Easy Fabric Strip Rug

it's time to make an easy fabric strip rug look at all the beautiful examples of fabric strips sewn together to make something very useful for your house you can make these with any type of fabric strip sets for instance we're gonna demo one that's made from one of these strips they're laid out next to each other what beautiful colors you can also make them from batik sets look how gorgeous and earthy those boutiques are or maybe pick your favorite color mine screams make an entirely green rug you can also use some of the classic strip set these come in very bright red colors this one was done we even have strip sets that are available in Christmas colorations or Halloween colorations this quilt was done making this rug was been using this strip set up above and this beautiful red white and black was done using this step set first thing we want to go over is what you need to make an easy fabric strip rug here's a pattern by piece and applique and it's available on www.hsn a blockade com we'll put that at the end of the recording as well this easy fabric strip rug the directions are all you need to be able to do the rug you also need some batting you can of course cut up your batting that is excess after you've done a quilt but if you want to you can buy katak thin on a roll batting it's two and a quarter inches by fifty yards you only need one roll to do the entire quilt again two and a quarter inches by fifty yards you'll also need a large spool of thread you could use aurifil in any bright fun color or you could use a large spool of mutlar for the needles we like to use a jean or denim needle Jean and denim needles are a little stronger than other needles my preferred size is a 90 14 you'll also you might want to use a set of gloves these are Grippit gloves and as you're working around the quilt rug you may want some extra grip enos to your hands so you can use your machine quilters gloves to do that you may also want to do some best press after your rug is done some people lightly spray the rug with best press and then iron it and finally you're going to need 44 pieces of two and a half inch fabric strips in this case we're going to use a line by fandangled which is Krista Watson of kristin quilts and it's made by benartex we're going to use 40 for two and a half inch strips to make our quote anything between 40 and 44 strips should work for your quilt okay to start first thing we need to do is arrange the strips we like to start with the lightest strips in the center and then work our way out to darker strips we use the dark strips on the outer edge because that's going to be the most susceptible to dirt or getting dirty so we try to use a dark strip out there and have the lighter strips toward the center the other thing we like to do is find a pattern that has two pieces in it so in this case these two strips will be the outer edge of the quilt and if you have two strips it'll make it all the way around the outside of the quote so starting with the strip that you want for the centermost you take that strip and put it on your cutting board using your rotary cutter you need to cut a 16 inch piece from both sides of that strip so here I'm just cutting off the remainder of 16 inches here's my original strip now we're gonna start this using a very simple method we put a piece of 16-inch padding down on the table then we take one of the strips that we cut and we put it right sides up and then we take the second one that we cut and we put it right sides down then if you go into the pattern you're gonna find an oval shape you'll need to either copy it or Xerox it so that oval shape is doubled up with arches on each end you can set that onto your fabric and then counter it very lightly we're just going to use that as a guide so I'm gonna pin through this oval this is going to be a start how about if you don't want to pin you can just lay this on your fabric and trace around it with a pen and then just pin the pieces together now it's time to go to the sewing machine so we need to sew all the way around this oval pattern so I'm going to take this piece and put it into the Machine and then use using my beautiful Bernina 7:40 I'll go just off the side of the paper and I get down to the you and I'll go a little slower and go around that corner making a nice arch and then go down the other side you can go high-speed when you hit that long straight through slow down I'm gonna get the ID and go around look code again all you're trying to do is make a nice gentle critter for the center of your face now when you start there on the next slide be sure to leave a gap for turning so we started right here we're going to want to leave a gap about there there's arcing now unpin the pattern and use your pattern can be used time and time again and use your scissors to trim the excess especially around the curves it won't matter on the straightaway but on the curves you want to trim away that excess this will help when you turn it right sides out now turn the piece inside out remember those two right sides together will allow you to just make a nice gentle turn use your favorite turning tool or your scissors to make it go nicely all the way up what you're making is a sandwich oval for the very center of your quilt and that's going to make it a lot easier to apply your fabric strips to it so there's one side and here comes the other once you get that all the way out I go ahead and lightly iron under the seam that I turned it out through so here that's a nice gentle curve as well now grab my iron and iron this under so that it holds okay so I've turned that right side out and I just want to go in there and trim back a little of that excess batting with my scissors just like that and then I take an iron and I press this under and this on top of it just so that I have a nice place that I can sew around the outer edge so here I'm just pressing with my regular iron so there I press this out now I'm going to add a little bit of decorative stitching with the thread that I chose to do this rugged so in order to close the open seam I'm going to stitch along at a quarter inch just put that under I've laced this up with a beautiful blue thread now I just put that down and I stitch a scant quarter inch from the edge that closes the hole and gives a nice separate it's that gentle curve all the way around and start down the other side again we're making an oval for the center of our rug so our objective here is to make a padded oval Center by the way I do have differential feed on and I can lighten up the presser pressure a little for this activity because I've got a lot of then just all-around sweeper only makes it look now we're gonna do a couple more lines of stitching and this is to make this centerpiece look like it was made from a regular stitch strip so I'm going to start and go straight down the middle with a straight stitch I am using the outer parts of the foot to guide it straight down the middle it doesn't have to be too precise with a straight step once I get to the end I move over right into the middle of the place I've just stitched and I now I'm gonna go down the center with a zig zag stitch that's gonna make it look like I had zig zag this together when I do that zig zag I'm going to increase my stitch width to about 4.8 and I'm gonna increase my stitch length to about 2.5 you don't need to have a stitch that's right next to each other a big bullet stitch is often very nice so there I am I just redid it I'm at 4.5 and and I'm putting a zigzag down one side when I get to the end I just quickly click back to the straight stitch and I walk myself right on it over to the other side when I get there guess what I hit that straight stitch or that zigzag it's still on four and a half and two together right you may want to back up and set your stitches just to make sure they're done press your cutter button and you're ready to go this now is the center of your rug and instead of having to turn back on itself you'll be able to gently go all the way around the rug without any issue okay the next thing you need to do is use the balance of your fabric strips to make the fabric into a very long piece so what we're gonna do is take our fabric strips put them right sides together and just like you do with a jelly with a strip rug or with binding you start at one side and you sew diagonally on straight across the others so we're gonna make what in effect is one really really long final step by sewing all of these strips on the diagonal crossing over as if they were binding in order to keep this manageable I'm only gonna do two or three before I start I'm gonna show you how to make this row of stuff at a time which really makes it so that's enough for right now I'm gonna take the rest of my strips and just leave them on the back of my chair now that I've got that done clip your strips apart again honey I did one two three strips was off and the balance of the first one that I had cut off have your strips apart and I do take the time to press these up them because the rugs just gonna lay a little bit flatter if you've got all these pressed open so I press that okay actually press out the little seamless or the fold that's in the middle press this open press out the full nice iron and then press this one else in you'll notice that I left the salvage edge in there if it's white and gonna protrude beyond I just take my scissors at this point or a rotary cutter and clip that off finally press that open so now I have two or three strips that I put together like a binding on the diagonal okay so now it's time to make the start of the rug and I've got a really fun way to do that that will work very nicely to begin a soft edge so take your roll of batting here's our out of him on a roll two and a quarter by 50 yard by me and find the end of it what you need to do is using a ruler this is about a 10 inch PC I cut from one edge down to the point so I've laid this on my board there were at the 10 inch mark here we're at the zero I'm gonna lay the ruler across that do you see how I'm making a nice fine taper with my rotary cutter save that piece because I actually will use that later so I've cut from the zero to ten inches just picking the corner here and cutting down to the point there now take the end of your piece that you need to start on we're going to flip this over to the pressing side [Applause] and put your strip right side down and then put this on top of it just about centered on there see how that's laying across there now we need to trim off the excess from here so here's how we do it we're gonna fold this over all the way down to the point we're gonna give it a press fold it over all the way down to the point and give it a press that's gonna give us a big great edge now flip it over and just use your rotary cutter to cut off the excess there it goes that's all that's excess now flip your mat back over again because this is when one of those fluffy mats is really nice to use okay now open that up and I'm gonna show you how to make the tapered edge you only need to do this once so don't worry it's not that hard the first thing you do is from the bottom fold up a quarter inch all the way along the flat side boy there's some steam in there so you're folding up a quarter than it then fold the top down but make sure that the raw edge does not go all the way to the outside edge you're just folding it down so it's just inside the other folded edge just like that get that point as trim as you can make it now we're going to start folding and what I do is I fold from the bottom up and I use a pin to hold it on one of these boards from the bottom up pin it to the board from the bottom up you're putting the two folded edges together pin it so you do that along the first ten inches of length we're just folding this out holding it to the center put those two folds together and pin it this is gonna get you started down your rug really nicely without having to struggle with how to get these pieces together you're just folding straight into the middle once you get out to this edge and pinning it into your board the reason these boards are nice to use is because then if you want to you you could come back along here and yep I've got steam going and I'm pressing this out so that the start of my rug has a nice piece to start with okay now we're back over to the facility and again [Music] in general I take my batting and I put it on the floor I just want to make sure it's not my way take your pins out of the board okay now that you've got your cording ironed to the center we're gonna stitch straight down the middle of the strip but this is so tiny that you may not be able to hit your feed dogs so what I did was I move my needle all the way over to the left I'm putting down my presser foot and now I can stitch through the center of the strip again my needle is all the way to the left because this is so skinny it might not even hit your feed dogs all I'm doing is eying keeping trying to make a row of straight stitches go straight down the center of the cording that you're creating I do leave my machine and go down and I'm on about a 2.45 stitch length as I come to the part that's not ironed this is how I do it I take the fabric strip on the back and I gently lay the batting onto the top of it wrong sides together and then I fold the two pieces inward to almost touch and I fold it in again I then run my finger through the center so that it all lines up and then I take about six inches of stitching stop with it needle down open it up make sure that my fabric and batting are aligned my batting should be in the middle of the fabric I fold the two together and fold it again I've got about six inches and I run my finger through there to make it all go flat turn it over so about six to eight inches again open it up lay the batting in the middle of the fabric strip fold the two edges to the inside fold it in half and then run your finger down the middle to make that folded edge go all the way to the back I continue doing this for a couple of feet arrange it each about a quarter of an inch from the edge fold it together and then run your finger down that edge to fold it all to the center now that you've got it started by the way you can move your needle back to the center position but I'm going to take it out for a minute and show you how to attach it to the Sun now that you've sewn down the middle of the fabric cord I take the end and just clip it on a diagonal just to make it a gentle start and then our job is to attach this cord to the center oval remember that the two folds need to be toward the middle and the single fold needs to be toward the outside so I'd go back to zigzag and I start toward the end and I am gently pushing this cord toward the center gently push it you don't have to be too forceful about it because the zigzag is what actually puts us together so just gently push this cord toward the Oval and zigzag at about a four and a half by a five and a half zig zagging away when you get to the end you need to lightly round the corner again jump lead push this toward the Oval but turn the Oval not the cording you want this to lay as flat as possible so again you don't want to have too much of the cording going toward it you want it to be oval to be the one that turns the cord will follow on gently push the cord toward the oval and be sure that you're turning the over the cord just continues to lay flat now you can just stitch down until you get to the end of where you've done your single stitch I stopped a little bit before into the end and now I go back to making cord so I'm gonna cut it at that point and I'm gonna go back to making the cord I actually like to alternate between the two because you never get so much that it gets confusing I'm going back to making cord so I go needle down I stop I make sure the batting is right in the center of the fabric strip I fold it to the inside and I fold it again I take my finger and run it through there to flatten it out and then I relax and make the cording don't pull too tight on this pulley it'll make it bunch up thanks a lot all the way up to my finger I've sewn about six inches I stopped I put the batting in the middle of the strip fold it to the inside fold it again run your finger through the middle and now stop putting too much pressure on that just very lightly let it go through the machine don't pull this really hard you're just gonna make it skinny and put too much pressure on so all the way up to about six inches back up put the batting in the center fold it in and then swipe your fingers through there so that get always flat now relax left the core team goes through the chain the point ring foldable that's it we're going to continue doing this for a really long time I'm going to alternate between doing this courting I'll do one more set fold it to the center swipe your fingers through it and then relax don't pull it too tight as it's going I'm sewing straight down the middle and when it's done with that round I'm gonna cut it and now let's go back to our rug piece flip over to zig zag two and a half by four and a half and start back a little on the zig zag so it's got a couple of stitches that it takes over as well let's go back to zig zagging lightly going back and forth between two pieces and then it's easy to do this on the straightaway you can gain a little more speed but when you get to the end remember you're turning the Oval you're not turning the cord you're just lightly putting the cord next to it this is so that it doesn't roll up on you just turn the Oval don't turn the court the cord lightly goes next to it that's gonna make this whole thing lay flat where we are going around the head of it and I didn't quite catch that just a little bit back up just to there and make sure that you catch it is that's going to help with the integrity of your rug now when we come to this point where we started we're just going to slip those to that little end right into the pole of the new cord so I just slip those together gently press them together and off I go and I'm on my second round and again I'm being very light about this just barely pressing it toward the center and look I'm just about back to the point right you could go and make some more cordial cut it there and now I'm gonna go make some more cord the only thing you'll have to know is when you get to the end of this strip I'll go ahead and add a strip from behind me to the end of the jelly roll once again forming that diagonal seam and then just continue on I do two or three strips at a time so I'm doing two or three of these diagonal seams and then I'm sewing into into a cord that last two or three feet and then I zigzag the cord onto the flat rug come back later as I'm getting toward the end and I'll show you how to end the rug [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi good morning we're back in sewing on our easy fabric strip rod you may notice that the color the table has changed as well as the quilt that's in the background we've moved down to the more shop I sewed on the road for about an hour and a half yesterday and I'm gonna complete it while I'm sitting here I want you to notice a couple of things first of all when I came up here I'll tell you that I noticed I was sewing the cording with the two folds to the right when I sat down this morning I started sewing and immediately put the two folds to the left you'll see that it's much more comfortable for me to fold the fabric in my dominant hand which is right and then fold it in half and half again and then use my left finger to sweep through and make it flat then relax and sew through so all the way up to your fingers so you're getting a full six to eight inches each time so I put the batting in the center I fold it to both sides to the center fold it in half with the double edges being on the left I put it back in my right hand and swoop through with my left hand I'll tell you yesterday or last night when I was doing it swooping with my right hand was really difficult because I like my right beyond to be holding the piece so you can back up and see the effect of that on the video I just it wasn't as natural of a motion for me the other thing I want to show you is over here on my table if you put the roll down on the floor and it off spools this is gonna become twisted as it goes along so last night I put this roll on to the new lever on my machine today I put it into the cabinet and as I need a little bit I just pull it forward that keeps the the batting from getting twisted around and you having to stop and untwist the whole thing so again last night I used the knee lever today I'm using a drawer on the side of my machine okay back to sewing the fabric cord so as we talked about the last time I'm sewing straight down the middle I'm sewing with about a two and a half inch stitch stitch width I've got all my strips already joined in a binding diagonal to make a long strap that is sitting underneath my sewing machine and now I turn both of these to the to the middle and then turn them both on their side when I'm ready to start sewing I relax my hand and take the tension off of it so that I'm not pulling and then I just like the sewing machine feed it all the way I'm gonna do it one more time and then we're gonna go back to the zig zagging fold both to the center again because this is a two and a quarter inch binding or batting there's plenty of room to fold this to the center and not have it get bunched up and then fold it in half again hold it in my right hand and use my left hand again you can't imagine how different that is because I'm not trying to smooth it out with my right hand and then sew up to where your fingers are and stop I'm gonna cut that and we're gonna go back to zig zagging for a little bit this is gonna let go right now I'm using a Bernina eight thirty to do my sewing what a lovely machine I do have the differential feet on if you have feed dogs now would be a great time to use them cuz feed dogs I'll help it manually go through the machine a lot nicer I'm gonna go to my zig-zag stitch it's at four and a half wide by two and a half long and I am gonna back up just a little bit to make sure those stitches are secure let's talk again about what you move this hand is very light we just want to push it toward the rug this hand is the one that works as you're moving move the rug around with your left hand my right hand is only here to keep the cord close to the original rug if you pull on this too hard let me show you what will happen when you pull too hard the edge comes up and you start to form a bowl if you leave it nice and loose your quilt your rug will be when you're done so here we are just stitch online take 4 time when you're on the corners on the ends then when you're on the straightaway cuz it straightaway you're just as exacted lets you go nothing's moving I actually am using a number 1 D foot and I have a center mark there and I'm turning to run that Center mark right down the middle of these two pieces that's why I'm lining up my zigzag again on the straight part you can go a little faster it won't hurt it at all when you get down to the first part we're just trying to make this as flat as possible so turn the piece with your left and continue to only snug it up lightly with your right hand and take your time and you're going around the curved line up the - that's on your foot with the space between the two pieces again just take that curve by the way you'll see that Maddy chose a turquoise blue color or the red it's one of the colors in this great big rug but you see here on the early part of the rug it's serving as a contrast color I think when you take the time to do all this sewing that you should sup show off your work by doing a contrasting Judge then everyone can see kind of what you've been working for if you want it to blend in you could pick a more neutral tone or take a smaller threat you could pick a sixty or eighty thread weight and the thread would blend in more and you'd see more of the fabric because this is a more contemporary look we wanted to have a contrasting thread being used and it's going to look beautiful when we get out to the Blues that are run at the end of this again there are other ways you could do this pulse but I like to do a little bit of the cording stitching and then go back and a6a get on then I go back and do a little more quality and I zig zagging right now I'm turning the rug with my left hand very gently any of those starts and stops that I have I'll go back and trim those Till's later so here I am making my big turn everything is laying in just beautiful and it's nice and flat some people have had difficulty with creating a bowl again if you use that whole piece to start out your quote will start out flat and then your rug will be flat in the end so I am just a [Music] I make a yard or two according and then I zig zagging on that I go back and make another yard or two according and Isaac daddy [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so look what we've done to complete the rug you'll see that all of the fabric cording has been put onto the rug down to the last about a foot and a half you'll also see that this rug has never been touched by an iron but it's already laying almost flat at the very young I am going to take and put a little bit of best press on it and flatten out the edges but this rug as it was built is laying flat on the table that's what's great about the pattern so we are at the last foot and a half of our rug what I did was I cut the batting to be the same size as the fabric strip I'm going to take just the batting and do the same thing that I did on the very first piece I'm gonna lay my ruler across from 10 inches down to 1 inch and I'm going to make a diagonal out of the piece if you want to you can use this piece from the start and just add it to the end there whichever way you'd like to do it I just want to make it simple for this demo so you see how it's done once I cut that I'm going to iron the part of the fabric strips so that it matches it so here I'm going to start right there and you know what I'm going to put a couple pins in here to hold it so that I'm not struggling with the ironing and remember I'm gonna take this turn it down press it just a little that tells me exactly what are my quarter inch seam is and then when I flip it up I can cut it off again on that line or I can just flip it over and cut off the excess so I cut off that little bit of access just like I did on the very first one back to the ironing pin as you recall on the last one in order to make these two go together I folded up the remaining edge just shy of the folded edge on the other side so I'm folding this up easiest to press in that quarter inch seam first so I'm gonna press in the quarter inch seam that covers this there we go see how that presses nicely up there it's a little bit less than a quarter inch press that up hit that with an iron again to make sure that that's stable and now I just join those two folded edges together and put a pin in there on this fabric board join the two folded edges together and put a pin in there back here I'm gonna do the same thing just fold the two folded edges together and press a pin into there there we go as we get to the fattest part I go back and I fold the two edges together fold it in half and again put my favorite pins in there this is going to hold it so I can give it a really really good press fold those two edges together and give it a pin just one more fold those two edges together and give it a pin all right so this is in the shape that I want it to be in this is a nice tapered edge now I take my iron and give it a really good press it's just gonna be so much easier to work with when I get over to my sewing machine if I press that out really nicely I'm not gonna have to struggle to get it all lined up alright so there's a nice folded edge take out all your pins don't want to drop any and let's go back to the sewing machine so now we put the fabric strip back into the sewing machine I use my needle down as I've been doing all along and I sew straight down the middle of I can stop as I go along make sure that this is accurate again I like that the two polls party the love it really makes it a lot easier fold it down now I'm getting into the part that I already have iron so it's very easy - so that 40 just making sure that all the raw edges line up all right we're almost at the end here we've just about started our taper Erica's coming down I will tell you I kind of hang to the left on this part just to make sure that I got all the finished edges just folding that over look at those pretty well folded edges ready to go right to the end of it as I did the last time I'm gonna take a scissors and cut a diagonal onto that piece just from where I went off on sewing I'm cutting off the Salvage s turn that little bit of a diagonal now I'm going to pop back to my zig-zag stitch and under the needle that goes again this is nice you have a couple of feet left to zigzag the balance of your rug together wouldn't it be funny if I ran when I get down to the end I do decrease the stitch length a little because this is the end of the ride and it might actually take a little more traffic than the beginning of the rug so I've decreased my stitch length to like - I'm still at a four and a half with a guy on a little bit thinner stitch right down that's it look at that beautiful room and because you started with an oval everything is already flat again I'm gonna take a little bit of water or a little bit of breast press put some water on the rug and then put steam on it flatten it out just a little bit more but that rug is already flat and ready to go again finding go was the fabric line used on this and the pattern is available on piece and an applique PE a cen applique com it's on the front page of our website and it's a digital download so you don't have to wait for it to come in the mail you can get the pattern and use it immediately thanks so much for watching our easy fabric strip rug hope to bring another one to you soon you

Channel: Madelaine Quistgaard

Views: 501,165

Rating: 4.7960634 out of 5

Keywords: sewing, Rugs, tutorial, Fabric

Id: co6DzlMX7hM

Length: 55min 7sec (3307 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 31 2018