever mark with pencil is when I'm doing this pretty fine or can be you can see they vary it doesn't make a big difference I'm just doing a little simple running stitch and I want to go all the way to the edge of that bottom piece the top one I'm not going to worry about going all the way to the end because we're gonna be trimming some of that away here in a few minutes now if I was on the machine I would not be nodding my threads on this but I know with with a running stitch it tends to pull out a little bit easier so I'm just putting a simple not taking my main scissors that's all I'm using for this project using my basic supplies I'm gonna put a knot in the end because otherwise I forget when I go to put the next piece on so now you can see that running stitch it's just simple the stitches aren't particularly even they're even a little bit wavy along that line that's fine it's not going to matter a whole lot remember we're gonna be adding embroidery and that also is going to help down so now I fold it over and if I want to just do a finger press I actually take my my thumbnail and I just press hard along that scene and with Cotton's the beauty of the majority of them is that actually presses the seem really nice but the flatter I want my block to stay an iron can be very helpful tool so I would put that in one of your not while not necessary it's a nice-to-have item so I'm gonna take this over to the iron press on that so now we can see how nice and flat that lies the piece is flattened out I can see everything and I generally don't trim off these ends until I have put the next piece on think I would like to use this pink fabric next so originally I was putting it up here but it looks a little busy next to this bird so I think maybe I would like it down here better so to use it I'm going to turn it over and I'm going to line up I'm still lining up with the edge of my original piece and I want to bring it out so I'm going to sew from here and I'm going to go all the way along here I want to leave a little bit of extra just so that I have a little trim room to go and especially when I'm sewing things down by hand so now I'm going to turn it here's my edge so I know I'm going to start right in there [Music] I'm just gonna take my scissors and trim it off there and now I don't have too much bulk so again I can finger press just using my thumbnail this is a little softer fabric so it doesn't doesn't press quite as firmly as that batik did but it still does a nice job now this one I do have a lot of bulk in that fabric and so I probably am gonna take some of that off here it's just too much so I'm gonna just cut in about the same line it doesn't have to be quite even that's not gonna matter so much I think I'm gonna come over here and put a fabric here so I'd like to bring the green through so I think maybe this is a good spot so I have to decide do I want green and blue or green you know where it's a little bit different or do I want to pull that pink through and I think I want to pull that pink through so let's put that one here and here we go so now we're just stitching this next piece down and then we're gonna play with some fabric ideas trying to see what fits in the different places just trying out ideas this is the fun part it takes me a while I try lots of different things it's kind of fun to see what all the possibilities are you can see kind of money thought process here and pointing and thinking about things as we go ultimately I decided to change things up just a little bit we still got our our rent what if we bring that ran in and put it here it might not be sitting up quite straight but I think it will still work well if we put it up in here somewhere so I think before this piece goes in this one needs to go in and maybe we're going to try and line it up with that so that then we can come with this and not lose our bird I like that one I think that's the one I'm going to put in next so this one you'll notice I'm not matching up an edge here I'm going to be stitching off in a completely different area and that's okay we're gonna trim all that off and even though we're stitched down I'll trim that stitching but the second row of stitching will help hold it so I'm just going to start I've left a little bit of extra here so that I can have my edges match well [Music] isn't this turning out to be a fun block so I think the next one I'm gonna add is this one but I realized that I have this piece here and I think I would like it to carry up I want to be able to see that blue so I'm gonna just fold it back and we're going to put this one in I still want a little overlap and that's gonna work out almost perfectly [Music] and now I'm gonna work around that little spot so I just pulled it back pop the stitch and there it is and if I need to I can take a little pin and pin that down for the time being but I'm not going to stitch that down at this point I certainly could go back and stitch it down but I'm not going to on this particular occasion so to keep track of where my block is at if I'm working with minimal supplies maybe I just have a basic ruler and you just want to measure and get an idea are we six inches wide we're pretty close you do want to come a little bit beyond because you need some room to sew it together into whatever the finished project will be so I still have a little bit of ways to go before we get there so the ruler can work well it's sometimes a little harder to square it up you can use you know any kind of a ruler clear plastic one whatever you happen to have a sewing tape measure will work so let's come back to this I'm going to press this crease out of this fabric because it's gonna be hard to figure out exactly where it lays until I go and I think this is a good time to just take the iron and give my whole block a little press so I'm going to do that very quickly okay so now we're pressed out [Music] and because I want to maximize this yellow fabric I think we're gonna bring it back out right in there and there's where we're gonna go and so then when we come in with this one and then bring it all the way across I'm finger pressing this because this seam is not going to be straight on this fabric it's actually going to angle off a little bit trying to preserve the head of that little bird I don't really want to cut his face off so there we have about where we're going to put that but I need to get this one sewn down first so I'm going to take that put that in [Music] you [Music] it's time to stitch this bird down because otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to lose that so I have that finger press here it's hard to see on the video but there's a little bit of a crease there I am going to make sure I start my stitching there [Music] you [Music] there we go seeing that bird is just perfectly in line I'm really happy with how that turned out we're gonna come up and decide where to bring this so I have this point and this point that needs to get covered up so I'm looking at this so we're gonna have this nice triangle of yellow here the pink pulling through which I like the blue pulling through and so when I do this I want to stay just that's my biggest point right there that I need to worry about and I'm gonna just do the same thing just gonna get started and stitch it right down [Music] you can see I got a little pucker right here where my steam wasn't quite straight you know what no worries with crazy quilting we're gonna fold it over we're gonna press it down I have a little gap there where that seam went but I can fold it and get that nice and straight and especially once I press it down you will never know the difference but look at this one how that fabric almost disappeared completely that's something I hadn't quite anticipated so if I need to fill in with more I think I'm going to add that fabric in down here if I need to square that block off so one last little thing and we're almost done [Music] you'll press that to the side we are almost done let me give this a quick press with the iron there we are so there is our block you know it looks really wonky right now because it has all these gaps around the outside but look when we put this on here I'm just going to use a regular pencil to mark this this what I'm gonna mark is gonna actually end up ever so slightly outside of my stitching line when I assemble the blocks so I can use a pencil for it I've positioned my template where I want it I'm just gonna run it along mark a line if the line is gonna be just ever so slightly away from the edge of the block I'm holding the template down very tight and snug go over it a couple of times if you want and now it's hard to see but my line is there and if I want I can come back and use my thread just baste a stitch right around that area and and these don't need to be fine stitches they can be big fat stitches because all you're doing is holding the edges down which will make it easier when you're doing your embroidery and when I have a loose edge like this one here where we pinned it earlier I want to make sure I catch that edge down to help keep that piece of fabric from moving around so just a big big fat basting stitch this will actually get pulled out more than likely when we go to assemble it with other blocks so just a quick stitch but it will make it very clear and easy to see as we stitch where our border or edge is and it keeps those fabrics a little nicer and neater and once I have it in then I can come back and trim off all this extra fabric that's going to be flapping around and getting in my way while I'm trying to do the embroidery on this block [Music] so I'm just gonna square this up I'm going to leave about half an inch of fabric if there is that much around the outside that gives me again room to stitch it together [Music] there voila now we have an a crazy quilt block ready to go the next step is going to be choosing our embroidery threads to use and getting going with some stitching thank you for watching today's episode don't forget to subscribe click on the Bell to be notified of new episodes give me a thumbs up down below and I'd love to hear your comments or questions in the comment section below thank you for watching happy stitching let's go create something beautiful you

Channel: Ivory Blush Roses

Views: 50,434

Rating: 4.9543424 out of 5

Keywords: crazy quilting, CQ, stitching, fabric, Crazy Quilting Tutorial, Beginner, crazy quilting for beginners, craft vlogs, crazy quilting techniques, crazy quilting by hand, crazy quilt piecing, Basic Crazy Quilting Series

Id: 5ye-ymTx228

Length: 23min 9sec (1389 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2019