How to Make Bags on Your Longarm Machine - Watch & Learn

welcome to our watch and learn i'm christina whitney a studio educator with handy quilter and today we have kelly ashton our studio manager we have a special treat for you today kelly is going to be showing us how she makes these fabulous bags on the long arm kelly show us what you've got okay i love bags so i hope you can relate with me but i'm not very good at following those bag patterns so i know that a lot of you are but i've um found a way to make a bag on a long arm that's really quick and simple and i just want to share with you today how to do that so this is probably one of the first ones i made it's just a big shoulder bag and i did probably 95 percent of it on the long arm so let's show you how there's a couple of samples there's not much quilting on them i've adjusted the pattern throughout making them and i've also changed it to fit like your throat space so it depends on your throat space the the size of the bag that you can make so i have an infinity so i can make these bigger on the infinity and the smaller ones i'm working with we've done on the amara or been my avonte so i'm gonna walk you through the steps of making the longer or making the bag on the long arm okay i'm excited all right so i have just basically three fabrics that you can see and the first one you can see is this black fabric right here excuse me this black fabric right here and that's the main part there i'm going to put some quilting okay it's the kind of the foundation of my bag so i'm going to use the yellow fabric right here i have and then i'm going to put soft and stable on the inside i've used lots of different interfacings this one's more of just a heavy pellon interfacing it's a little floppier uh this one has soft and stable so it holds up a little stiffer okay so you can just decide what you want sorry no you can just decide what how stiff or kind of floppy you want it to be you're going to say show the soft and stable yeah so everybody can see what it is this is just an interfacing but it's it's almost like a little uh i don't know it almost looks like sponge yeah kind of a little foam yeah yeah so and then it has a soft deck it's soft and stable there you go okay so i have the soft and stable already down on my i loaded just um this is just like a muslin because this fabric that's the backing on my throat is not even going to show in the bag anywhere okay so it doesn't matter you can use any kind of fabric and then what i did on the soft and staple is i stitched a pump plumb line with the channel locks and on this machine i have the electromagnetic channel lock so i stitched a line straight across there and now i'm going to line up this this solid fabric to that line and how do you know what size to cut your fabric in your soft and stable so that's a really good question christina and the size of the soft and stable i just want it a little bit bigger than the bag okay because i'm going to use it like batting okay so i needed a little bit bigger mine was already cut and it's just barely long enough but we're going to make it work if you can make it a little bit longer this way that's probably a good idea the first important thing you need to do is mark the center so i have the centers marked here and here and the center that center point i'm going to refer to quite a bit while making the bag okay so i'm just going to we'll speed up some of the quilting so it's not such a long process for you but i'm just going to baste across here i'm going to use my channel locks again so i'm just going to bring up my bobbin thread needle down needle up bring up that bobbin thread i like to put my needle down and then i'm going to set the horizontal channel lock okay and i have my stitches set at five stitches per inch it's just a nice basting because i lined up my fabric right to that straight line i did on the soft and stable i'm pretty confident i'm gonna get a square bag i'm just using my hands to kind of keep any extra like bubbles puckers in the fabric i have all this stuff on here so i'm probably not doing myself a favor here let's i'll look for all of that in a minute now i'm just going to switch my channel locks so they're vertical and i'm going to smooth this fabric as i go and get my my line straight forward now longer machines don't love to stitch left in a straight line you're not going to do any damage if you do it but i don't love to do it because my thread usually shreds so i'm going to move over to the left side of the machine and i'm going to do the vertical line down i'm basting the entire thing onto my soft and move that stable here [Applause] yes [Applause] all right christina i have the whole fabric basted in the rectangle all the way across the soft and stable so i don't have any loose edges it's all basted down okay and now if you look back at the bag again i only need to quilt it depends on how you've cut your your your bag but i only need to quilt about four and a half inches at the top here okay so i'm going to just lay my next fabric out and just double check that and i made this one a little bit smaller so i'm going to quilt about five and a half inches so kelly why you have that measuring tape there or the the ruler can you tell everybody what size you cut your yellow fabric for yeah great idea let me see if i can find the measuring tape so i have my measuring tape so i'm going to give you some measurements of what i'm doing here today i'm working on the amara so i have the 20 inch throat space so and i've cut the length of the fabric 36 inches and i've cut the width 16. so i have x you know it's a 20 inch throat space but i'm giving myself a little wiggle room there so so about that's about the widest that you can make a bag on this frame on this frame now if i were working on the the gallery frame with the forte or the infinity i've got more throat space so you can do it recording use your throw space and then take off about four or four and a half inches and you should be fine okay now i was measuring what i have here i'm going to i'm going to quilt about five and a half inches on each end so i'm just going to make a mark with my blue water soluble pen at five and a half inches so that i know how far i'm going to quilt on both ends so if you quilt a little bit more than that it's okay but you just need to make sure you fill that whole area you can quilt more than that but that's that's pretty much all that's going to show okay so you can quilt all you'd like so we'll do some little speed up but i'm going to put my stitches at 10 stitches per inch and just to kind of be time efficient i'm going i'm going to use my electromagnetic channel locks and i'm just going to do some straight lines for fun okay all right so here we go on the stitching [Applause] okay i got one end done so i'm gonna go to the other end and do the same with the channel locks this is fun to do it this fast [Applause] okay i've got my horizontal lines on the ends of my fabrics now i know i said that i don't like to stitch from right to left in a straight line but i can you can generally do a five and a half ten inch line without much of a problem so i did do that okay now this is my pocket of the bag look back at this black bag this is the pocket this is this part right here and i do have on this one i have an extra color and i do on this one too but some of these i just use the same fabric all the way around it's fine but what i did because i didn't want any it just was easy i just made a tube so i took the fabric i added where's the camera i added an extra piece right there but this is a big tube that's all it is and i have pressed it so that it's this gray part is right in the middle because that's going to be the bottom of my bag okay i didn't really want this cute polka dot to be the bottom of my bag because if you set it down on the ground it's just going to really look dirty so i just personal preference put the gray fabric on the bottom so that i have a bottom of my bad bag that will stay kind of looking clean okay how do you determine how big to make that tube so that's also just kind of your personal choice how big you want your pockets i'll tell you how big i did mine okay okay so this one measures 26 and a half inches so remember the yellow fabric was 36 inches this one is 26 and a half that's after i have the seam and everything and it's double so it's that big circle so i had 50 probably three inches sewed a half inch seam and made the circle so i'm just setting it right on top there i could even take a couple of pins and i can i can just pin down nowhere near i'm going to stitch i don't want the fabric to move but i do not want to hit those pins with my machine so i'm just going to put a couple of pins in there to hold it in place and i'll stop and let you see where i've put those pins so the mark that you made on the interfacing that center mark you're lining the center of your tube up with that line also exactly okay so it's centered perfectly right in there okay now i know i'm going to use when i put my bag sides together i'm going to do a half inch seam so i'm just going to stitch this down a little less than a half inch so it's going to be hidden in the seam all right so i'm just going to put my channel lock on maybe about a fourth of an inch and i'm doing a regular size stitch here just this 10 stitches per inch and i can even do a little back stitch forward back did you know your machine has a back stitch all right now i'm just going to tack this down on the sides and i use my hand forward and back now you don't stitch your fingers but i do go slow and make sure that i don't get any puckers and i can pull back or i can push forward sorry this this is a flannel and it's giving me a little bit of a stretch so i'm getting a little bit of a bubble so i'm just trying to work that bubble in okay back on this end forward and back now i barely caught that on that end but i've caught it enough that i will be able to catch it in my seam i'll take a little bit wider one at the bottom you know every stitch stitch you take it kind of pulls your fabric in a little bit so you do have to be making those adjustments and i didn't make a very much of an adjustment there okay so i notice you have your ruler base on is that helpful while you're doing this or does it make a difference um if i well it it's just my personal preference i like to have it on there it helps me but it's not it's certainly not required once again i have my channel locks on i'm just stitching straight across i know i'm probably driving some of you crazy because my fingers are closed don't stitch your fingers i want to make sure that i keep this fabric right where i want it okay so that is stitched on i'm going to do one more thing with my long arm stitching and it's it's just something i feel like it helps keep the bottom of the bag flat so let me see if i can find one that you can see it good well i know this isn't showing up but i did vertical straight lines across the bag that where it sits flat on the ground i just kind of help i thought that would help it sit flat okay so and it the other thing it does is it stops your pocket because these are now my pocket oh if i don't have a stitch a line here in the center my pocket would go all the way underneath the bag and then i really would lose my keys so i have to stop that pocket so i'm going to go right to the center i have the center marked remember and i'm just going to when i did my the stitching on the sides here the straight lines i didn't measure them i did random just random widths so they're not all the same i'm going to do about three inches each direction to give me the base of the bag okay and i'm going to use a measuring tool so that i can kind of keep them a half an inch pretty consistent so that i know my base is the same so does that does that make sense okay so i'm right in the center i'm just going to do a vertical seam right down the center don't stitch your ruler okay and then i want to move it a half an inch one direction so if you had the pro stitcher you could just use the measure tool the ruler right you could the measuring i'm just going to keep going until i get three inches both directions so bear with me just a second you could also maybe use one of the templates or rulers that we use sure for a ruler really hold one right here and that would give me that it's good you can't see that these aren't perfectly exact it's going to be the bottom of the bag bottom of the bag and i'm actually measuring to give me the three inches so okay so we've talked about measuring with mark or not with mark with the measure tool and pro stitcher we're using templates what foot could you use to do this yeah all i'd have to do is put on the echo foot the half inch echo foot so you could use the half injector foot or the half inch square foot oh i could do the square foot too oh we have so many options you got a lot of things to choose from now i was making it simple just get the electromagnetic channel lock i've lost track of where i'm at let me measure okay so i have one more stitch i'm going to do i'm going three and a half inches so i said three i changed my mind okay now i just need to go the same the other direction [Applause] if you didn't want to do straight lines on this part do you think it would work just doing some kind of a quilting design yeah you could okay i think i would want a straight line to stop the pocket okay like i don't i just don't i don't like to lose things in there so i would want a straight line to stop it if i had a fun little curve i might maybe do like the the side lines and then fill in that part yeah all kinds of options there's no rules it just happens no rules let's just have some fun [Applause] we're almost there gonna measure now and just make sure i'm the same distance oh got one more to go [Music] [Applause] okay one more i took off my glasses i need them that doesn't look like it's listen to all right there we go all that quilting is done at this point all right now the next thing i'm going to do i can add the straps right here so here's my strapping fabric or not fabric my strapping what do you call this strapping tape no that's that white stuff that you put on boxes just get this at the hobby store and twill tape almost yeah tell you how much i bought could you make your own straps out of fabric i buy three yards but you could do any kind of length could you make your own straps out of fabric yes this one i did you see those straps on there i just took the the pocket fabric and extended the straps like that so the width is about an inch inch and a half yeah it's an inch and you said you bought three yards of it okay yep what i'm going to do is just find the exact center a brilliant friend of mine showed me how to do that after struggling okay so we're going to do the center and i know the center and i'm going to put this in four inches from the side so we're going to go that makes it so much easier i'm going to put this right on the four inches right in the center and so i'm going to measure that and put the pin right there in the center and then on this side as well i'm going to go in four inches now i have to cross the webbing this on this side so but because i pinned the center over there i still should be right at the center do you ever sew those pieces together before you put it on yeah you could okay you sure could i don't i guess the question was do i i know i haven't i just do them like this but and then i just need to to pin them out straight you can check the four inches but what we're going to do when we sew them down is just we're going to use the channel lock so it's going to keep them really straight actually if i just start in the center and channel lock out each direction it's going to keep them first i've got to take my channel locks off and i can come right over here to where i start and you made sure that the webbing wasn't twisted or anything right christine i did okay we're just laid it out like it's going to go on that bag but this is double so it's a little tricky to stitch over it so so if you have a hard time getting that foot over you can lift up the hopping foot yeah put over the top yeah you're hopping foot hops so i'll lift it up and bring it over and set it right down on there and i'm going to just put my needle down to make sure i have it right where i want it i get my threads out of the way and then i'll put my channel lock on the right way the horizontal channel lock and i'm just going to stitch out to the edge of the pocket and i'm just holding this i have a lot of things in the way sorry about that i'm just going to hold this out straight now when i get to the corner right here i'm going to do a little square or a little rectangle so that i'm really stabilizing the handle at that point so i'm just going to go over it and i'm going to go over that rectangle a couple of times and i'm going to do an x in it because that looks cool and then i'm going to put the channel lock back on and go back the other direction now i am stitching right to left so i'm just hoping it doesn't break my thread and i'm right here in the center where i crossed those the webbing so i'm going to actually do a little rectangle right here as well so that it stays in place and i did take the webbing and kind of melted the end of it so i don't have a nice raw fraying edge okay now i just have to sew in this direction okay christina my handlebars are stitched down they're stabilized at the corners um besides the webbing i just wanted to point out that you could make your own handles like this is just this fabric that i i put the the tube i just made a little tube you know like you would apron strings or anything and just made a little tube turned it inside out and made my own handles for this one so you can use the the fabric that you have and do that if you don't have access to the webbing you can make really chunky handles if you wanted yeah okay i'm not finished yet now i can cut this bag out halfway flip it over and use my channel locks and do the side seams to do these side seams it's really thick with two layers of stock soft and stable i don't need to adjust the height of my hopping flip but if i put on the glide foot then it just zips across there without any problem at all it's just really easy to slide across so i'm going to put the glide foot on it's the glide two foot i'm just going to loosen that take off my regular foot just a reminder when you're using the glide foot it's a plastic to metal connection so when you're tightening this we're going to tighten until it's tight i'm going to wiggle it make sure it's on there good but i don't want to do the extra just um tighten it i just need to make sure it's tight don't crank it okay i'm going to move all of this stuff out of the way and i'm going to come over to this side here i'm going to take these little pointed scissors i'm just going to cut across the top i'm going to cut down right down the side as straight as i can and i do have that straight line that i stitched against right just barely past center point i have to go past center just a tiny bit okay now i just have to fold this bag over like this and line up my ends make sure right oh i didn't line up the end go to the end i'm like why is that not lining up because i wasn't to the middle okay i might have to raise that foot again to get it right over there and i would like it to be a half an inch if i used the half inch square foot it would give me my exactly half inch but this much bulk i just really like to have the glide foot so i'm going to put that down bring up my bobbin thread i have the bobbin thread okay put on your channel locks i'm putting on my horizontal channel locks which that channel lock just a reminder it keeps my seam straight horizontally or vertically whichever way i have it hooked a little back stitch cut my thread there you go batting scissors cut thread well too whatever you have close by you can tell i need more than a table by my side when i'm quilting don't i measure your half an inch i gotta pull up the bobbin thread don't forget you can lift that foot to put that up on top of that bulky fabric and you're quilting through several layers of fabric right now yes i am put on back stitch okay i'm gonna cut off the rest of the bag and turn it right side out and we'll show you the bag that we got i'm excited let's see it with my luck i'd cut through the handles at this point we're moving them way out of the way so we don't can i just say how much i love those batting scissors you can because they're one of my favorite tools as well well i guess you don't have to say all my favorite tools but they are one of my favorite tools as well mine too okay so the inside of my bag it's okay it's fine but let's see what it looks like from the outside the big reveals look how cute that is can you make a bag like that okay we're not quite finished i did tell you that i did 95 of it i might have stretched just a little bit because we have a couple of things left to do and one is i really like box corners do you know what box corners are i do so when on there at the outside they look like this they give you a nice flat surface if i don't do that i just have this like pointed surface i don't have a flat surface to set my bag on so i do want to do some box corners you can do it on your long arm machine but really it's it's nice to be able to to just do it at your domestic machine so i'm going to turn it back around just had to show you what it looked like and i'll show you how you make the box corners okay i i actually have also made this at my domestic machine and what this is is um it's a lining because i like pockets on the insides of my bags so the yellow fabric i used initially i made another piece exactly the same okay and i took a half inch seams on the edge but before i turned it i put some pockets on here okay so on that side i've got that pocket so this is just an added bonus this is just if you want so and then i also put a pocket on this side with that i could put pins in i put some straight lines so i could put pens down in there okay all right and then you can see that i did the box corners on here as well so i want to show you how to do the box corner this is another sample so i've just done the side seams so all i have to do is take the the end of my so this is the pocket i've got right i'm going to take the corners of the pocket and i'm just going to fold them so they make a nice triangle okay okay and if you can tell on this one i already have it sewn i used a measuring tape and i measured two inches on up the seam so my triangle from the point to my line is two inches okay what that gives me straight across is four inches so i'll get a four inch base okay if i measure two inches up and draw a line now you can see i'll hold it so that you can see it right there and then if i'm two inches from point to line i get a four inch base okay so now inside my pocket or i can just slip this inside the bag but i'm going to do the same thing on the bag before i turn it i'm going to fold my points like this it's really bulky we have the stitch machine it's industrial straight stitch and it easily sews through this layer so i think most domestic machines should sew through it that well the same way but if you need a domestic machine that sews through more stuff that that machine will the industrial stitch machine will sew through all these layers no problem i'm going to do the same here i'm going to measure two inches from point and that's going to give me also i'll draw a straight line and do those box corners okay good um you're just about finished i know these aren't sewn yet but i'm going to slip it in here to show you how it works i just slip my lining right inside there it fits just perfectly and then all i do to finish it is i i sew a binding on just the top edge and um i just put that binding on and flip it around and i sew it by machine and i'm i'm done with the bag and i know we sped some of it up but it really only took us less than an hour to make this bag so i'm i'm seeing right now a benefit to stopping the handle down at the edge of the pocket rather than taking it and sewing all the way to the top good then you might be able to get your binding on yeah good point see there was a reason there was madness reason to my madness so i'm going to show you one other bag really quick before i let you go because the long arm can be used for so much fun um this bag these little bags okay those are just fun little bags so all i did was take a a jelly roll strip and sewed it all together this was actually a junior jelly roll so it wasn't quite as big as some of them but i sewed that together we quilted it across the top of it and then i've cut it into strips and then all you have to do i'm losing everything something fell down in the handy hammock a little bag yeah that's why we have a handy hammock to catch everything right so i you could put the zipper anywhere you want in here you can put it right in the middle you could do some box corners you could do a lot of fun things but i just like to put it kind of near the top and this is just a little bag i take with me with all my tools i can put it in my suitcase it's just a fun little quilted bag and and the backing of this fabric does show so whatever you put on the back it's you will see it on the inside of your bag but that's so easy and quick i did a little box corner on this as well so it would sit flat but i hope that you've found something that might inspire you to try at home today the long arm it's amazing to quilt quilts with right but there's a lot of other fun things we can do on it as well so so give your hand and try a bag yeah i am really excited i think um as soon as we're done filming i am gonna go play on the machine yes so thank you kelly that was great um for those of you watching take pictures of these bags that you're creating and send them in to us we'd love to see your projects so thank you for joining us and join us again next week for our watch and learn and make sure that you like and subscribe and follow us on instagram and facebook yeah have a great day this one's really fun to play with so let's take a look down here and see what we can do with this you can see i've stitched out in this purple thread our diamond shape so i'm going to show you how i stitched that it does have some over stitching if you're concerned about the thread build up you can use a finer thread or you can cut your threads and just shift the ruler and just do the diamond i'm a little bit lazier with my quilting and so i tend to do over stitching to get to my next place so i started here in the corner and i went around and i stitched a full diamond and actually i'm going to switch out rulers so that you can see what i did i marked with painters tape where i needed to stop okay so i did the full diamond shape stitched over that same line and i stopped when i got to my painters tape then i shifted my ruler over however far i wanted bumped it up against my foot made sure it was lined up within my seam and you've got these straight lines that you can use to make sure that the ruler is going straight so once i had the ruler in proper position i stitched down stitched the whole diamond and actually i stopped right there and then back stitched up to here again stopping when i got to my tape shifting again stitching the diamond stopping here and over stitching so there's lots of tricks that you can use with your rulers i've got the handy grip on this one so that it stays stationary and then after i finished stitching out all of my row i went back and i did some fills in a different color thread so it just gives it a different look so you can compare it between this section here that has this ribbon candy and just some curves in the center here compared to just using the ruler so that's a challenge to you to try to expand on what you're doing don't feel limited but do whatever feels natural to you at that point okay let's look at this next section here for this one i'm only going to use part of the ruler so another thing with rollers is you don't have to use the full shape so i'm going to line this up so that my points are right on my seam i would have my needle down right here bump the ruler up against that foot and then i stitched up and i'm going to add a little fill right here i'm going to do a teardrop shape with the ruler still in place stopping when i get back up to the top and stitching down here i'm going to shift the ruler just a little bit just to get it out of my way do another teardrop shape and then position the ruler for the next section so again lining up with my seam oops i'm going to stitch up do a little teardrop and shift down so here's a little tip for this one if you are doing a border and this size shape is not going to fit and you need to lengthen it out a little bit this is a good place where you can lengthen it out you can stitch up do some kind of a little shape shifting it over just a little bit and then stitching down again do a little shape shift it just a little bit and then you can continue on so that can help lengthen out that border designed to make it fit within your border okay let's look at this one right here this is really fun i like doing this one i had a larger border that i could play in i didn't have to be limited to just go one direction so what i did is i put my ruler on an angle stitched around the ruler stopping here rotating and i was just random on this i didn't use any markings really i just played with it stitched the next one and then i backtracked over stitching to get down here flip it again shift or sorry stitch around a little over stitching oh i overstitched all the way to that one okay and then the next one around you'll notice on this one that i did some echoing around so this ruler it's a diamond shape but you also have a straight edge on here so i was able to just take the straight edge line it up on the stitch line that i already stitched and stitch a quarter of an inch away because your hopping foot is that quarter of an inch so you don't even have to measure anything okay rulers are fun when you have to put them on uncomfortable positions but it's doable play with it get used to it try different designs again this one i added a little fill in here just to make it look a little different between the two okay let's move oh we've got one more design right here i forgot about this one this one again i used half the ruler shifted it over half the ruler and then i went back and i did the same thing just offsetting it by half or sorry by quarter of an inch so i lined up the edge of the ruler with my previous stitched line made sure i've got my quarter of an inch so that i can hit my seam and then i stitched out my next line shifting the ruler over stitch the second line and then i repeated the same thing a third time so that gives it that different look there okay let's actually stitch with this ruler and learn some tips on this one first thing i'm going to do is move my machine into position bring up my bobbin thread try to run away from me then with my needle still in the up position i'm going to take the ruler and this slit right here is going to slide right over that foot and that's how i get to the center the needle has to be in the up position for that trick to work okay so i am wanting to fit this design or this diamond within my border so i've got a quarter of an inch that i can do to hit that seam perfectly or i can move it up just a little bit if i want to give myself a little bit of wiggle room so i'm going to give myself just a little bit of wiggle room okay do my tie off and then i'm ready to stitch okay when you get to a point make sure that you pause shift your hand and you'll notice that i don't have any pressure on this side so i might move my hand just to give myself a little bit more control there so i'm going to walk my hand a little bit holding that side of the ruler down okay you don't want that to flip up and get caught in there now i'm going to continue coming down little pause there and i'm back to where i started if i want to continue that on i'm just going to travel back over and now i'm in position to shift the ruler and do another diamond with this design it's important if you're going to be traveling over the same line that you have handy grip on so you'll notice that i actually moved the ruler just slightly and i didn't stitch perfectly on that line if i'd had handy grip on my ruler it would have stayed in place better okay so that is our diamond template and you can do amazing things with this think outside the box you can even do this side of the ruler instead of this side of the ruler if you have a larger border play around with it and have fun

Channel: Handi Quilter

Views: 10,404

Rating: 4.9351354 out of 5

Keywords: Handi Quilter, Longarm, Sewing, Quilting, Quilts, Free-motion Quilting, Finishing Quilts, quilter, longarm quilt, quilting tips

Id: lXxBR4YLknA

Length: 44min 47sec (2687 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 07 2021