Month 10: All Stars Block of the Month with Jenny Doan of Missouri Star Quilt Co (Video Tutorial)

[Music] hi everybody it's jenny from the missouri star quilt company this is an amazing day it is time for block 10 and this is our last block that we are working on ta-da for the middle of our quilt right here it's our medallion block if you will and i feel like we've kind of saved the best for last because the missouri star is a wonderful quilt block and it's obviously what we named our company after so you should all have month 10 and this is month 10 right here and we are going to open it up and one of the fun things about the missouri star block is that you're going to learn several different techniques in making this block that will help you in other things that you're quilting first you're going to have your little pattern then we're going to have some 10 inch squares in here and because we are using pre-cuts because we are using 10 inch squares there is going to be a little bit of waste so normally if i were to make this this block i would use yardage because we're cutting them into six and a quarter inch squares and you're going to feel like there's you know quite a bit of waste around the side but it's way easier to send some um some of these you know blocks out to you in a 10 inch block than it is in yardage so that's what we've decided to do and first i'm going to take four of these ten inch squares like this and i'm going to make count them and make sure because we only have eight and we need four so one two three four there we go and we're going to cut the first cut we're going to make on these is we're going to cut these into seven inch squares and cut them once on the diagonal so i'm going to trim off my little edge right here my little pinked edges so that i get a nice clean cut and i'm going to come over here seven inches so 5 6 7 and make a cut and this i'm just going to put back in my box somebody asked me today i made a mistake will i get more fabric the fabric is pretty generous in these so if you've made a mistake in one block hang on till the next one you may get enough to just fix it up also it doesn't hurt to sew a little seam in a you know if you need a piece that's bigger and you have two smaller two smaller pieces just go ahead and sew a little seam in there so that it's the size that you need and cut it no one's ever gonna notice if you have an extra seam in there so again i'm gonna go five six seven and make a cut on this square and then this is going to be some leftover and then we're going to take this and we're going to cut it diagonally corner to corner just like that and then we're going to stack these on top of each other and put them up here so our next four background squares we are going to cut those in those are going to be our corner squares right out here and those squares are six and a quarter and again count to make sure because if you cut all four of them at once it will save you a lot of time now if you're if you're having trouble cutting four then you probably need to change your rotary blade and one of the ways you can get a little bit longer life out of your rotary blade is if you you know flip that blade over before you toss it in the garbage flip that blade over and we'll be able to get more cuts out of it and so i'm going to trim this off and then i'm going to trim i know my ruler is five inches so i'm going over one inch for six and then a quarter and so i'm making sure that these blocks are six and a quarter in the corner and this is leftover and then we're going to turn this and do the same thing i'm going to cut off my little edge right here make sure that i have a nice clean edge and then i'm going to co and i'm going to cut five six and a quarter and these are our corner blocks so we're going to set those four aside as well now we're going to take our we have this chartreuse color and this peacock color and we have this orange color and the peacock color is our middle right here so we're going to take the peacock and the gray and we're going to put those right sides together like this and i'm just going to set those over here for right now because we're going to take our other two colors and we're going to put those right sides together let me press this a little bit so it's nice and flat and we're going to cut this into four five inch squares so because this is a ten inch piece and the our little peaks are tiny we are not going to trim those off we're just going to lay our ruler right on the edge and we're going to cut it right in half to make four five inch squares and we're going to leave those facing each other all right so now i'm just cutting this once horizontally once vertically it's going to give us four five inch squares and i'm going to stack those right here and then all our cutting is done for our block i'm going to iron these two now for these two this is our middle block and this is a super easy way to make half square triangles and if you follow me at all you know i like to do this way this is one of my favorite ways so we're going to lay them right on top of each other and we're just going to sew all the way around the square so a quarter of an inch all the way around the square we're going to sew down one side and then flip it and go down the next side [Applause] and one more side here now we've sewn this completely closed so what we're going to do now is we're going to take our ruler and you've got to have one that's at least 15 inches long so that it will go corner to corner and we're just going to cut this on the diagonal both directions like this and then like this so corner to corner and now we have four half square triangles and here's our half square triangles right here and we're going to press those to the dark side so put your dark color on top and lay them down here you can set all your seams at one time like this and then we're just going to pick up that dark color and roll them back and pick it up and roll it back and pick it up and roll it back all right now we're going to look in our pattern i know i haven't done that yet but i i have this down pretty good and so we're going to look at what these should measure at the end and these should be squared to six and a quarter just like our corner ones and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take a a square ruler and i have a block lock here but any square ruler with a diagonal works and we're just going to fit this up on here like this and we're going to trim all of these to six and a quarter and so on here i can just move this down so that i'm in the the quarter inch line here in the quarter inch line and we're going to trim off this edge just like this and we're going to do this to all four of our blocks so the block lock has this little ridge in here and you can nest it up to your seam and mine this one i'm going to have to trim both sides because if it moves beyond six and a quarter at this point then you're going to have to flip it around so i'm going to trim this side and then i'm going to flip around my other side and i'm going to nest this into six and a quarter right here on these edges and then just trim off this side so there's that one here's our next one and sometimes it works out just perfectly sometimes not so much so we just do what we can this one i can actually trim just on one side and then this one let's see him all right we've got six and a quarter here and here nope i'm gonna have to turn him around so here's our one side and i never know why that happens you know i people say well how do you do that the right just the very first time i'm like i'm just not sure i end up squaring and that's okay all right so here's our um our four pieces now and now what we're going to do is we're going to sew the grays together in the middle and so this makes our first big square in a square block which you can see right here it makes this block right here all right so now we're going to sew this together like a four patch so i'm going to lay these two pieces together and match my my my edge up here and match my edge down here and i'm just going to sew a quarter of an inch down the side and a quarter of an inch down this side and i'm sewing these through so that when i'm done i can just flip it open and sew it right together [Applause] so now i can open these up right here and just lay them on top of each other and sew them together make sure you're lined up at the top and then pause a minute and get your middle seam nested now you'll notice when you cut half square triangles this way they are cut on the bias the but a lot of people are afraid of the bias i didn't know you know i was a clothing sewer first so clothing sewers love the bias i didn't know to be afraid of that and so i use the bias a lot but just be careful don't pull uh you know don't stretch just let the sewing machine do its work and you won't have any trouble at all and it is a big time saver now i also know that if these squares didn't fit i could actually make them fit because i have a little bias so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to put a little bit of spray starch on this and press it open and that will also help the bias retain its shape and so this is the very middle of our block right here and we're on to the star legs so for our star legs we have these pieces right here that are laying right sides together and the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take all these squares and we're going to sew just the sides only the sides and we're going to do this to all of our pairs of squares so this is a fun technique for making quarter square triangles so we're going to go i'm just going to chain piece all of them one after the other make sure they stay lined up some of mine have scooched a little bit but that's okay [Applause] i re-lined them up now i'm going to flip this whole chain around and sew the other side so we're only sewing the sides on these and one more out here there we go now what we want to do is we want to clip these apart and we're going to keep them in sets of two so i'm just clipping these apart right here and i'm going to stack these two up and i'm going to stack these two up now the trick for this is that one set of these is going to be trimmed diagonally this way and the other set has to be trimmed diagonally the opposite way so whichever way you want to it doesn't matter it matters that they're opposite so i have my two stacked on top of each other and if you're nervous about stacking two just do them one at a time and i'm going to just take mine and corner corner it and trim it diagonally this way and then i'm going to and i like to do these at the same time so that i'm actually very aware of which direction i'm cutting it so these then i'm going to lay this way i'm going to cut these the opposite corner to corner and then when you open these up you'll see that they are they're all going a different direction so i'm going to stack mine like this and all the oranges should be on the left side of this one because you're going to need one of each of these for the legs and then i'm going to open these up and all the oranges should be on the right of this one and they are isn't this a cool little method all right so this here's this one we're going to press all of these to the orange side and we're going to i'm just going to lay them out here and make sure they're all going the right direction there we go all right so now i'm going to press these and i'm going to just bring them over here and roll them back to that orange side like this and like this and then this one as well we're pressing to the orange and we're going to leave them in separate piles and now come our seven inch squares that we cut diagonally once now those come into play and we're going to add a stack to each one of those and we're going to sew those together now we obviously have a center seam on our quarter square and we need a center seam to match it with on these so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to take my square like this and i'm going to fold it to point to point and i'm going to finger press a little crease right there and that's going to give me a line to put my seam on and we're just going to lay these on here now they should be a little bit you know your colored piece should be a little bit smaller than your white background piece and we are going to just sew those right down the side like this and we're going to do this to all eight of these [Applause] and i'm going to do this one side first and i'm going to get them apart and fold my crease line lay my seam on there stitch across you want to make sure they stay pretty well lined up along that uh center cut and that will keep your block fairly square i wonder if i oh i can finger press too i didn't know if i could do two at one time all right there we go [Applause] and one more here so don't stress while you're doing this this is a fun new technique and a great way to do this and we're going to trim all these up [Applause] all right there's our one and i'm going to cut these apart and make a little stack of them on my ironing board actually nope we're not going to iron them open yet so don't iron open yet and i'm just going to sew the other side all right so i've got a middle there on a couple and a middle on a couple more i'm going to get those apart just like that and then we can go right down the side of these so lay again lay your little seam on the middle and then sew right down [Applause] making sure you stay pretty true to your quarter inch [Applause] all right one more we've only got two more to go here line it up on the center [Applause] [Applause] here's our last leg we're on our last leg we're on the last leg of this block and this is the last lock we have to do for the quilt pretty exciting right now all right so now i'm going to cut these apart and then we're going to square them so for squaring any block that has a center seam a quarter you know quarter square triangle like that this clearly perfect slotted trimmer is really my go-to it's just my favorite they don't come in quarter inches we're going to be squaring these to six and a quarter so you just have to remember that this is a six and a half right here and that the six and a quarter is just a little bit on the other side of that seam and so um i kind of uh i kind of just like to to lay mine just a little bit uh off that seam and then i line up this center line right here with my stitch line and so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to trim these to six and a quarter and if you want you can actually press them open and and square them with any regular square ruler two just remember that they're squared to six and a quarter and so i'm gonna i'm gonna do this one because there's not an actual line i'm gonna press this one and then i'm gonna actually look at it on that square to see you know how close i came and see if that little trick works and then we will know if i can actually do that so yeah that actually really worked for me and it's almost exact so i'm going to go ahead and do that there's lots of different tools out there there's different tools because we all have different brains so look for the tool that makes sense to you it will because if you have if you have a ruler or something that you struggle to use when you look at it you can't see you know the the lines or the grid or there's too many lines or you have to look really hard you have to put painters tape that's not a great ruler for your brain and i know you guys have heard me say that before but we all have to we all have our own brains and we all have to figure out what works best for us and it's going to be different for everybody oh i got a little bit of a hanger on her there and as soon as i get these cut i'm going to lay them over to my ironing board so that i can go ahead and iron them open when i'm ready i seem to have a little a little uh hanger on every single one on that side i must not be pressing hard enough on that side oh this one is barely any to cut all right now we'll go to the bigger one or the other ones the other side and i'm going to put my ruler on that line and there we go that one is almost exact let's see on my center line and on my bottom and the lines i'm matching up are my seam lines my seam lines have to match up my stitch lines have to match up with their stitch lines there we go and you just want to take your time with this part because you just want to make sure that you're you're pretty squared up you're pretty good to go all right so now we're going to press these open and i am going to actually on these i think i'm going to do press to the the lighter side because there's a double seam on that other side it wants to lay that way and see how see how on this one i've got this little kind of pump thing going there that's because there's a little bit of bulk there but if i press it the other direction it will lay flat so i'm going to press it the other direction i'm going to let the seam decide that it wants what way it wants to go which means i'm going to have to like coax it now that i've already pressed it once so i'm going to coax i'm going to coax all of these into submission so now what i'm going to do is i'm just going to press these all to the lighter side which is a bit unusual but it will work and it will make our block lay much nicer all right let me see which way i did this one all right i did this to the dark side so i'm going to roll that up to the light side all right so now what we're going to do with these is we are going to sew these together in pairs now we have you still want to make your stacks like this so we have four stacks this way and four stacks this way and what i remember my little mantra for putting these legs together is that actually i'm going to switch sides on these is that my background goes to the middle and the orange goes to the top and so i'm going to sew all these sets of these together in twos like this and we're going to do all four of them this way and so again i'm just going to turn these to the middle orange to the top and i make that check every time every single time and you should have four sets of star legs and here's one more and one of the things that is nice is because we square all these blocks they really go together very nicely all right so now two of these are going to go around our center block and two are going to have our corner blocks sewn to the edges so we're going to i'm going to do that first just because i like to have those done because once you get those two center legs on you are ready to put the whole thing together so i'm going to go ahead and sew a corner block to the corner of two sets of my legs so i'm going to sew one side on this side right here and then i'm going to flip this around and add the other one to the other end so that one is done and now we're going to do this one remember to get your pieces right sides together [Applause] and then right sides on this one line it up along the edge sew a quarter of an inch [Applause] all right so i'm going to set those there these two i'm going to press open right here all right so now we have our two legs done and our two end pieces done and we're getting our middle square here and we are going to put two legs on these two sides just like this and then these outer pieces are going to go on the top and on the bottom and just with a few more seams our block is going to be done so let's start with these side legs on this big center square like this i'm going to take a few stitches match up my center square this is another one of those places if you don't want to lose those points make sure that you look where your stitches crossed and that you sew to the seam side right on that or to the seam side and there's there's pretty good amount of room on these so you don't lose your points and even if you do lose your points seriously no one's ever given a quilt back to me because i i didn't have perfect points so don't stress about it do the best you can there we go and then this side right here [Applause] all right so now i'm just going to press these open right here and take a look at my points and these points look pretty good to me i don't really stress too much about the points i just it's just one of those things where i'm like i look you know i look at the overall if it really bothers me like three times then i will take it out and fix it but if not i'm not going to worry about it all right so now you can see we have this big side piece ready to go on here and we're going to lay it on here so the places you want to look at you want this seam to match up you want this seam to match up and you want this seam to match up so what i'm going to do you can pin it if you want i'm going to just start here take a few anchoring stitches and then i'm going to go to that first junction and make sure that it's nice and nested and that i can't feel any nothing in between those two scenes seams they're just nested nice and tight and one of the reasons i did not iron this first is because i wanted to make my seams go the way i wanted them to if you want to iron first make sure your inside seams go out and your outside seams go in or vice versa either way works just you just want to make sure that they're opposite so and then they'll nest on this one i just kind of like doing it as i go along all right let's see what i do i did outside on that one so and you want to make sure they're the same so if you have one seam that is going out you want the other one to go out actually even that doesn't really matter honestly you know as long as you can press it so it's nice and flat we're going to be happy with it alrighty so here's our next leg and we're going to do the same thing on this side what we're looking for is a flat block [Applause] there we go oops there nope just a thread that caught i just wanted to make sure i didn't have that i still had bobbin thread that's the worst to run out of bobbin thread like right in the middle of your block or actually it's worse when you run out of it like after sewing like 84 blocks that's the worst that happened to misty the other day oh my gosh all right hey look at this this looks pretty good doesn't it all right let's press that so it's nice and flat and i'm going to go ahead and use some best press on here and just oh this is a gorgeous block and go ahead you know somebody on on on the msqc all-stars the other day put up a post and i have to say i loved it she said she said that she hadn't sewn very much but how proud she was of herself when she finished a block and i just think that's so cool i mean there's it's okay to look at something you've done and just go you know what that is really good and uh you know be proud of yourself for these little accomplishments i think that's a i just loved that all right take a look this is our last block this is block 10. next time we're going to put all the pieces together and you will have a quilt that is ready to go to the quilter so i hope you guys have enjoyed this as much as i have i obviously i love the missouri star missouri star it's a much easier block it's one of those blocks that looks like you worked really hard but it comes together so quick and easy and i can't wait to see you next month when we put all of this together you guys have a good month and we'll see you soon you

Channel: Missouri Star Quilt Company

Views: 43,135

Rating: 4.9553237 out of 5

Keywords: MSQC, Missouri Star Quilt Company, Missouri Star, Jenny Doan, Jennie Doan, Genny, Jenny, Ginny, Doan, quilting, quilt, quilt tutorial, quilting tutorial, free quilting tutorial, sewing, sewing tutorial, tutorial, quilting precuts, pre-cut fabric, sewing fabric, how to quilt, learn to quilt, quilting lessons, free quilting, free quilt class, free quilting classes, how to sew

Id: aFMYAWsvqbo

Length: 30min 40sec (1840 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020