Hi, I’m Jenny from the MSQC. Take a look
at this great quilt behind me. Isn’t this beautiful? I call this the Binding Star Quilt
because it was made using the binding tool template. And my good friend, Susan Brown,
who makes the binding tool, she actually brought this idea to us and I love it. It’s so easy.
And you know, this is a, this is a, great tool for helping you finishing your quilt.
You won’t have any trouble binding. We have a video on that, and you can check it below.
But when a template has more than one uses, it becomes really valuable. And so I love
this binding tool template. Now what I wanted to show you about this template right here,
is that sometimes we get them and people say How come mine is blue or How come mine is
red? or you know, whatever like that. Well it’s not really, it’s clear and it has
just plastic on the back and you just have to remember to peel it off. And the reason
I tell you this is because we do get some calls about it. But I actually thought my
washer and dryer were blue for two years and it was because I left the plastic on. So one
day when I was peeling this off, I thought, I’m going to go home and check that washer
and dryer. And sure enough, I have a, I do not have a blue washer and dryer. Anyway, so this pattern is using the binding
tool. And you’ll need that to make that. The other things you’re going to need is
you’re going to need about a yard of background fabric. And we used this black. And you’re
going to need a pre-cut 2 ½ inch strips, 40 of them. And so this, for this one we’ve
used The Jenny Byer palette, the Galaxy Color Wave for RJR. And it’s just gorgeous. I
mean just look at those. I mean it’s just beautiful, beautiful blending colors. So let
me show you how to do this. So to put together this binding tool star,
it goes together in quadrants. And so you make these big blocks right here just like
this. And you’re going to make four of those and put those together. And it’s going to
make the star. And this is what one quadrant looks like. Doesn’t that look awesome? And
it’s so easy. I can’t wait to show you. So for each quadrant, what you’re going
to need is one 8 ½ inch background square. We have black. You’re going to need four
2 ½ inch squares right here. And you’re going to need one 8 ⅞ inch square that is
cut on the diagonal to make two triangles. Just like that. And that’s what you’re
going to need out of your background. What you’re going to need out of your pre-cut
2 ½ inch strip is you’re going to need four pairs, so eight pieces of, of matching
colors to make this gradient look like this. And so when I say a pair, what I mean is,
I mean, you need one going that direction, and one going the other so they’re going
opposite directions. And I’ll show you how to do that. You know if you just leave your
jelly roll strip folded, you’re going to get pairs. So let me, let me cut one of those and show
you. Let me just pull one out of here real quick. This is danger. You know if you pull
one of those out in a store, you’re not getting it back. Alright so what we’re going
to do is we’re going to take our binding tool right here and we’re going to lay it
on the edge of our strip right here. And we’ll cut off the selvedge edge right here. There
we go. And then we’re going to cut right here. See how it has this 45°already made.
And these are the pieces you’re look for. And if you leave your strip folded, you’ll
get two of these that are going opposite directions. Just like that. And so you’ll cut, you’ll
cut two from each strip and then you’re going to, you’ll have a piece left over
and that piece is what we use to make this piano key border out here. So we’ll get
to that a little later. Alright, let me show you how this block is
made because it’s so much fun. Now what I do is I separate my pairs into two stacks.
One going this way. One going this way. On one set, it doesn’t matter which one, you’re
going to sew a 2 ½ square to the end of the strip. So right down here to this end part
right here, we’re going to sew a square to each one of these. So let’s go to the
sewing machine and do that. Alright, I’m going to take the whole pile and I’m just
going to sit over here. And I’m just going to sew them on, one after the other, after
the other. So there’s one. Two. And this actually is called chain piecing. If you’ve
never done it. Putting all these, you know, not cutting in between threads. It saves you
a lot of time. Alright. So now we’ll just cut these apart. And then we’re going to
iron them back. And this construction, when it starts to happen, it’s just so much fun.
Oop, I have one still attached. We’ll free him. And that one. Alright. Oop, I ironed
my corner down. Let me press that out. Ok, so once you get these all ironed, you’re
just going to leave them over here in one pile. And then you’re going to take from
your other pile, and you’re going to sew one of these to the side of your 8 ½ inch
block right here. So we’re going to lay these right sides together. And we’re just
going to sew down a quarter of an inch. Alright, here we go. Alright, once you get that sewn,
your threads clipped, then we’ll press it back. And iron, just iron it out from the
middle. And then what we’re going to do is we’re
going to come over here and we’re going to add the matching piece to the other side.
And see right here how you can see how this is forming up right here. And it makes, you
want to make sure this seam, you know, goes, nests up nicely. And so I’m going to lay
this right along this edge and sew it a quarter of an inch. Alright, now we’re going to
press this back. And you can see the beginning of our quadrant has happened. So then what
we’re going to do is we’re just going to just keep adding. And now you’re adding
where your, where your black square is. You know these should fit each time. And you know,
you’ll know if you’re putting this on the wrong way or something like that. It’s
not going to match up. So then we’re going to go ahead and add our single square to this
side, and our strip with the block on the other side. So let’s go ahead and add a
few of those. Again, I like to just press it back. And then we’re going to add the
matching piece with the black square up here. And you can really see it starting to come
together. Alright, let me go ahead and put this on. Sometimes it’s easier to start
from the, the square when you’re nesting them, to make sure they match up real nice.
And if your seam happens to be going to wrong way, just flip it over the other way, because
we want them to lay really nicely in there. Alright, so now I have two rows on here and
let’s press this one back. And we can flip this over to make sure our, our seams are
kind of going the way we want them to. Alright, so you can see this is coming together. So
I’m going to go ahead and add these next pieces and I’ll meet you right back here.
Ok, so now we’ve got our last piece on here. Let’s go iron it open and see what this
looks like. Ok, so here’s what we’ve got. We’ve finished our last piece and we ironed
that on. But now we need to make it a square and that’s where these two triangles come
in. And we are going to attach those to either side of this right here. And that’s going
to give us, that’s going to give us that square look that’s we’re going for. So
what I’m going to do is I’m going to take these triangles and they will. I want you,
I want you to see this because they will hang off the edge a little bit on either side.
And that’s ok because we’re going to trim them down. And we need enough room to trim
down. And so what we’re going to do, you could put a pin in here if you’d like, but
I’m just going to go sew these down a quarter of an inch and sew one to each side. Alright,
we’ll just flip this around and sew this other one on over here. Alright, now we’ve
got our squares, our triangles onto the sides. And we’re going to iron them back and trim
it up. Now the one thing you want to remember about
this is that you want your four quadrants to be the same size. So once you get one done,
you want to measure it. And mine measures out at 16 inches. And so you want to make
sure that they all end up the same. So I’m going to put mine right here. And right on
these edges, you know, if you have a place that overlaps over here like this little dog
ear poking out, you just kind of want to trim it up. Let’s see here. We’re going to
trim this one up. Not too much to trim off so far. Alright, oop. There we go. A little
more on this side. And then this side. One more. Alright. So now we have our quadrant. So now it takes
four of these to make a star so let me show you how these go together. There’s two right
there. And you’ll sew those two together. And you’re going to sew this together like
a giant four patch. This is so much fun. So all of your corner squares, your center squares
are the black squares. And look how easy that is. And your star is done, just like that. So this is the middle right here. Then what
we did was we put a little 2 ½ inch border around it. Then we made the piano key border.
The piano key border is made using the leftover pieces off the end of your pre-cut strip.
And so we’ll have 5 inch pieces like this. We’ll trim them all to five. And then you
just, as you’re sewing them together, and of course you’ll use different ones. But
you will just lay them right sides together like this. Sew your little quarter of an inch
seam, oop. And you’ll just keep adding and adding and adding those until you get this
nice border out here. Now one of fun things about this quilt was
when I finished it and I brought it upstairs, my grandson Noah started playing with the
different quadrants and the different pieces. And I have to show you what he came up with.
Because you know it’s, it’s just a cool thing, you know, you share a little bit of
your talent with your children and your grandchildren, and they make it bigger sometimes. So that’s
what happened with this. So I’m going to take this down, right here. And you can see
what happened behind us here. So take a look at this. This is the same, just the identical
quadrant but he’s used it all over in this quilt. So here’s a quadrant. You know, I
mean the whole thing is just quadrants again. And he’s used the big star in the middle.
But he’s used all these star pieces. All the way around it on the outside. And it’s
just so gorgeous. So if you want to make this big quilt, we used, for this one, we used
the Artison Spirit Shimmer Strips. And this is the Blue Lagoon. And they’re just, I
mean it’s just beautiful. It’s 2 ½ inch strips. You’re going to need about 40 of
them plus a charm pack and that will give you enough to do your quadrants and the border.
And then you’re going to need about 2 yards of your background fabric. And on this quilt,
we used the teal. And it’s just beautiful. So go ahead and make some of these quadrants.
Play with them, have fun with them. Find new ways to use them. And just enjoy this. And
we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Binding Tool Star from the MSQC.
