How To - Landscape Quilts

hi this is Austria Anna in today's video I'm gonna be talking about how to make a landscape quilt similar to this one now the technique that I'm going to talk about is only one technique to make a landscape quilt I'm sure there are many different ways out there this is just the one that I learned when scape quilts are a pretty easy project they're great for beginners or experienced sewers they're also really good for stash busting because you're just grabbing any fabric out of your stash that fits the overall look you're trying to achieve now this quilt has some rolling hills in the foreground a nice lake in the mid ground a couple of mountain peaks talked with some snow in the background and the nice blue sky the main difference that I'm gonna be introducing today is I'm going to add a beach to the lake and there's only gonna be one mountain in the background and no snow so let's get started I've chosen some fabrics out of my stash to make this so let's see if I can get these all on camera I've chosen these five greens to make the rolling hills that are going to be in the foreground I like to choose fabrics just my personal choice that suggests the effect I'm trying to achieve so maybe something with some flowers on it to make you think of flowers on the hill same idea with this green I'm not sure if the camera is picking it up it's a tone-on-tone green with a nice maple leaf motif the supplies you need to make a landscape quilt are pretty easy other than your basic sewing implements in order to cut the fabric you want either a pair of scissors or a rotary cutter I prefer the rotary cutter I find it's easier to use especially for making the Ghent sweeping arcs that you want for the rolling hills and of course if you're going to be using a rotary cutter you need the cutting mat behind it so you don't cut up your table the key to making a landscape quilt is layering strips of fabric now the length of the strip's is entirely dependent on how wide you want your final piece to be I'm gonna be making a piece similar to this one and it is about 11 inches wide so I will be cutting pieces that are between about 12 and 14 inches to give me a little wiggle room for the width of the strips I find that between three and five inches gives me enough room to make the sweeps in the Hills or the points on the mountains that I would like to have alright let's get started so the first step is to cut the strips out of your larger pieces of fabric now this strip is already five inches wide and I'm just going to trim off the excess from the end and that's gonna make it about 12 inches long a little bit on the small side but it's going to work just fine you so once you have all of your strips cut out it's time to decide how you're going to layer them so all the way to the back a nice strip of sky which will be followed by this brown whip which is going to go this way and will get cut into Jaggi mountain peaks followed by a nice blue lake sandy beach I'm gonna pull these up or I won't be able to get them all in frame and just laying them one on top of the other like this even without anything cut out can be a good way of just figuring out how you want them to be layered then for the Rolling Hills now I had previously decided that I wanted this to lead into the beach it looks to me like it's might be low grass the kind of stuff that you get as you near a beach and I wanted this darkest green to be all the way in the foreground so the rest of it is to be decided now I think I am going to do this one next then yay that one trying to get it darker and darker as it goes down until I reach the darkest green how's that and there and there I think I'm happy with that overall layering and now it is time to cut out the shapes now when you go to cut out the long sweeping arcs that make up the Rolling Hills it doesn't much matter how you cut them out so your trusty rotary cutter or scissors whichever you prefer and just start however you want and whatever feels kind of right oh look that looks good there you go there's a help and you repeat that with all of your layers of sweeping hills there how's that that's a good one make a few little tighter ones on this guy and I didn't show this but two layers no reason you can use both halves to make two different quilts way to reuse the stash this one I think I am going to cut just right down the middle and make two quilts out of it when you have only one big piece of a fabric left ever oh it's good and the last one for the rolling hills after this comes the beach so there we go that's all of my Hills done in the quilt I could position this in a way that shows more Beach or less Beach so to give me that freedom I'm going to cut the edge a little bit closer to the top not close to the middle like I was doing with the other pieces so oops not quite as swooping as they were not the big deep valleys gave me room to decide how I want my beach to look up close to the water the next layer is the lake and I'm not going to cut that at all so that is just going to stay the way it is up next is my mountain this is going to get some nice jaggedy Peaks cut into it so there are some nice mountain peaks and the final layer is the nice blue sky that of course we don't cut so now it is time to start layering let's start with this strip for the sky and next was the mountains and it doesn't matter how high or how low you place it because once you sew it down you can trim off the excess of background fabric maybe a little bit lower this way if I find that there's too much sky I can always cut it lower in the final piece and next was the lake so there and now the beach how much water so already you can see how the image starts starts to take shape as you layer the pieces yeah I think that looks good so I wanted to start with this and when you're working with smaller pieces like this this is where your placement side to side starts to become important because eventually I'm going to trim down these edges and I might take just this piece and cut off the rest outside there I'm gonna start with that for now and as I continue to layer see how I decide to change my mind now with this one I'm gonna go yeah I like that there show a little bit more of the green of the lighter green rather and I mean I could always do something like that if I so chose I don't like that as much there is no right or wrong way of doing this it's just whatever you feel looks right sometimes I find placing my hands to create a bit of a picture border helps to determine whether or not I like that placement and I like that that'll do like that and then I would cut this down to continue that arc actually I'm gonna do that so I've trimmed a few of the pieces to give more an idea of how I decided I wanted this to look and then I added these three strips of fabric just to create a fake border it gives me an idea of what the final piece will look like now that I'm happy with this configuration I'm going to pin it down and bring it over to the sewing machine now I am pinning in such a way that I will catch at least two if not three layers of fabric with each pin just to be sure that everything stays in line as much as possible breath that a little bit lower and pin as often as you feel you need to for your own comfort I firmly believe the more pins the merrier it just helps to hold everything in place a little bit more securely I made the mistake at the beginning of focusing just on the bottom few layers what I should be doing is trying to get what a few through the middle just to keep all of the layers in place more or less the way that I want them and then I can worry about pinning outwards with this particular technique of making a landscape quilt I will be leaving the edges what they call raw so instead of layering them together and folding them open to leave the raw edge of the fabric at the back where you wouldn't see it the raw edge of the fabric is going to be right up front it's going to be visible and over time it's going to fray and give the piece a little bit more character so we're gonna sew this starting from the foreground and working our way back so over at your machine you're going to set it up with a top thread that matches the fabric that you're sewing and a bobbin thread of whatever you like because unless your tension is messed up you're not gonna see it anyway line up the work under the needle however you like it the rules of seam allowances of quarter of an inch or whatever you like do not really apply here you can sew as close to or as far from the edge of the fabric as you like now as if you were sewing clothing you are going to backstitch a couple of stitches to secure the thread in place and you're going to do that at either end and taking out the pins as you go and just trying to follow the edge of the fabric you're securing whichever layer you're securing whoa trying to keep it consistent or more or less consistent getting a little close yeah that totally did not work and a few stitches back just a secured in place and my thread cutter and there is my first layer secured you you so now that I've sewn down a few of these layers I'm gonna flip it over and start trimming the excess you can of course leave all of these excess layers the way that they are if you like I prefer to trim them down it helps to keep everything a little neater for now I'm gonna leave the bottom as long as it is that way I have the freedom to choose later how large I want the final product to be so I'm going to continue in the same way sewing down two or three layers and then trimming off the backs and I will come back once everything is sewn in so I mentioned earlier how this technique leaves the raw edges exposed and so they're gonna fray over time if you don't want this to happen to your water then you simply fold the edge underneath and sew it down like that so now all the strip's are sewn down and you can see on the back I've cut back all of the extra bits of fabric to keep it nice and neat now I'm gonna go ahead and trim off the edges according to the image that I showed earlier so let's flip that around so I'm not cutting at a weird angle so I'm gonna take out my handy ruler and my rotary cutter and that is about where I'm going to cut it I'm gonna keep it a little bit wider than I was originally planning so that when I make the border and I overlap the border fabric it's going to cut off a little bit more and leave pretty much just the window that I want it and I'm gonna line up one of the straight marks with the water edge because I want that to be my straight line reference and there goes that turn it around and do the same thing on this side bring it over just a touch there we go and I am going to cut off the top and the bottom I don't want this giant expanse of green at the bottom that looks about good so let's cut that off yeah that looks good and we cut that off so now all that's left to do is layer it quilt it and put on the binding I like to quilt it with lines that mimic the hills get some definition to them maybe throw in a couple of currents into the water and then that'll be everything I hope you enjoyed this video join me again in two weeks when I will be making a skirt from a commercial pattern see you then

Channel: Lady Astrianna Sewing

Views: 11,493

Rating: 4.8571429 out of 5

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Id: h80b2bu6IO0

Length: 21min 45sec (1305 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020