Beginner to WINNER!!! DONNA'S BEST FIRST QUILT FOR BEGINNERS!! "It's Only Triangles" Pattern

hi i'm donna jordan from jordan fabrics today we're going to make a quilt now one question i regularly get in my emails is what's a good beginner quilt what's a good pattern to start with i know how to sew but i want to make my first quilt well that's exactly what i'm going to show you how to make today an easy quilt that has a simple method but when you're all done it will be beautiful and you will feel accomplished not like a beginner at all we are going to use something called a pre-cut to make this quilt now a pre-cut is just something that fabric manufacturers put together that's a bunch of prints from one collection usually 40 different ones and that makes it easy for you to get a nice variety of prints that coordinate without having to go and select 40 different fabrics to buy for today's project i'm going to use something called a layer cake that's this group of 10 inch squares i've got 40 different 10 inch squares here and these are from laurel birch and they're nice and bright once you've picked out a layer cake with some nice prints that you like you're going to need a second layer cake and that's going to be for the background so you probably want something that's solid or neutral i'm going to use this nice solid white one because it's going to look really good with all these bright prints now if you'd like to make a smaller quilt it's very easy instead of using the 10 inch layer cake squares you can use something called a charm pack these are five inch squares there's 40 of them and the method will be exactly the same but the quilt will be smaller so if you're using charms to make your quilt it's the same thing you're going to need one pack of prints that you like and then a second pack for the background i'm going to use this nice solid black okay our first step is to get these open the first thing we're going to do is mark the back side of each of these background squares so we're going to be putting a line on the reverse side of the fabric now my fabric doesn't have a right or wrong side it's the same on both sides so it doesn't matter but yours may have a right and wrong side so we want to put a straight edge i'm using my plastic ruler here and i'm just going to use a pencil here and i'm going to make a light line from one corner down to the far corner and i'm going to do that on every single one of the background squares once you've got all of those marked take the backgrounds and your printed squares straight to the sewing machine so what we're going to do is take one of these squares and one of the backgrounds and i'm putting them right sides together that way i can see my pencil line here and we're going to stitch on both sides of this line we're going to stitch a quarter inch away from the line now my presser foot is a quarter inch wide so if i put the edge of this right on that line i'm going to get a nice quarter inch seam and you can always double check you can make a seam on a piece of paper even and measure make sure yours is a quarter inch but that's pretty standard so i'm going to go all the way down this side and then i'm just going to turn it around and i'm going to stitch down the other side once you've done that with all of your squares you want to trim right along this drawn line we're just going to cut it right on that same line so get your plastic ruler place it right on the line which again is corner to corner and cut and that's going to give us two squares so now we're going to take these to the ironing board i like to put the background fabric down first and then peel the top open if you kind of peel it open and press with your hands like that you can make sure that this seam stays nice and straight we don't want it to bow or to sink down at all so press a little with your hands and then get your iron and i like to do it dry first and once it looks pretty flat then i'll add some steam and that steam really sets that seam allowance so that the seam allowance is going away from this light background the last step is to get rid of this little corner here this is called a dog ear and it adds a lot of extra bulk if we leave that in so we don't want that extra bulk in our quilt so i'm just going to take some scissors and trim those off now if you're using charms it's exactly the same procedure i'm still going to mark the back of the background squares now if your background is very dark like mine here you probably can't see a pencil line so i'm going to use either a white charcoal pencil or a silver something so that the line will show up so put these right sides together sew a quarter inch on both sides cut these right on that drawn line now this time i'm going to iron the seam allowances toward the background because the background is dark there's kind of a rule in quilting you want to iron your seam allowances toward the darker fabric most of the time there's exceptions but that's generally what you want to do once those are all done now comes the fun part i really like when i get to lay the blocks out and start to see a secondary pattern so i'm going to start in the middle of the quilt and i'm just going to be laying these out in what we would call a barn raising pattern so we're going to start in the center and we're going to have bigger and bigger diamonds now i'm just doing this from memory because i've made a lot of quilts and i kind of know which piece is going to go where but we do have a free pattern even though it's a very easy quilt to make we have a free pattern that will have this layout and several other layouts so you can have fun laying all of your blocks out into a big quilt so now that we've got a little bit more of it laid out you can see that we've got a row so to speak a row of all the colors then a row of backgrounds and that is what you get because all the squares are half print and half background so we can turn them and get more pattern showing this is really my favorite part of quilting this is the part where i get to see a secondary pattern pop out so it's hard to envision when you're just making these that you can get any kind of different look at all so the more blocks i lay out the more of that pattern i'm seeing show up and i'm not worrying right now about exactly which color is going where once i have everything laid out then i might worry a little more about trading colors around to make sure that the individual colors are balanced the pink and the green are sprinkled throughout evenly okay it's all laid out and it's pretty simple to do if you just start in the middle you just build your background and your prints in bigger and bigger diamonds once i have it laid out i like to stand back and look and see if the colors look balanced for instance i might not want all my pink in one corner i want to make sure it's distributed evenly now sometimes of course you want all the pink in one area all the purple in another and then in another area and you can do that too it's a lot of fun to mix around the colors also i like to put the fabrics i like the best in the very center and i like this green a lot so i think i might trade that one there and then before i sew the blocks together i'm going to give it one last check and make sure i don't have any of the blocks turned the wrong way now for the charm squares i did a completely different layout and you can see it's a lot smaller so if you want to make a lap size even a wall hanging this would be perfect so the layout is quite a bit more elaborate but it's all done just by twisting those blocks around and this layout will also be included in the free pattern now that everything is laid out we're ready to put this into a quilt top and i want to show you the way that i keep everything in order so i don't get any of the blocks mixed up i'm going to make this row at a time so for the first row the easiest way to make sure you get them in the right order is just to overlap them quite a bit and just put a pin in there there are other methods sometimes i stack them but that's because i've had a lot of practice if i do it like this and pin all the blocks into a row i know that they are not going to get spun around and they're not going to get out of order so i'm just going to take this first row off right to the machine so i know these two get sewn together i'm going to take that pin out put them right sides together and stitch it together with a quarter inch seam now i'm going to do something called finger pressing so i'm going to press this seam to the side and i'm going to do that by holding it open with my hands here and then drawing my fingernail or the tip of my finger right down that seam so it's not pressed with my iron it's just finger pressed but doing that will help keep that seam going the way you want it to go i'm going to continue adding pieces and i'm going to finger press all of the seams in this row all in the same direction so i'm going to put this right back where it came from and then i'm going to do the same thing with the second row now on the second row i'm still going to finger press but the seam allowance is going to be going in the opposite direction and i'll show you why in just a second here's that second row and now i can show you why we want those seam allowances going in different directions so they're going this way here and that way there so when we come to sew these two rows together the seam allowances are going in opposite directions and that's going to make it easy to match the intersection and it's going to make less bulk there so i'm going to keep sewing the blocks into rows until i've got all the rows finished then i'm going to sew the rows together then the whole top will be done at this point the top is all finished and i've got it loaded onto the quilting machine now any quilt top needs to be quilted needs to have all the layers stuck together with stitching so you can either do that on your home machine or you can send it to a service a long armor who will have a machine like this and they can get it all quilted for you you could also add borders if you like before you put it on the machine it has to be finished with binding but all those steps those are common to finishing any quilt and we have lots of other videos that will show you all those steps if you want more information on those but for now let's pick out some thread and get this quilted for thread colors there's lots of choices for this quilt it's got these nice deep bold colors in it already so we could pick from any of the colors in the quilt now these dark colors the purple and the blue they're fairly extreme they're going to show up a lot on the white and not near as much in the printed areas same with the pink if you like pink that'd be a great choice now these two are a little bit lighter they're going to tend to recede more and that's normally what i like so it's still going to show up this one also still going to show up i really think i'm going to use this one the quilting is going to show because there's so much solid it'll show with texture and then we'll have that hint of blue that'll just be perfect for the quilting pattern i'm using this one called van gogh it's nice and abstract and swirly and it kind of echoes the kind of prints that are in the top [Applause] the quilt is all done and as you can see it doesn't look like a beginner quilt it's hard to believe that it's made just from this one block turned different ways now this is called a half square triangle block and you'll see this in many different quilt patterns often mixed with other kinds of blocks but you get that overall secondary pattern going and look at the quilting here can you see those little swirls it's not real prominent it just recedes in so it doesn't overtake the boldness of the pattern and then on the back side just a hint if you move it around because i used the same color thread as what's on the background there now it's big it turned out i think it's 72 by 90 so you can make a nice big quilt with just those two packages of the layer cake squares now the smaller quilt made from the charm squares this one looks really elaborate but again it's just made with that one block so you just have this twisted and turned different ways and that just looks really nice with the deep black and i used a light lavender thread here so the quilting is more prominent on this one this one turned out 32 by 40. i used a big bold print on the backside it's always fun to use something big and fancy now these are fabrics from k facet he's a designer who always uses bright bold fabrics and they just really pop against that black background thanks for watching our tutorial today we hope you enjoyed it and i hope that gives you an idea of a good beginner quilt to start with now i'd be interested to know which color do you like better i do really like the deep bold prints here with the black but this one is very cheerful too so leave a comment and let me know which one you like better now at the end of every video we always do a giveaway we try to give away a quilt and that's what we're doing today this is called chain links this is a pattern designed by deb grogan from the quilt factory and look it's got half square triangles in it so that's what i was talking about we mix these blocks into a lot of different patterns now you can win this today by clicking the link right below the video that says giveaway and you enter just your email address and your name and we can send this to a winner anywhere in the world so good luck now if you enjoy our videos and you would like to support us the best thing you can do is subscribe to our youtube channel that really helps us out happy quilting you

Channel: Jordan Fabrics

Views: 76,966

Rating: 4.9786634 out of 5

Keywords: Quilt, quilting, quilts, 12 block, log cabin, fabric, fabrics, pre cuts, table runner, table runners, sew, sewing, log cabin 12 blocks, Jordan Fabrics, Jordan's, jordan, floating point, Floating Point, Donna Jordan, Matt Jordan, Patterns, 4k, Batik Bali Batik, tutorial, let's make, vlog, quilt shop, quilt store, BEGIN, beginner, beginners, new, first, start, howto, make, build, stitch, cut chofp, easy, fast, layer, cake, charm, charms, squres, square, squares, half, triangle, triangles, kaffe, fassett

Id: itg0r6yzdAk

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021