Chicken Pin Cushion

hi I'm Sharlene Jorgenson and welcome to quilting from the heartland today I am going to show you how to make chicken pin cushions or door stops using the log cabin templates by now you know that we've done many different things with the log cabin templates and these are really fun little projects to do the chickens that our pin cushions are made from the miniature log cabin templates and then of course the larger ones are from the larger log cabin templates which I came out with first the chickens can be either made in two hands or roosters depending on how you connect the blocks in the end you'll notice that on the hand we have the light part of the block towards the top and then on the rooster we have the dark part on the on the block on the larger ones my neighbors when they were stuffing them decided that they needed a little decoration on them so they added a bow to the hand and then the waddles to the rooster and that's something that we just pinned on so that you could see how it added to the rooster these are cute just sitting around the house to as decorations if that's what you want to use them for wonderful bizarre items or gifts for your quilting friends now I've used scraps to make my chickens and that's I'm sure what most of you will want to do is use scraps leftover from some of your last sewing projects some of you might have brighter fabrics and so they would match probably the decor in your home better these are left over from the pineapple log cabin which I'm going to be showing you next week how to do some of my scraps were larger than others and ahead of time I have laid some of them on top of each other to get get them ready to do the strips this one is smaller and then here we've got some tinier pieces under here but that doesn't matter we're going to cut them all at the same time anyway and we will first straighten them all at one time to get ready to use the logs for cutting and I do all my cutting with the small rotary cutter rather than the large one I find that I have more accuracy with the small cutter the first cut I make I always go backwards first and then forward and I move my left hand ahead as I'm cutting that way I won't move the ruler and always remember to close the cutter before you place it down and then I allow plenty of room to turn the whole board with all of the fabric up on top of the board that way I won't lose some of the accuracy that I've started out with now I'm going to cut many logs at a time and off to my right you'll see all the different shapes that are used in the log cabin block and of course I'm not going to cut all of those today but you'll see how they graduate from small to large and that I have little fabric grips on the backside and that keeps them from sliding when I'm cutting the fabric now the quarter inch seam allowance is included in all the templates which is a really nice feature to have now I'm going to place I'm just going to take one particular template and show you how you determine how wide to cut your strips I'm going to cut the strips of fabric to accommodate the length rather than the width and that way I don't waste as much fabric so this time we're going to cut a three inch strip of fabric I will line the line on the ruler or the three inch line on the ruler with the straightened edge of the fabric and then at one time we will cut seven layers of fabric is what we happen to have this time and we'll remove that out of the way and then I like to move up on a small mat board which I have off to the right and we'll buy fold the fabric up on top of that and then just lay that template up on top of all those strips and you can get a lot of logs cut at one time now if you're going to make a lot of chickens this is the way you would do it you would mass cut many of these or if you are going to go on and make little quilts that I'm going to show you at the end of the program this is how you'd want to do that you wouldn't want to cut just a couple pieces at a time and you just work your way across until you've used up all the strips now if you're going to work just strictly with little scraps of fabric then let's let's just say that your scrap is this small you would lay your template up there and see how you can just take advantage of the smallest piece of fabric that you might have and if you work on a small mat board see how nice it is to turn that board as you work your way around the template so you can use up the tiniest little pieces of fabric that you have in your sewing room now if you're cutting from mini scraps you would just lay many of them up on top of the eachother and get the same thing so I usually stack six to eight layers of fabric always when I'm cutting so you have a dark and a light side to your little hand and you would just repeat that you would cut we have one two three four five six lights in this one and we have one two three four five six darks of logs in this little chicken and you just repeat and do the cutting the logs from the darker fabrics just like I did the light ones the rooster all and the hand also have the little tails and to cut those all you need to do is cut two little two and a half inch squares and there just happens to be a little ruler for that now you place the little square on top of two scraps of fabric and this is going to be for the rooster and again just like cutting out the logs you can turn your board and I bumped it so we'll get to line it up again sometimes I put little fabric grips on the rulers too and that makes it easier to control the ruler when you're cutting ok now the tail feathers are little triangles so to get the triangle I will cut the square in half diagonally going from this point to that point so now we have two tails for the rooster and what we'll do over at the sewing machine is I'll show you how to sew these units together to make the tails that are needed in both the hen and rooster well I think we're ready now to go to the sewing machine and actually make one of these little birds ahead of time I have lined up all the pieces at the sewing machine that are used in the little chickens and we'll set these off to the side so that you can enjoy them while we're working on them actually I need one for a pin cushion over here we're going to start out in the center of the block and here is one completed block all ready to go we'll start in the center of the block and then we'll work our way around adding logs as we go to start the little chickens you have to have a light and a dark and that's what it starts out with in the center so if you are going to make one either a hen or a rooster you would have to have two of these units so you'd have to have two lights and two darks the sewing machine has the perfect scant quarter-inch seam allowance already included in the quilting window that we have to pick from and the reason that I recommend sewing with a scant quarter inch seam allowance is so that you make up for the fabric that's used in the seam line and that's very important for having perfect patchwork to get your blocks to lay nice and flat when they're done if you've ever looked at some quilts you probably see some ripples or probably they've tried to stretch it to fit and that's probably because the right seam allowance hasn't been used I like to always start sewing on an anchor cloth and I don't do any back stitching because it just creates bulk in the corners and I'm not going to use any pins but I will guide these tiny little pieces with a stiletto in front of the presser foot we'll just send a couple of these through and then I'll show you how to take a sewing test these are tiny little pieces actually I have started working with miniatures and I just really find that you become hooked with them or hooked on them you go through different stages of what you like to work on and and lately that's what I have have enjoyed mostly is working with littler things after you have sewn the light and dark pieces together you finger press them open and then press with an iron and if you have passed the sewing test these two little pieces will match the next piece that you're going to add and that's how you know if you've done it just right and that's also very important if it doesn't match you might think well I'll just trim it off but your problem will multiply every time you add another piece so you might just as well get it right in the beginning in making the log cabin I prefer to press all my seams open and you'll notice that on the backside of the block there's as much fabric on the back side on the miniatur as there is showing on the right side what I should say is there's as much of the right side of the fabric showing on the wrong side of the block is there is on the right side because the block starts out at a one inch strip and the seam allowances are a quarter inch on both sides okay over to the left here I have taken the block a little farther and started working my way around and I was chained sewing some pieces together and I do that to save time as well as thread and I have already added the B to the top of the block and also I have a dark B over here now we're ready to go to the next lighter piece which would probably be this one and we'll add that one right here I think I had some more fabrics to choose from so we'll switch to another one here you want to alter the the print see we've already used that other one so we want to switch this time now when you add the next log you want to always add it to the side that has two seams to cross over that's how you remember which way to go with this block and because this now fits the next log I have used the correct seam allowance and also with these seams on top so that I don't have to worry about them flipping back on the wrong side and use the Stiletto to hold those seams down as you work your way across the patchwork and we'll be ready for the next piece on this one we'll work on two at a time here you do need two blocks for each chicken whether it be the hen or the rooster okay then we'll finger press it open see how little that piece is in the center you know what I do when I work with miniature pieces like this I find that if I have added starch to washed fabric it's easier to work with the small pieces so what I do first is wash the fabric dry it in the dryer and then I use a spray starch to stabilize the little tiny pieces before I cut them out that way it's a lot easier to work with well it looks like I added that piece wrong because it's very easy to see what I've done this one should have been a dark one instead of a light one so let's show you what the right one will look like well see how this one has gone wrong so we need to have the dark one on this side so let's see if we can do it right this time adding it to the side that has the two seems to cross over well so on to an anchor cloth there that looks a lot better it's important to maintain that light and dark side to the block and always take the time to press as you go notice that I keep a small iron beside me at the sewing machine and then I use the bigger iron when I get when I need to iron bigger pieces of fabric okay now I could use a light piece over here and just keep working your way around the block until you have the unit as big as you want it to be now if I hadn't passed that sewing test in the beginning these logs that I'm adding now would not be fitting and I would have to be easing them or trimming off the extra and so what happens if you're making a large quilt all your blocks would be a different size and so you'd have to square them all up and then the last round of your block would be distorted okay there that was the right one to do now we would be ready for another light one over here and you would just keep working your way around doing the same thing always adding to light and then to a dark until you have a completed block well then after you've made two of these it's time to make it into a hand or a rooster if you want to make it into a hen you put the two light sides together to make the top of the little hen and ahead of time I have inserted in here the comb that goes at the top of the head and a little beak over here and you have to allow plenty of room for the pivot for the seam allowance so you don't get the beak and the comb on top of each other we'll just pin those in place and then we'll move this to the side and we'll show you what we're going to do here ahead of time this one has already been sewn in what what we have done here is put like I said the to light sides together and the two dark parts of the block together and to make it into a hen or if you wanted to make it into a rooster you would just flip reverse it and put the dark up here you sew a little ways here then leave an opening for stuffing it around and leave one dark side completely open and that's where we're going to put the tail after you have made that seam then you trim the bulk off of the corner for turning it now we have to add some tails so to make the tails what you take is those two triangles that we sewed or cut out earlier and you match them right sides together and you're going to leave the bias edge open and so here and here and then you will clip the curve the corner off like this and then you would turn it inside out and then you have to have one tail a little bit smaller than the other so what I did was I decided which one I want it on top and then I trim them to the same size and that's what's going to be now inserted in the little hen now to make the shape of of the little hen you're going to pull the two seams together and you're going to stick the little tail inside of there you know what you might want to do is find the center of the tail but it up there looks like we have it in the center and then we'll sew across the top or across the bottom of the chicken it's pretty easy to do and like I said earlier it's a great Bazaar item that you can make we'll check to see that our seams are open on the bottom and we'll be just about ready to turn it inside out for this part now you would want to reverse at the very end to strengthen the corner and to clip the thread we have an automatic thread cutter it lifts the presser foot all by itself and you just pull it out from the back and we are ready to turn our little chicken you might want to cut these corners but let's first turn it inside out and make sure that we have sewn it correctly and I think we have you pull your comb out in your little beak of course you take some kind of a blunt object to push out the corners and there's our little hen and like I said I prefer to stuff it with the crushed walnut shells of course you don't want to have the walnuts in there because they have oil in them but we found our crushed walnut shells at a gun shop they must use them for some part of the gunsmithing or something I'm not just sure but that's where we found our crushed walnuts you know for there's a lot of other things that you can do with this block when it's completed and I'd like to show you some of the little miniature quilts that we've also done with the same block that I showed you how to make after you have made that one basic block there are many different ways that you can arrange it to create the little quilts and these are just some of the fun things that we have done with it this one is very unusual and I don't know if it has a name or not but I like the effect that it gives and also when you look at it notice how we have done the quilting because the pieces are so small we decided to put a little motif in the light area and then the dark area has a meandering on it on the next one that I'm showing you we've done it in a diagonal set in it that these ideas are just created by twisting and turning the blocks in many different ways and in the light area you'll notice that we have put a leaf design down the center and also we have used a thread to stitch on the light area that's darker than the light fabric so that it shows up a lot better and these logs then have been stitched in the center of each one and we've done it in an L design on this particular one and out on the outside edge we've done a continuous line swirly design on the next one this is one of my favorite ones we have done it in a zigzag set and on the light area we have put some quilting with a feather design down in here and same thing was done on the dark one we actually had to use a larger feather design on the dark area because when you make the log cabin block one half of the block can either be mainly light or mainly dark and in this particular group of blocks we had more dark in our block than we had in the light so I hope you've enjoyed watching all the different things that we've done with a simple traditional log cabin block today I sure have a lot of fun working with it I've decided that I can spend my whole lifetime creating things with this particular set of templates

Channel: Quilting From The Heartland

Views: 89,537

Keywords: Miniature, miniature log cabin, log cabin, colorado log cabin, heartland log cabin, courthouse steps, pineapple log cabin, streak of lightning, barn raising, Christmas wreath, chicken pin cushion, acrylic templates, quilt, quilting, sharlene jorgenson, shar jorgenson, quilting from the heartland, quilting with shar, piecing, sewing, inspired by shar, stiletto, rotary cutter, chain sewing

Id: cP7IOO3AdgQ

Length: 24min 20sec (1460 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2015