Bee In My Bonnet Design Board Tutorial

welcome to my studio today we're going to talk all about my design boards my daughter cassidy is filming and here she's showing you how i keep my design boards stacked up with all different projects i always seem to have a lot of different projects going at once and by keeping them there on the design boards they're safe and secure until i'm ready to start on that project again so i have three different sizes of b and my bonnet design boards i have the small and the medium and the large the larger 18 inches square the medium or 14 inches square and the smaller 10 inches square i also have a new smaller size they're called bitty boards and they're seven inches square and i use those inside my project bags for cross stitch i use all four of these sizes pretty much daily and when i'm cutting blocks i use the 10 inch size the most so i just grab my fabric my ruler my rotary cutter and i just wanted to show you that in my books every block is lettered so i cut out the pieces on my design board and i label the pieces i can either use alphabities or i can use my sew handy stickers they come in several colors there's letters and there's numbers as well and i just stick them on there label the block and then i can stack up my design boards instead of stacking out so that i can have more room to work now i move up to the larger sizes of design boards when i'm laying my blocks out to sew them together like i showed you in my last video when i'm ready to sew those blocks that i have cut i just take the stack of design boards over to my sewing machine whenever i'm going to teach at a workshop or i'm going to a so day with friends i put my cut pieces or my blocks inside two design boards with rubber bands around that way they're safe and secure i also wanted to show you that i use my small design boards to prepare my applique blocks each block is cut and labeled and ready to go for my prim sew along okay let's talk about how to make a design board i start out with a 20 by 30 foam core board and i cut the board according to the size that i want to make you can get six small design boards which are 10 inches square from 120 by 30 foam core board the thickness of the foam core board that i like to use is 3 8 of an inch foam core board is basically two pieces of poster board with foam inside you can find it in a lot of stores in the school supply section now this is how i cut mine so i just use my ruler and i measure in 10 inches and cut down one side and then i turn over and measure in 10 inches again and cut the other side and the foam just comes apart in the center and it works out perfectly you can see those two little heart stickers on my rotary cutter that means that's an old cutter that i use for my foam core boards so that i don't use it for fabric okay so then i just continue cutting until i've got all my boards ready to go just kind of pull off the little leftover bits there so i came up with these design boards in the early 90s and i've been using them ever since about three or four years ago the b and my bonnet design boards became available for purchase over the years i've done many tutorials on my blog and on videos showing how to make them but today i'm going to show them again because i've had a lot of you ask me how i do it okay let's chat about the fabric for the edge i use two and a half inch wide strips you can use jelly roll strips or just scraps that you have for one ten inch small design board you'll need a two and a half by with the fabric strip when you're making larger design boards you'll just need to cut the strips and sew them together first now the first thing i do when i'm preparing my strip is to press it in half with wrong sides together after i've pressed it in half that crease in the center becomes my guide point so that i can go ahead and take the edge on one end and fold it in to that half crease and press again i do that all along one side and then i start over on the other end and do it down the other side as well [Music] now let's do a little sewing i do a zigzag stitch down the center and i use my needle down and about a setting of a four wide zigzag but first let's chat a little bit about my seems so easy guide it comes in several colors and after lining it up with your needle you cut out on the dotted line my newest one is in this jade color and it comes already cut out so all you have to do is line it up with the lines on your machine now this is meant to be removable and not a permanent guide and i use stick it's or i use washi tape and it's easy to put on and off because of this you literally can use it on any machine so now when placing it on your machine the first thing you want to do is line up that center line with your needle and on most machines you have lines straight lines going both ways and that's why i designed a grid so that you could line it up and make sure that it's going straight because you could start out on the top with it lining up with the needle but as you go down you could make it crooked if you're not lining it up now i just make sure that the opening doesn't cover up my feed dogs and i pull my thread out and i just stick it down okay so i've got my strip under here and i'm just doing a zigzag right down the center i use the lines on my seam guide to keep things straight i also wanted to mention when i'm changing my bobbin in a top loading machine i just simply lift up the guide and stick it back down okay so now my zigzag is complete let's go over and plug in the glue gun so after i sew the zigzag i do press it just to keep it nice and flat so let's glue the batting on first i always cut it a little larger than the square i start with one end and then i flip it over and do the other end and before i stick it down i stretch my batting out because i want it nice and smooth and get all those wrinkles out then i just continue on with the other two ends i just trimmed the edges with scissors but first i'm going to let it cool down in the meantime let's talk about not burning your fingers along with my glue sticks in this bucket i keep a paper creaser from the scrapbooking aisle i keep popsicle sticks and i have these cute little finger hot pads you can find those handy little things on the glue gun aisle of your craft store okay the glue's cooled down enough that we can trim so i go ahead and just trim along the edges the reason i do it this way is i don't want to cut a 10 inch square of batting and then have to stretch and make it fit exactly i'd rather just cut it larger and then trim it afterwards i always place a drop cloth on my surface just to protect it just like i do when i'm painting okay now let's glue the fabric strip on the edges i made these five last night with my prim fabric and i really love how the fabric just really finishes off the edges beautifully so first i trim the white part of the selvage off and then i find the wrong side of my selvage strip where i zigzagged so that that's the part that i glue down to the board so that the right side shows on the outside of the board now this is one of the reasons that i like to do a zigzag because that zigzag is right down the center i know exactly where the center of that strip is and i can glue it right down there on the edge so that when my fabric is glued on both sides it's even now what led me to come up with these design boards is in the early 90s i had been teaching a series of eight week beginning piecing and quilting courses in quilt shops around my state and i found that when my students were making mistakes most of the time is when they were picking up the pieces to take them to the sewing machine or in between ironing and sewing they were turning the pieces and sewing different ends you know wrong together so i got the idea to make each of my students a square design board out a foam core board and use cotton batting so that the little pieces of fabric would stick i wanted it to be large enough to hold a 12 inch block and all of the pieces but i also wanted it to be small enough to make it portable so that they could keep laying out their pieces each time they were sewing and ironing and then between those steps they were laying those pieces out exactly how they would go in the block and they wouldn't get confused and it really worked out great now of course i admit that i still get confused when putting some pieces together but my design boards really help that out and i really really love them and i just don't ever want to sew without them so now that my edges are finished i go ahead and start with the front of the design board and start gluing those edges down when i get to the corner i just do it like you do when wrapping a present or binding a quilt i use whatever tools i have there just to keep my fingers safe and to make it look as good as i can these design boards are never perfect but they're good enough for who it's for and i think they always turn out cute sometimes those corners take a little bit extra time to work with and for the glue to cool down so i just keep my fingers pressed down there longer but if it pops up i can always go back after at the end so okay see that little part over there on the right that has a little bit of glue that kind of showed on the top edge i just let that cool down for just a few seconds and then i'll show you that i take a popsicle stick and i can just kind of like pull that off [Music] so i just continue going around doing each corner after i finished an edge and then continue until i have the front finished and then i'll turn to the back i usually have to finish that little part where the ends meet by adding a little bit more glue and just pushing down to make it as neat as i can then when i'm finished with the front i just turn around and do the same thing to the back now of course you could just have your design board with just the foam core board and batting but i think anything worth making is worth making it cute right and there you go fun and done that's how you make being my bonnet design boards i hope you've enjoyed today's tutorial and that you love the being my bonnet design boards i'll chat with you next time

Channel: Lori Holt

Views: 358,809

Rating: 4.9407382 out of 5

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Id: uO-fosn6Yfs

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020