How To Make Small Log Cabin Blocks with Paper Piecing

hi I am fleecy abrino of fleecy s worldcom and today I'm going to show you how to use some new log cabin paper foundation templates that I've developed so I've made these little books and inside of them you will find lovely little foundation paper piecing templates to make four inch log cabin blocks that are so cute and little with quarter inch bars and you know in quilting usually when something is small I assume that it's hard so what I'm going to show you today is how incredibly fun and easy it is to make these little blocks you don't really measure a whole lot no quarter-inch seam allowances to sweat over and you'll make beautifully piece blocks very accurate so I have a couple of projects to show you that I've that I've sort of made with these templates so far I have this little wall hanging I'm not going to fold out the whole thing this is a wall hanging that I have made using Michael Millikin couture you can see I used to sort of a dark graphite on sort of the diagonal half of the block and in sort of chalky pastels on the rest the kit for this quilt is available on my website Feliz es worldcom so that's an option for those of you who get scared when picking your own colors another project that I have also done with the same blocks is this pillow and so here you can see a totally different effect here I've gone all the way around with different colors and so same template a completely different effect so let's go ahead and get started and I'll show you how to make your own like beautifully pieced little log cabin blocks using these templates we're gonna have some fun I also wanted to show you my setup here in my studio I'm so lucky I have several amazing sewing machines that I work with today I'm going to be sewing on the Janome skyline as mine which is brand new on the market and I love love love it it's such a cute little machine and it's just a great little workhorse so it's standing here on standby and what you can see here so I've set this up for a foundation paper piecing and you can see my design wall in the background with a silk project that I'm also working on and then when you're doing foundation paper piecing you're going to be ironing a lot like between every single piece and so instead of getting up and walking over to the ironing table and and working that way I have a little ironing surface that I put next to my machine with a hot iron the iron is on a dry setting it is on a hot setting and the reason you want to dry iron is that moisture can warp or shrink your paper and that is not going to make anybody happy in this process and then you can kind of see that I have a pile of fabric strips laying on the right side of the machine so I'm a left-handed person so most of you guys are right-handed ninety percent statistically so you may want to put your art on the other side or maybe make yourself a little table next to you so that that it feels natural for you whichever way you need to turn or stretch or whatever in order to to get onto your iron every between every piece that we sell so here you're seeing the actual booklets of paper piecing templates that we're going to be working today in our log-cabin tutorial each of these books has a little single see if I can find it here single page that is the sort of a short set of directions for how to use these these templates if you are new to foundation paper piecing this is probably not going to be all that helpful for you so that's why we have these video tutorials to help you get off to a good and happy start instead and then here you can see there's 48 paper templates if you are making a larger project then you are going to need more than one of these blocks and of course the the actual blocks are only four inches they're pretty small but as you will see today the fact that it's small doesn't actually make it any harder when we were working with these log-cabin blocks so often in quilting when something is tiny we think it's going to be really complicated it is hard but as you will see here when we're working with paper foundations the size doesn't really matter all that much so the strips here are going to be a quarter inch wide but you're going to cut yours wetter than that of course because of seam allowances and in this model quilt I chose to make half of my bars in a dark sort of graphite gray and then the other bars in sort of chalky pastels to get a nice contrast and the fabric I used was Michael Miller cotton Couture which is my absolute favorite solids in the whole world and the dark color hair is a color called graphite and then I used a variety of different sort of chalky pastels I do have kits available at my on my website Felice es worldcom if you're interested in using the exact same colors that I used if you have been quilting for a while you are probably used to worrying a lot about your quarter-inch seam allowances the quarter-inch seam allowances are not very important when you're doing foundation paper piecing you just need to have safely large enough seam allowances that your work doesn't fall apart but whether it's you know a quarter inch exactly or a little bit more or a little bit less probably it doesn't matter so much but since you may be in the future working with templates of different sizes and want to teach you how to calculate the size of centerpiece and the width of the strips that you need so if you look at this template here you can see that the center is somewhere in the vicinity of 3/4 of an inch and you could cut it an inch and a quarter and have a quarter inch seam allowance all around and that will be pretty comfortable but if your pieces are a little bit bigger it actually doesn't really matter so much so you want to have at least a quarter inch all the way around so again if this was is one and but one of the quarter-inch or sort of 3/4 of an inch wide then then cut your center square no smaller than one and a quarter inch and if you put the one that I have pre-cut here you can see that I'm I cut mine quite a bit bigger that might be a little overboard but it doesn't actually cause any any serious problems at all then in terms of your your actual logs these are a quarter inch wide and that means that your strips here can't be any narrower than 3/4 of an inch wide but that is actually a little bit uncomfortable to work with not because it's hard per se it's just more comfortable to sew and you don't have to be quite as anxiously precise if your strips are a little bit wider so that these strips are all one inch wide and that gives us a little bit more wiggle room a little bit less anxiety about you know having enough seam allowances on both sides of the strips and it allows us to measure a lot less in the sewing process which I think will make you happy when I'm cutting fabric for my log cabin projects I actually don't cut the strip's down to the length of the logs in other words I don't sit here and worry exactly how long that strip needs to be I just take all of my fabric cut it the whole width of the fabric piece that I have to work with which is in this case 40 44 inches and I take that over to my sewing machine and then I cut them to length as I go so everybody has to stitching personality and some people may feel inclined to sort of measure things ahead of time but I find that I work faster when I just cut as I go and it also works better for me because I tend to kind of improvise which color goes where and so I don't actually know before I sit down exactly what I'm getting won't wear and therefore I also don't know how long I will want these fabric pieces to be so just pull all of your strips over to your sewing machine and we'll go on to the next step we are going to start off with a little tour of the paper template that we're using as you can see there's a lot of numbers here those numbers actually indicate the order in which the paper pieces or a fabric pieces scuse me are going to be sewn down and then the solid lines are going to be sewing lines the exception to that is this outermost line you don't actually sew on this line that goes all the way around here as you're assembling a block this is this line is actually what you're going to be sewing on when you're assembling your blocks into a quilt after all your blocks you're finished so the last lines that you'll be sewing on are the second to outermost layer of solid lines so between 15 and 19 and 17 and 21 and so forth I'll I'll show you that when we get on the sewing machine the outermost line here that is stippled that is your seam allowance your quarter inch seam allowance so that after you've assembled your block you can trim your block down to this line so if you're brand-new to paper piecing one thing that we should probably clarify is that this side that you're looking at here this is what goes up on the sewing machine this is what you're looking at when you're sewing your fabric actually ends up on the underside of the paper so that your block as you're sewing on this top side your block is actually forming on the backside here with actual fabric so we're now ready to start assembling our block and I have a paper foundation here I have a white square that I'm going to use in the center and then I have a blue piece of fabric that I'm going to use for my first round so in order to start and it's always tricky is to get these blocks started I'm going to turn my paper upside down and you can kind of see the numbers and then lines through the paper so I'm going to center that altynai paper and in my case just to kind of while we're doing this I'm going to put a pin in I'm going to start sewing on top here that's where the number two is I don't want my pin on top of that I'm just going to put a pin in right there and for now to keep the fabric in place while we get ready to put the first strip on that we're actually going to sew so we're going to start with this blue fabric and I need it to be a little bit wider than the window that says number two on it so again it doesn't matter here if we have exactly quarter inch seam allowances I know that these strips are quarter inch wide Sarah each of these little logs so to make my life really easy I'm going to take my little scissors and I'm going to cut it like this I'm going to turn it over I'm going to put it down here sort of line it up with a white centerpiece and this will actually I'm going to put a little bit down here and then I'm going to put my little flat headed pin in this is the one pin I'll be using for this entire project until I lose it now here is the thing at home it's hard to demo this on a video but at home you will not hold your block up against the light and you will see the fabric through the paper and you'll make sure that the fabric is actually covering the number two window and the center window and that you have a fair amount of fabric all the way around this space and we're going to sew on the two line now when we're doing foundation paper piecing we do need to sew past the lines that are marked on the paper so in this case we're going to attach piece one and two you so we're going to sew on this line here between one and two but since we then will be sewing on three we also need to go past the line so we're going to start sewing here in the three window so on the line between one and two so past where it ends well into the five window again you don't have to sew a quarter inch past it doesn't really all that matter that much but I wouldn't go any less than say an eighth of an inch here when you set up your machine for foundation paper piecing use a straight stitch and set it to a really short stitch so what you're looking for is a stitch that's short enough that it perforates the paper but it's not so short that your paper foundation falls completely apart on you so it also as far as the color of the thread I'm using white here you could use a different color if you wanted to because your stitches are going to be really really short and Janome here it's 1.4 I think on my Bernina I use a 1.4 as well and because your stitches are going to be so short the thread really isn't going to show much so don't go out of your way to find something obnoxiously contrasting but don't sweat it if your thread isn't matching your fabric exactly either also notice that I'm using an open toed foot I want to be able to see what I'm doing and again quarter inches seam allowances don't really apply here because we're sewing on top of the paper so I'm going to lower my pressure presser foot and lower the needle just to kind of make sure that it's lining up with this to line notice that I'm starting before the line that I'm sewing on and then we're going to so all the way down it's a really short distance right we just sewed an inch and I'm going to cut my thread and now we're ready to press out the first piece so we're back to the ironing station we're back at the ironing station turn this over take the pin up this looks very unimpressive at this point I know and we're simply going to open up our seam that we just sewed then press it flat and then we are going to lay down our next piece so again we just sewed here between one and two and cut the thread off and now we're going to put the piece for number three down so I know roughly how long it is I've done a lot of these but in your case if you're new to this we're going to put the fabric down I'm going to take the little snippy sister's cut off a piece turn it back over I know that it's going to be right here this will feel a little scary for you in the beginning when you're at home you will look up against the light and you will see that you have your your line covered here between two and three I have enough experience to almost not even need to look anymore because I've made made a few hundred these blocks put a little pin in some people don't like to pin I like to pin um and then I'm going to put this back on the sewing machine for the next step if you miss your hole like I did here I felt like I wasn't completely lined up and just needle back up and kind of reposition it we're sewing down you know I could sew all the way off the paper if I wanted to it doesn't really matter then we're going to cut it and we're back on that ironing pad so now you see why it's so important to have your iron and your sewing machines set up really really close to each other so you can just sit and sew if not you're going to get a lot of exercise which can be good too but it makes your quilting slower here you can see our first circuit our log cabin block is done and we're going to change color that's always fun to build the blocks and kind of get to try all new colors and that means that if you go back to this side we're now going to sew on piece number six which is going to be right on the outside of piece number two at this point in the pillow that I showed you earlier I would have used white but in order to just generate a little bit of contrast for those of you watching this on top of the white paper I'm going to use the light blue here I'm going to put my piece down and we're back on the sewing machine so I've sewn down a couple of more pieces now I want to show you something that you want to consider as you're making these blocks so we here have a light blue fabric on top of a or outside of a much sharper blue fabric and what's going to happen very likely when we use high contrast between our fabrics is that this little piece of the dark blue that's showing up at the seam allowance there is going to show through when I iron down the piece so what I do and the quilting police very likely will not like this is that I basically just fold this works out just great by the way your quilt will be just lovely and I just fold this down this feels a little cumbersome now because I'm trying to do this front of the camera in real life this is very painless and I'd basically just cut these this a little bit of extra fabric off so that we don't have it sticking up and now you have that light blue fabric covering the dark blue and then you get that extra layer and now you can see there's no show through of the dark blue and that makes your quilt looks look really nice and crisp so just one way to kind of avoid measuring and to relax when you're sewing and you're using tiny tiny stitches here so as long as you have about an eighth of an inch seam allowance or so nothing is probably going to ever slip out or unravel in your quilt [Music] so we're almost finished wind this block just a few more strips left I always end up when I'm sitting like this I always end up with a big pile of big pile of fabric strips in my lap it's usually just how how things flow hmm see if I have enough of this blue to get us all the way around these strips have been laying around in my scrap pile for a little bit let's see put that right there and this is a great whites use of scraps by the way so if you have leftovers from other projects like mmm you know most of us do then this is a great way to kind of showcase fabrics that you have just little bits and pieces left of make something cute [Music] so here I have the grain sticking out underneath the darker blue but I don't really worry about that because they're both about the same sort of intensity if you want so there's no show through and then last a little strip I have a little boo-boo here I'm ran out of this color because I'm a terrible planner apparently and I have sell the chair so I'm going to have a little bit of an this year but we're just going to pretend I don't have in this year just go for it there we go so now we're going to press open the last last piece of this block there we go and so now what you're going to do is you're going to take your block over to the cutting table turn it over use your rotary cutter and a roller and you're going to cut on the stipple lined all the way around so that your block actually is going to measure at that point four and a half inches because of the extra half or quarter inch seam allowance all the way around so here we are over at the cutting table we've completed the last round in real life I probably would give this one last good press before I started on trimming down the block but just for demo purposes here we are going to again I'm a lefty so if this gives you a headache to look at and turn it around in your head and we're cutting this off pretty much on that stipple line there you go so now you have this cute little block you have perfect seam allowances so this is the last part of assembling or sort of thing to think about when you're doing foundation paper piecing I started taking a little bit of paper out here in the middle but what I do normally do when I'm doing foundation paper piecing is that I wait to take the paper off until the entire quilt top is assembled because with the paper here when you lay the blocks together to so when you're assembling your block you're actually going to start right here on the corner and you're going to sew down well you're going to sew all the way across obviously but you're going to sew on the solid line and when you're putting all these little blocks together with the paper foundation still up the edges will butt up and you'll be it's very easy to line things and then when the entire quilt top is actually put together that's when I take the paper off and that's when you you don't match cume your house right before you're going to do this because it does make a mess it doesn't take all that long to do you just have to be prepared that somehow although you're trying to hit the trashcan a little bits of paper will be everywhere afterwards so just be prepared for that and then you'll have a beautiful quilt top that people will be really impressed at how precise your piecing was and all you did was sit around and not mesh or anything after you're started so I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial and I hope you feel inspired to go and play with these little log cabin templates that I made for you guys and let's see if I have a picture of them here here they are s again they're available at Feliz es worldcom and you can also check your local quote store to see if they're carrying them have a great day and happy quilting everybody you

Channel: Felicia's World

Views: 73,641

Rating: 4.8136544 out of 5

Keywords: log cabin, paper piecing, quilting, patchwork, log cabin quilt, log cabin blocks, quilt piecing, log cabin quilt piecing, Felicia’s World quilting, quilting tutorials, quilting videos

Id: S5ORqaH2vHs

Length: 26min 14sec (1574 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 29 2016