FREE Pattern - Balancing Act!

hi i'm donna jordan from jordan fabrics today i'm going to show you how to make a new hoop that i've designed we're calling this balancing act it looks like those Jenga sticks that you stack up those little blocks and you try not to knock them over so I've done some of the numbers here so let's go pick some fabrics for this pattern I'm going to need a fat quarter bundle that has at least 18 fat quarters and then we're going to need 3 yards of background we just got in a new shipment of K facet fabrics and I love to use his fabrics because they're so bold and he has a lot of different kind of print circles zigzags flowers so this is what we're going to use today right the background for this quilt we could use almost any color a light color that won't fight with these but I really want to use something that will just recede and not show at all so I'm going to use solid white that will look really good and that will allow these prints to be the focus of the quilt the first thing we're going to do is open this up and iron them all nice and flat every fat quarter is going to get cut the same way so I'm just going to iron and stack now all we need to cut is two strips that are eight and a quarter wide I can't cut all 20 layers at once so I'm going to take some off and I'll probably cut this in three sections so I can make sure I get it accurately cut [Applause] that is all the cutting we need for the fat quarters now let's get our background I'm gonna need 3 yards of background and I'm going to cut that into strips that are 4 and 3/4 inches wide that's all we need on the background now we need to split all of these in half so that each one is the same size as our fat quarter strips now that everything is all cut we're going to take six of the printed strips here and we're going to take six of the plain strips and we're going to make a strip unit now we are going to alternate these strips so let's take one print and one background and stitch them along their long edges using a quarter inch seam and you should use a fairly small stitch length so you have a lot of stitches here because we're going to be cutting this afterwards and we don't want it to come apart right where the cuts are now open up this and finger press that seam allowance toward the dark side so hold it open press it down like that making sure that that seam is facing the print now add another colored strip and we're gonna keep repeating this process till we have them in a long minute there's the last piece there we'll finger press it to the dark side this edge up here it's pretty straight and even because I used all of the cut edges up there I didn't use any of the selvage edges they're all down at this end now I'm going to take this whole big long thing here and I'm gonna make it into a big tube so I'm gonna do that by putting these edges together let's get that out of the way and we're gonna sew this last seam here together so now it's gonna be one great big strip to so now it's it's a great big to hear so I'm gonna go ahead and take the rest of my strips and I'm gonna get them all stitched up into these strip units all of the strip units are all stitched together and I'd like to give them a little pressing I know we finger press to them but it's still helpful if you get those seams ironed flat so just go over all of those seams so they're nice and flat now we're going to cut this we're gonna do some sub cuts to make our rows so I'm gonna take this big tube and fold it in half and then I'm just gonna turn it so I've got it folded so that I don't have a lot of seams a lot of these seam allowances right stacked so you might want to move this up or down a little that'll make it so that we're not cutting too many layers all at once so fold it line it up on your board and we're gonna make a first cut to neaten everything up and then we are going to cut this into three and a quarter inch rows so cut the whole strip unit tube up into three and a quarter inch pieces all the rows are cut so we have six different rows here so we're gonna take all of these over to the big table and start laying out the quilt now the next step is kind of fun we are going to take one of these roads let's start with this guy and I'm going to fold it somewhere in the white section and I'm going to cut because remember it was a big boob now this is going to be our first row so let's lay that guy out and then I'm gonna grab another row a different one doesn't matter which one and I'm going to cut that knot right in the middle I'm just going to fold it so there's a lot more showing here than there and I'm gonna cut this now this row has a lot of white at the beginning and so my stack is moved over a little bit but both rows are exactly the same length so that's gonna make it really easy when we sew our rows together so I'm gonna keep alternating the rows and stacking them up till we have the whole quilt laid out so there's the last row so all of the rows they're exactly the same length they don't all look perfect here because they're all not stretched the only thing I'm gonna do now is check and see if I have any two fabrics that are exactly the same like right here right on top of themselves so I'm probably not going to want to do that all I'm gonna do is take this row out scooch all these guys up and put this row down at the bottom the other thing you can do is you could just flip the row around the rows can go any way they're all the same size so now I'm going to take the first two rows and I'm going to sew them together there's no intersections to match at all all I'm gonna do is put a pin at the beginning and at the middle and at the end you can put more pins in if you like and stitch very carefully down there seam finger press all the seams to one side and make the whole quilt top I've got some of the cooktop done so let's go and pick out a backing the nice thing about this quote is you can pick almost anything for a backing any of these small prints will work this little multicolored one that would work I particularly like the blue one we could pick one of the Cape facet prints to use on the backing there are just tons of brilliant colored prints any of these any of these would make on great backing even this one now this might not be in the top but it's still gonna make a great backing we do have a large section of grunge fabric it's not a very pretty name but the fabrics are really nice they have a little bit of color in them and any of these colors would work for this quilt so if you're giving this to someone they like yellow yellow would be a great backing red orange pink but I think I'm gonna use a jade color this is just a great color blend it's got greens a little purple that's just gonna be perfect the quilt is all loaded on the machine and it's loaded on sideways so these long towers that's the up and down and here's some thread options you really could go with any color thread you like I don't want to get it too dark on that white lavender would work that yellow is pretty this one's gonna show too much I know but this light aqua one that's not going to show much in the white and it blends in quite nicely in the colorful colorful areas so that's the one we will go with I'm going to quilt this in a pattern called scribbles it's kind of like a meander but I use this when I'm making quilts that have kind of a cheerful young feel to them and I think this will look really good on the K facet quilt now that the quilt is done you can really see all those different colors balanced one on top of another and so we're calling it balancing act because it just looks like towers of colors that are almost ready to fall over it went together really fast this is one of the fastest quilts I've made and I really like it in the bright K facet prints but this would look good in solids or florals and you can see that scribble it enhances the white background there doesn't take away from it you can see the quilting on the back side just a fun quilting pattern it turned out 72 by 90 so it's a full sized almost a full sized quilt and you can make this bigger or smaller depending on how many fat quarters you have thanks for watching our tutorial today we hope you enjoyed it now we're gonna be having another giveaway we're going to be giving away four table runners the first table runner is this beautiful dragonfly dance nice black and gold with metallic accents then we have a really nice Civil War style Joe Morton prints for Moda with a stripe on the back this one is beautiful floral Maywood fabrics from Robert Kaufman and then this one is pretty fun it's called sushi and we've got Asian motifs and cranes and flowers now it's very easy to enter all you have to do is click the link below that says giveaway and remember we're giving away four different runners to four different people so you've got four chances to win now this is open to everyone we can mail these anywhere in the world so all you have to do is enter your name and your email address good luck and happy quilting

Channel: Jordan Fabrics

Views: 294,317

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, bali batik' sister's choice, tutorial, let's make, vlog, quilt shop, quilt store, circus, balance, balancing, act, acts, plate, spinning, plates, fat, quarter, free, pattern, easy, fast, quick, learn, how, to, make, method

Id: b8mzG0HR4c8

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2019