How to Make the Tree Farm Table Runner | a Shabby Fabrics Tutorial

[Music] hi it's Jan from shabby fabrics for the fun table on a project for you today this is called tree farm table runner and this actually was a free quilt pattern from motive fabrics a few years ago and they have graciously allowed us to take those blocks and just sew three of them together and turn this into a cute little table runner this is using the splendid collection that's this year's Christmas collection for motive fabrics one of the many Christmas collections from know that and I just really fell in love with how this side of the table if you're sitting on this side you're seeing the green to green trees the red tree and on the other side you really have a Christmas trees too those are just happen to be white so I can't wait to show you how simple it is to put together it looks complicated and of course it's much simpler than it appears inside your pattern everything will be full color it's very easy to understand so what I've done here we'll be making one of the green blocks is it's really put together in two halves this is the right half of the block and we're making the left half of the block a portion of it together and you can see how easy the assembly is so the first thing that you'll be working with is cutting your you're kind of what I would call white out of with your two and a half inch ruler I love the creative grid ruler that's the two and a half inch because I don't have to find that measurement on a larger ruler most of the time when I'm cutting yardage I'm using either you know a six and a half inch by 24 and a half inch ruler I love that this ruler once I get my edge all cleaned up let's just cut some strips together rather than me describing it you can just see how really special this ruler is it's great too let's say that you want to cut a project any project that's using two and a half inch strips maybe using a jelly-roll but maybe the fabrics you want to use are available no jellyroll this is a perfect ruler to go ahead and cut those two and a half inch strips and you can know that they're going to be right on the money because all I have to do is lay my ruler right on and line that up with the edge of my fabric you really can't miss here I don't even really need to be lined up with the mat you see what I'm saying is I'm not lining up with my mat right now I'm lining up with my ruler and that might be a new concept for you you may be always lining up with your mat but when you have a ruler like this you don't really need to do that at all I'm just putting that ruler right along the edge of my fabric and I'm gonna cut my strips and of course you'll follow the pattern to cut as many strips as necessary once you have all of those cut of course we'll be cutting those down per the pattern to the various sizes indicated in here that's where you might want to be using a smaller ruler because as you can imagine this ruler this way can be a little bit awkward it's big right so as I I per my pattern on you to cut a two and a half by eight and a half a two and a half by five and a half a two and a half by four and a half and as you can imagine while this is functional it takes up a lot of space and that's where I like to move into a smaller ruler or something that's just a little bit easier to fit in my available space even my sewing room at home is quite cramped and having various size rulers is really really very helpful so this is where this ruler comes in so handy because it already is eight-and-a-half and the biggest cut you'll do on this particular project is eight and a half so you would simply and I'll start on this end since I clean that up there just bejust the full width of that ruler the full okay and then my next cut is a five and a half again I don't really need to worry about lining up on my mat I'm finding my five-and-a-half I'm laying it on my fabric and I'm making my cut my next cut is a four and a half I'm finding my beautiful four and a half notice that create a grid rulers black dots or half increments one and a half two and a half and so on all the way up to eight and a half white dots are whole numbers since these are all half-inch increments I'll be using the black dots let's do that one more time I'm have to cut a two and a half by four and a half well we already know our strip is two and a half all I do is line up on the four and a half and make my cut these these rulers are truly ingenious and I love the fact that the back of them has this kind of tackiness they're not sliding all over my table and I'm slipping as I'm cutting which I've done plenty of missed cuts when the ruler simply slipped away and my blade followed and now I've potentially ruined that cut so you get the idea you'll be cutting your whites and your greens per the instructions in the pattern and of course the same will go for the red and we have that all outlined in the pattern I always love to lay everything out and get a visual on what I'm doing to make sure does this look right and for me at this point based on what the pattern is telling me everything looks correct again the right half is already done and I've done the bottom left section will be doing the upper portion together so as you would imagine you've draw this a little bit closer to me so you can see it and we'll actually put this one aside for now as you can imagine and per our instructions in the pattern we're going to here's our fabric we basically just to get a visual and what we're going to do that's going to be in that corner so you're used to doing that you're used to cutting a square putting it in the corner drawing the line right we've we've all done this have you've done any kind of quilting projects I can be almost certainly you've done this before where it's the sew on flip method right where you draw the line you might pin that or not take that to the sewing machine sew on the line and flip it's a lot of this bringing out there ruler and drawn the line and doing that same a technique over and over again but we think we have a smarter mousetrap it's a tool called the corner clipper while this has been out for a while it's new to me and I'm telling you I love this tool it makes things go together so precisely and faster I don't need that friction pen I'm gonna actually put that away so what you do instead of drawing the line I can leave the line there or take it away I'll take it away so it's it's just out of our way we're not staring at that is the corner Clippers job is to sit right in that corner see the drawn line see this line from here to here isn't that the line Idris drew absolutely it is so what we're going to do we're their corner clipper notice how beautifully I have so much guidance to know that everything is squared up perfectly I'm going to cut right here and I'm just gonna simply bring that to my sewing machine and my quarter inch seam allowance will naturally take me from this corner to the next let's go do that together oh this reminds me I'm using a confetti 50 weight cotton this is our Neutral set this is the only thing I use for piecing on dark fabrics real dark fabrics I use that kind of middle colored fabrics I use the grey and on a lighter colored fabric I just use the off-white there's fabulous thread and I use that in the bobbin as well I've got a starter strip going I'm sewing under Bernina 770 today and I have a 57 deep foot in there I love that it's got a little gate so I've already started my starter strip and notice how I'm just feeding this in my fabric is right at my gate and notice how it's gonna begin and end exactly where it needs to be did you notice how I never pinned I didn't pin I don't need to pin that also saved me a step now pressing I'm just gonna do a quick press button I'm going to tell you why I'm gonna make kind of a emphasize pressing on this one I know I'm an oppressed to the outside and normally I always do that press to the outside when I put a square in a rectangle like this however it's a little bit different for this project because we know that when we bring the other half in we want to be able to have interlocking seams where I'm going with that is please make note that inside our instructions we have been very specific the fabric on the right side the the right half of the of the tree we are pressing toward the white and up on the left side of the tree we are pressing toward the green and down what that's going to do for us later on when we assemble our block is we're going to have these beautiful interlocking things if that's confusing to you you're going to see what that's going to do for us very shortly let me move on to the next step and I think you'll see what I'm referring to and how important pressing really is to make the block lie as flat as possible so that's the very top right you can see how that's going to come together now here you have two sections you have the portion out here you have the green it's got to be wider right because our tree is growing and now we have our other portion so we know we're going to be right side together so how do we manage our corner clipper tool with us let's get that out of the way and this out of the way for the moment it's more natural for me to use the tool this way I can see my crease I've been depressed that my line is going right down my crease and I'm gonna go ahead and cut and let's go so again and I'm gonna take my little starter strip with me I like using a starter strip it just kind of gets the Machine going and then I come right along afterward with my pieces that I want to sew together okay if you're inclined to save these and do something with them go ahead or toss them as you prefer and let's look at what our pressing instructions are right we agreed that on the left side we're going to be pressing down so let's go ahead and do that okay so now we have the other half as you would suspect we'll simply go right sides together let's go so these two together alright now here naturally you can see what does this thing want to do you can see I'm not even really tugging on it this seems like take make me go that way great I will agree with that let's let's press away from the bulk okay so now that's our two halves let's go ahead and sew those flip those and we will sew that I think I will go ahead and put a pin in there because I don't want I need the beginning in the end to work out right we all know that so far I really haven't been using a pin because the corner clipper sets everything up to work out perfectly alright let's take that over to our machine this is where I want you to referring back to the pattern so that you will be pressing in the direction so that will have those nesting scenes I'm gonna bring out that other half of the tree I always kind of like to reorient myself and say okay yes this is the top portion of my tree everything else has been pressed downward just like we're showing the arrows are pointing down so I'm gonna heat up that seam and similarly I'm going to be pressing downward on that I like to press from both sides to make sure I didn't take a tuck sometimes I've done that where I've left a little bit of a tuck in there especially if there's some bulk so go ahead and double check that maybe even kind of just encourage it to open up and get that tuck away okay I'm gonna get that iron heating up good and hot now you can see our tree is growing so I will go ahead and sew this together and again let's just put a pin in there at the beginning in the end maybe I'll even put one in the middle so it doesn't push out I have to make sure I don't want that seem to roll over on me so let's just be careful that doesn't happen okay let's see what we're doing we know we're gonna press downward let's heat up that seam and down again so we've got the other half done and now you can see why this pressing has really set us up for success and before in my early days the cool thing I was like ah just press wherever you want to and I'd sometimes end up with all of the scenes kind of kind of coming together and my blocks didn't lay flat at all and my long-arm culture would sometimes comment on how there was so much bulk that should break a needle even when she was trying to quote my quote so I've learned that thinking about interlocking seems ahead of time and planning that is very valuable so let's look at that of course you're gonna sew the two halves together see how the mindfulness this seam is going this direction and this is going that way so they just lay perfectly in this little valley is exactly where I'm going to put my pin and then look at this little intersection right here how they just nest perfectly this is what makes the difference between a block coming out pretty good and very good it's all of these steps along the way so if you're new to quilting or maybe you haven't bolted in a while I just want to encourage you whenever you're using a pattern to really do consider the best way to press something so that you have these beautiful nested seams and your block comes out laying nice and flat and the seams come together exactly where you want them to come to let's go ahead we're gonna take this to the sewing machine and we're gonna finish up this block lettuce I've pinned from this side versus the other side so I can keep my pins in place while I sew that's very important when I was an early quilter I would pin from the side I'd be removing them and removing them I don't want them to be removed I want them to stay in place because they're stabilizing the block let's get right in there now sometimes when I'm sewing as the presser foot comes toward these sometimes it wants to roll that seam over this is called the purple thing kind of a funny name but it certainly does a great job at it so if that's starting to roll over the whole job of that is to have that close to your needle in your machine instead of your fingers it's much safer this tool is just a couple dollars and is worth every penny because it keeps your fingers away from the machine and the needle now as you would suspect when you've got that much bulk coming together since we're two on the topic of pressing the natural thing to do at this point is to go ahead and press that seam open so let's do that let's see how we did let's see if our points came together as expected and let's see how flat our block is all scoot that over so you can get a good look at that just open that up it's so well nested it almost doesn't want to open up there we go sometimes I'll just with my fingers try to open that up so that the iron can just kind of track along there okay and let's check from the front look at that look how beautiful that is with just some very good habits your blocks will come out beautifully the corner clipper saved us a lot of time notice I didn't pin I wasn't drawing lines I didn't have to drag out that ruler and look how beautiful our block comes together this project can easily be accomplished in probably three-quarters of a day and just look how drawing that that is again Moda thank you so much for allowing us to take your quilt pattern and turn into a rudder pattern this is available as a free download exclusively available on the shabby fabrics website of course we do have limited kits available using this blended collection so I hope you enjoyed learning how to make this fun Christmas table runner and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Shabby Fabrics

Views: 168,196

Keywords: free christmas pattern, free christmas quilt, christmas table runner, tree table runner, free table runner pattern, moda pattern, free moda pattern, moda sewing project, moda tree pattern, moda splendid fabric, splendid by moda

Id: i8P_HDfgnqA

Length: 21min 31sec (1291 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2019