Full Episode! Small Quilting Projects: 5" Pre-Cut Squares Bag (MFQ 310)

with one charm pack you can create three tote bags I'll show you how to make one in this episode of my first quilt you hi there you're watching my first quilt I'm Sara Gallegos and in this episode I'm going to share with you how you can create a quick and easy tote bag out of charm squares and out of one pack you get three different bags you can make one for yourself and two of your sewing buddies you've got a really cute project now we're creating this adorable bag and you can embellish it in a lot of different ways with regard to quilting doing some different things with the straps and I'll talk to you about that as we go the bag starts with creating the straps and to create those straps you've got two long strips of fabric and what you're going to do is fold those so that you bring all of your raw edges right to the center this is the first fold so we're bringing those long raw edges right into the center just give it a good press at that point then you're gonna fold it in half over itself once again and this gives you four layers of fabric to create your bag strap once you've pressed it now it's time to top stitch you could top stitch with a decorative stitch a straight stitch decorative threads you could even just do a big wave down the center it's totally up to you I'm gonna start with just a straight stitch I'll show you what that looks like now for this first row of stitching I'm stitching my open folded edge and I've lined up the edge of my fabric right with this inside edge of my foot and that way I know that I'm getting really close to the folded edge so it's not going to gap at all when I throw this bag over my shoulder so I've stitched completely down one side of the strap now I'm just going to rotate my strap around and Stitch down the opposite edge with basically the same exact seam allowance just to keep it looking consistent so my first strap is complete you could add as much stitching to this as you want if you look at the second strap I've got here I did five rows you can use the edge of your foot as a great way to keep your spacing of your stitching so it's nice and straight and again you just want to create two of these straps next it's time to create the exterior of the bags I'm gonna set these aside just for a little bit here and the exterior of the bag is constructed with charm squares so 5 inch squares and you could use any kind of fabric that you like for this and you're creating 4 rows of 3 really basic sewing here you're just sewing together three of your five inch squares and then once you've got one row you're going to stitch a second row to it now when I stitch these I don't worry a whole lot about pressing as I go because it's just a really simple basic seam and then I like to just flip over and when I take it to the machine I'll just kind of nest those seams and stitch straight across then you're going to construct two of this unit here so you've got six of your charm squares sewn together once you have constructed that it's time to start building the face of the bag you're going to add on your base portion so this covers the bottom of the bag and comes up the sides just a little bit and I'll show you what that looks like and then you're gonna add a second set of your charm squares on the opposite side of your base fabric so here's what the exterior looks like fully complete so you've got your six charm squares on both sides and then your base piece down the center now it's time to stitch together this exterior portion and box the corners I love doing boxed corners on bags so the first thing to do is just to flip it over fold it in half so that your right sides are together and at this point we're gonna stitch with a quarter inch seam down both of those open short edges we're not going to stitch the top edge just the two sides so let's start with that I've got one side complete so I'm just gonna flip my bag over and Stitch the other side okay so here is our completed exterior bag piece now it's time to box the corners and what I mean by that is we're basically giving the bag a flat bottom this will give you a nice way to be able to stand your bag up and it also gives you a little bit of depth in the bag which is nice and a tote bag for that we're going to need a ruler and some sort of a marking tool I have a marking pencil here you could use a marking pen whatever you like and what we want to do to create our boxed corner is we need to fold our bag so that our side seam lines up with the bottom fold we're not gonna turn this right sides out we're keeping it wrong sides out like it is but I'm just gonna kind of grab the sides and bring and you can always give yourself a little finger press too so that you've really got a nice sharp edge on your bottom fold there I'm just gonna grab the sides and bring that bottom fold right to my side seam and I can feel with my fingers that they're lined up and that creates a bit of a point on the base of my bag so again I can feel with my fingers that that side seam is directly in line with the bottom fold now we're gonna lay this flat on the table and you can kind of maneuver the fabric around a little bit as you need and we want to make a mark one and a half inches up from the tip of our point so I'm gonna take my marking tool here my ruler and I'm lining up one of my ruler markings right on the seam line so that I know that it's straight and I've got the tip right up to the one-and-a-half inch marking and this is where we're gonna take our tool and give ourselves a sewing line good and we're gonna take this right to the Machine and stitch with a straight stitch across the line if you would feel more comfortable you can always add a pin just to hold your layers nice and straight as you take it to the machine all right very nice so I've got my nice straight stitching line here I'm going to take my pin out and now we need to trim off the excess so we don't have a bulky corner on our bag trimming about a quarter of an inch this is all buried inside of the bag you'll never see it so if it's not perfectly straight don't worry about it once you've got the first corner box like that we're going to repeat the exact same process again on the other side all right now we're ready now I've got my two boxed corners and my bag exterior is complete we're gonna turn this right sides out and when I do that I like to just kind of reach inside and put my thumbs right in those boxed corner edges flip the seam allowances over my fingers and that gives me a really nice crisp edge to the boxed corner once we stitch this around you can't get back in to fix it so we want to make sure it's perfect now just like that so there is our bag exterior now we need to create a lining piece exactly the same way so I've got mine done here your lining is going to be the exact same size as that exterior piece before we put the side seams into it and now we're going to place our bag exterior right inside of the lining so I've got them right sides together the lining is wrong side facing out and the exterior piece is right sides out and I've got my fingers right in those corners and I'm just pushing to make sure that all of my corners line up that's gonna make it nice and flat when the bag is complete there we go just kind of feel right inside there and then we also want to pay attention to make sure that our side seams line up so I like to just kind of nest those seams that will make it look just perfect at the very top of the bag so the first thing I'm gonna do is I've got my side seams lined up here I'm gonna go ahead and insert a pin now I'm not a huge pin er I don't use a lot of pins when it comes to piece ting and quilting if I can avoid it I do but when I'm doing something like this with a bag where everything wants to line up needs to line up it'll look really nice I do like to use some pins there we go perfect so I've got my side seams lined up a little shake there now we're going to insert our straps when you insert the straps you want to make sure that when you place these in that your strap is not twisted otherwise it's going to be twisted when you carry your bag so I've got them nice and straight and I'm going to insert those right in between the lining piece and the exterior piece with the loop of the strap facing down inside of the bag now you can position these wherever you like on your bag you just really want to make sure that they're in the same position on each side so I'm gonna line up the raw edges of my strap my lining and my exterior piece pin it you can always measure from your side seams to make sure that you've got them perfectly spaced there we go and then I'm going to find the second side and do the same thing again so I'm lining up those raw edges of the strap of the lining and the exterior and insert a pin so I've got my first strap positions now I'm going to repeat the same process with the second strap on the other side of the bag make sure it's not twisted [Music] so I've got both of my handles pinned in place and I can see that they're exactly centered in the same spot on both sides of the bag that is always nice and now we're going to stitch all the way around but you want to leave yourself a little bit of an opening so you can turn the bag right sides out so I'm gonna stitch it with a half inch seam allowance instead of a quarter inch and that's gonna give me a little space to be able to top stitch that's opening closed all right so I've moved my needle position so I've got a nice half inch seam allowance and I'll stitch around I'm gonna lock in at the beginning and end of each of my stitches just so that it doesn't pull out when I am turning my bag [Music] [Music] so I've locked in my stitches at the beginning and ending of my seam so that I've got a nice opening and that way I can turn the bag through that hole that's the next step okay so this is the fun part where you really wrangle your bag all around cuz we've got to pull the entire thing out through that hole I kind of start with the straps and then I can use those just to help me get everything through it always feels like you're kind of manhandling your project here but it's okay this is what we have to do now if you added some sort of a batting or a stabilizer and quilted it we'll talk about that in a little bit you might find that you need to leave a larger hole for turning because you've got a lot more thickness to get through that hole and it gets a little bit tricky when you've got a lot of layers in there so get in there and again really important to make sure that you lock in those stitches at the beginning and ending of your steam as you go around because you will rip out your stitching a little bit as you're turning this if it's not really secure there you go we're almost there I can see it coming there we go perfect alright so now we need to adjust this so that the lining goes down inside of the bag so I've got the entire thing right sides out and I want to just make sure that I shake it out a little bit just like this I'm feeling at the very top edge where my stitching line is so I've got everything nice and straight and then I'm gonna reach inside and feel for those corners again that helps to keep everything nice and straight so I'm poking my fingers right through those corners and right through there again good perfect now is when you would want to give your bag a good press slide this right over the arm of your ironing board and press all the way around and then you're ready to top stitch so when you top stitch you want to make sure that your finger shifting your seams so that the exterior is on the outside the lining stays on the inside and then you just want to kind of tuck down that opening where you turned your bag through sometimes I like to give that a little press to make sure that everything lines up nice and straight then you can put one pin in just to hold it study and at this point you're gonna go around and top stitch all the way around the very top edge of your bag when you top stitch you're gonna be doing three different things first of all it's gonna secure the handles again when you stitch over where the handles are attached it'll make sure that they're nice and secure it's going to shut the opening that you used for turning and it also just gives the bag a nice edge that way the lining stays on the inside the exterior stays on the outside and everything stays together really well now let's take a little peek at my other bag so that I can show you some options that you have with regard to quilting and handles so there are a few fun things that you can do to kind of customize your bag if you look at this bag here what you'll see that the straps have been added to the exterior of the bag that's really easy to do you're just going to place it so that the handles facing down and then fold it back over on itself that the facing up it kind of doubles it over it hides all of your raw edges and then give it a really nice secure stitching so on this particular set of sigh topstitched in whites really high contrast and it just looks a little bit different another thing that's different about this bag is that I actually cut the lining piece about an inch longer than the exterior you construct it in the exact same way line up all of your raw edges but when it comes time to top stitch and you turn that lining side down into the exterior of the bag then you're lining kind of folds over your seam allowance and gives you what looks like a self bound edge so it just gives you that little contrast of your lining fabric up over the top edge of the bag I always love how that looks the other thing I did differently with this bag was after I constructed that exterior panel for the bag I fused a piece of Hobbes fusible batting to the underside of it I really like working with this batting because it's got a little bit of structure to it which gives my bag body if you could feel this you would feel that it's a little bit textured that's the glue and it's really nice because it fuses right to the wrong side of my exterior piece I can quilt it and then after I flip the lining right sides out and tuck it all inside and press the entire bag before top stitching it actually fuses to the lining too which keeps all of the layers together so it's a really nice addition for a little bit more finished or polished looking bag in the end sometimes as a quilter it's nice to have a smaller project to work on you can make a quick gift and get a little bit of an instant gratification while still being able to quilt and create a really beautiful custom project that's what I love about this three times a charm tote bag I hope you've enjoyed learning about it we'll see you next time my first quilt is brought to you by Baby Lock free spirit fabrics Madeira and Hobbes batting

Channel: Quilt Videos

Views: 82,059

Rating: 4.8848524 out of 5

Keywords: Quilt, quilts, quilting, quilter, quilters, beginning quilter, beginning quilts, quilting techniques, quilting tips, how to quilt, the quilting company, quilting tutorials, quilting videos, sara Gallegos, my first quilt

Id: uxrJOxulJng

Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 22 2018