Making It Fun Episode #33 - The Recovery Quilt

it's a perfect time to hunker down and make yourself a quilt if you're feeling a little low I've got some hugs and kisses coming right for you that's right I'm stealing her friends project today called the recovery quilt let's get started stolen not exactly it was a loaner idea that's right I got to give huge props and thanks to my dear friends Laura and Lisa material girlfriends calm a couple of days ago and if you follow me here I am Rob Appell from Michael Miller fabrics again welcome to making it fun everybody I'm so glad you're here if you've been following my story as a quilt maker I'm actually a recovering alcoholic that loves to use fabric to keep myself out of the bars at least that's the short version of the story and recently I've hit a little bit of a wave of depression and I found that working with my hands is really helping me pull through some of those lower moments if you're following along what's going on in the world we're a we are in the middle of the corona virus outbreak in case this video goes on to live for another 20 or 50 years or whatever I know we all will and that is the point we will make it through this together and this is a time when we're hunkering or sheltering in place and so one of the best things we can do to keep ourselves occupied is turn to our crafts working with our hands and under our machines don't get me wrong and we're gonna have a blast so I've got a fun tutorial for all of us I feel like I've already said too much again Laura Lisa material girlfriends comm thank you so much for putting together this beautiful quilt with hugs and kisses but they're also focusing on the color green because the color green is a color for calming for soothing and this is something that I just needed so they sent me this fun diagram a few days ago and they said hey Rob this is something we're playing with we would encourage you just to do it I said what sighs they said it doesn't matter just have fun make some half square triangles which we're gonna do here and just have a blast so I did I broke it down and I came up with about six different colors is that correct one two three four five six plus the neutral so these are cotton couture from Michael Miller high density solids that are just wonderful - so patchwork quilt with all the wonderful things they have a pattern written there's a free download the link is in the bottom of this video here in the description so they actually I think he's nine colors overall throughout their project again you can make this scrappy in case you're working out of your stash the entire goal is just to have some fun and make a quilt that you might even want to just give away at the end to somebody in your neighborhood that can use it more than you could so we're gonna make half square triangles I'm gonna do them the four at a time method where we're gonna sew around all four corners of this I made six inch squares for mine whatever you do do the same and then follow the math on the pattern so that you know how many you need for this style I'm gonna come on over to my sewing machine drop the presser foot and I'm gonna sew all the way through from the top of the bottom with a quarter inch seam allowance and I'm actually gonna do this on all four sides I like to come down to the end pivot my foot has automatically lifted because I've got this awesome new jukey sewing machine and I'm spoiled by it I love it and then I'm just gonna sew on down this way as well and again we're doing all four sides all the way off and then once I'm done I'm just gonna left my presser foot cut that thread out of there and then the next step I want to do is I want to come on in here and I want a dog ear these corners so I'm just gonna cut off these edges and that is gonna save bulk in the seam and the patchwork later on okay and then once that's done what I want to do is I want to go ahead and grab a ruler that is longer this one certainly qualifies and I'm gonna lay it where those threads crossed over each other okay so I'm not so worried about the corners I just cut them off anyways so I'm actually laying them right over where the threads cross and I'm just gonna cut through there once and don't move anything other than the ruler lay it from corner to corner opposite and this is gonna go ahead and yield for us those four wonderful half square triangles okay and I have them I should have mentioned each of the greens are paired with one of my background fabrics or my neutral fabric colors okay you've heard me say it before we're gonna press these to the dark side which means I want my seam on the darker of the two fabrics so I find that if I stack these up in order points first I might have stalled just long enough for the iron to reheat while I was goofing around at the sewing machine up just a second longer is what we need but by doing it this way I can actually there we go grab the point the tip of that half square triangle and then I'm gonna lay the iron right in there nice and easy and I'll generally go ahead and press over about eight to twelve of these at a time because I like to make them all factory style you know all of them at once and then what you want to do is you want to let them cool all the way through nice and cool that way before you move them because fabric has memory and if you move them too soon they're just going to go back to that wrinkly state they were in the entire quilt itself is consisting of two blocks we have basically the hug block and the kiss block here I'm gonna walk you through both of those in a second here but I left the other fabrics across the room I'll be right back look here we go here we go here we go here we go clear these back out of the way then and we can go ahead and get these all together so we are gonna need four colors for our hug block here and for the hug block and the ladies Lisa and Laura material girlfriends calm they actually talk in their patterns about working these in quadrants like this because this block is completely Universal what you make here you could do this as a four-piece and then you could duplicate that over and over and over again again just like I like to do and doing some chain piecing styles for me I actually found it was easier working from the center out so what I'll do is show it that way so that you have both styles to learn from and to work Center out what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find that neutral fabric and I'm just gonna lay it together like this but then the next thing I picked up on on the block was that the outer fabrics were facing outward so then I drop those in place and then I'm going to make a dark tip here and a light tip like that and then it's just going to opposites its way around so it's going to be a dark and I say tip because I'm talking about this unit here to here just like that and that is exactly how you'll go ahead and construct all of the pieces to make the hug block you're going to need five of them to make the quilt the size we're working on which is going to finish roughly about 50 square by the time you get the borders and everything on it if you like okay so let me show you the layout for the kisses block or the X block and then what I'll do is I'll piece them together and show you the block then the rows and then it'll be so simple you'll be basically turning the video often moving on to your design wall it'll be so fun so let me just go ahead and quickly move these out of the way oh but as I move them when I get ready to move these into the sewing machine I've got this wonderful thing I'm learning because I love to assemble in rows and order so long story short let's let's stack these up organize so what I now know is here's my sewing machine over here and I am going to consider the last seam so this will be a seam at the machine this will be a seam at the machine and so I'm gonna stack those up in the order so three is on four I'm counting one two three four that way okay three is on four and then also what I want is I want to go into the machine I want to be looking at piece number two so that as I sew these I can sew these build them out and then press them all at once so I need to join this scene between blocks one and two and I'm gonna rotate this and stack it I'm going to place two on one I'm gonna rotate it and stack it two on one rotate and stack two on one rotate and stack and then I'm going to pile these on top of each other with an overlap so I can get to them each and if I do this and I slide these right under the machine right now with the seam allowances I am NOT concerned that I won't know where those are when I come back or I won't be able to build those when I come back so we can move on to the X block now again the X block is awesome but the X block is not universal like the Oh block was the X block and what do you mean universal rub what the heck are you talking about please slow down you said you would teach us all of this stuff so watch this with the O block if I take this unit the or cur of these two and I rotate a quarter turn it's always in position now we're counting one two three this way never is it consistent right so anyways no matter how I rotate the block all of the pieces are always in the same location no matter about the corner sit in the 90 turn but when I come back to this block even though these three pieces remain Universal the interior so we get this cool checkerboard between light and medium happening it doesn't so let me lay my finger right now on the light and as I rotate this a quarter turn look now it's on a dark now they're quarter turn it's on a light so this block is going to be universal but you have quarter turns to pay attention to on the light the dot sign wall on the layout and all that and the easiest way to do that is just always focus and always pay attention to the way that you're doing it and right now the way I have it laid out on the design wall my lights are on the right and I just like to say that because it rhymes and it makes it easier to remember so let's go back to that Center like we started the last one and just do that same exact thing but this time instead of the neutrals being in the center we're gonna use our colored fabrics and it's lights on the right and it forms up fun checkerboard look so we're just gonna do that okay and then I also know that on the exterior again now I've got my darkest of these colors see how it quickly said these colors in case I don't know that it's the darkest of all of the colors okay that's gonna lay out there and then the same thing here although it's going to be basically of the two choices I have I'm gonna go the medium here the lighter of the two there but then it just checkerboards its way around or alternates its way around super fun easy to do I will recommend you make sure you have all of your pieces accounted for in all your colors before you start sewing them all together though because that's just a wise way of building quilts okay I'm gonna do what I just did and get ready to sew this together so again now it's technically four on three 3 on 4 3 on for three on four then two on one rotate two on one rotate two on one rotate two on one rotate that way and then I'm just gonna stack these up stack these up stack these up like this and we're gonna bring them right over to the sewing machine and now I'm going to show you how to put these together into a row so like I said here's the seam allowance and it won't always work that your darks are touching your lights and that kind of thing so I'm just going to make sure that this is calibrated the way it was earlier i'm using my edge guide I'm gonna slide both of these pieces square to square edge to edge drop my presser foot and I'm gonna go ahead and just stitch on through here lift the presser foot and then what I can do is I'm just gonna slide the patchwork over and now that seam is ready for piece number three I'm gonna lay it over right sides together match up that corner down there drop that presser foot and start stitching through always double check the bottom corner make sure I'm happy with that down there and keep on sewing not reorienting the block so now as I just flip it again there goes those pieces just like that and then I'm just gonna set them on the ironing board so that when I hit the ironing board I can iron alternate directions of the seams I'm gonna rip through the rest of these I'll be right back once all the rows are made up then I want to go ahead and press them so that all of the blocks or the units have their seams facing in opposite directions to make it easier to nest so like come off of the stack of rows the four rows to make the block I'm going to grab one from the end and then I'm going to do the press press press in one direction that way and then I'm going to grab the other one from the other end rotate it press in the same direction I was but now the rows been rotated put it back in location this one I grabbed from the end versus the beginning and then this one I'll grab from the beginning and we'll press it to the end make sure you rotate them and check your orientation for everything and then I love to be able to so right next to where I'm working this way so I can just go ahead and grab row by row and we're just gonna join the blocks as we go so I'm gonna now flip these again right sides together and I'm really only concerned about the very first patchwork and now those seems like I said they've nested they flopped this way so as I come to the machine and I know it would be great if always the seams we're facing in the best direction but one row will be in the next row won't be so we just kind of got to get used to both styles of sewing sometimes the Stiletto will help and let's get in the habit of back stitching here at the beginning of this block now get it all nice and secure and we're gonna sew through and I'm just really secured really worried about that first union of blocks there as I come through and now I'm gonna line up the next union of blocks this way stitch on through and because there's a little give there's gonna be a little compensation which actually works in your favor line up the next row next set of units whoops I just pulled on it okay perfect there and then at this point you probably want to head to the ironing board and you want to press these open and I like to press from the first up into the second that I've done and then what I'll do is I'll just keep adding on the rows as I go from here take this one line it up head on into the machine we're going to finish out all of the blocks so you're gonna have five of the obe locks the hugs you're gonna have four of the X blocks the kisses and then once all those blocks are done I've got a bunch made I can show you it's just the same as when you're joining the rows right so let me just double-check my orientation yes I've got two O's left and an X so that X is going to go in the middle here I'm just gonna lay this together and the same thing I'm just gonna marry up those edges like yay drop the presser foot so now I've got the two blocks together I'll go ahead and take a second and join the last block so the rows now will have three rows of blocks in each now that I've got those all set I'm just gonna grab another row right off the design wall here make sure that its opposites X's two O's X's two O's and then do the exact same thing I'm just going to come on over here into the machine and get ready to run through here so very easy I'm gonna go ahead and back stitch and again I'm just gonna make sure that each unit each half square triangle block now lines up as I go through this whole seam allowance and as I stitch these rows together I'm thinking to myself I probably should go ahead and close out the video now the pattern put together by material girlfriends comm of course they've got the wonderful border around the exterior edge I'm actually considering making my quilt a little bit larger I think that might be cool but I'm also considering giving this quilt to a neighbor and I'm also considering doing another fun series of videos with this quilt I'm pretty sure I'm gonna open up a live camera feed in a day or two and I'm just gonna have some live quilting and let everybody enjoy that as we're all kind of staying at home right now we're kind of hunkering down we're kind of sheltering in place as this whole new way and creative process takes over as we together do some of our recovery and our healing from this crazy coronavirus that's going on right now I want to show you the rows as they come so I'm just going to talk for another second I guess I might as well fake thank you thank you thank you to Lisa and Laura for a fabulous quilt pattern but one of the things that really helped me to settle down was the fact that I was looking at somebody else's pattern I was looking at somebody else's fun and I didn't really have to think too much and I didn't to work too hard and putting this video together and that is really what I want to portray and and communicate here today is what I was saying earlier is textiles for me is a place of fun and creativity but it's also become a place for my busy hands to come together and work and have fun and just start to do more and more creating and constructing and that just makes me personally feel so very much better inside especially when I'm feeling a little stressed out or anxious or overwhelmed or all of those things that I think we all go through and right now sometimes on a daily basis so anyways folks please stay safe do something super creative with yourselves I will see you very soon with another fabulous video adios amigos I'm glad to see you're still there hey if you insist on spending all day on YouTube great with me please check out a few my other videos I think they're fantastic hit that subscribe button hit the bell to be notified we'll see you next time for another helping of fun

Channel: Making It Fun with Rob Appell

Views: 27,059

Rating: 4.9484978 out of 5

Keywords: Michael Miller Fabrics, Rob Appell

Id: nmAOun3wsxU

Length: 21min 28sec (1288 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020