Quilting Pt. 1 with Mister Larrie and Joann Stores!

[Applause] [Applause] [Music] hmm [Laughter] five more minutes we are hello there and welcome back to mr larry's craft show in today's video we will explore one of my all-time favorite crafts quilting everyone including the girls on drag race should know how to sew sewing is just one of those skills that i think should be taught in schools along with like doing your taxes being polite to people opening a bank account precautions for removing a plate of molten pizza rolls from the microwave and the complete and accurate history of our country and those involved in its founding it is february which means it's black history month and if you haven't noticed before now i'm ble what oh we already did that joke okay um work joann's store sent me a mystery box of newly designed fabric in honor of black history month and if you weren't able to see that video where i unboxed that fabric you can check it out listed below if you tuned into my instagram live feed earlier this week you got to watch me use this beautiful fabric and turn it into these pillow shams and we also did a little bit of quilting with it as well i'll share today with you some of these quilting techniques and just techniques basic quilting techniques that i've been using as of late they're really simple and they will definitely get you on your way to doing your own quilting at home and i'm just using my regular little brother sturdy and tough machine so i'm not even using anything specialized for this you can do this kind of work at home if you have a little bit of preparation and some patience so let's get into our three things for today [Laughter] starting with thing number one since the dawn of time black people all over the world have been kings and queens caregivers and inventors artists revolutionaries philosophers and so much more if y'all don't know my last name is king so in the united states each february we observe the collective and individual moments that have helped shape black american history being a black american is by no means a monolithic experience but our collective pain and joy and progress can be tracked throughout our country's history in the southern united states where i'm from those histories and stories are often told with the aid of quilts that brings us to thing number two quilting is an ancient process of stitching disparate pieces of cloth together to produce one unified fabric traditionally this is done in three layers europe has included quilting as part of its robust needle working traditions since around the 5th century but things like quilted bedding and seating and comfort items didn't really come into prominence until much later around the 12th century in the u.s patchwork quilts have been a tradition since the 1770s when they were largely used as a means to reuse and recycle things like paper fabric and old blankets and many of the quotes produced around that time were made by african american slaves that brings us to thing number three after the abolition of slavery african-american communities created their own rules or lack thereof for producing stunning striking quilts the celebration of quilting contributions by black americans has assisted in the evolution of quilting worldwide many of these quilts are so striking because of a surface technique called piecing piecing is simply stitching together small bits of fabric which gives you the opportunity to use lots of different colors and fabrics and textures to kaleidoscopic effect piecing is typically reserved for the topmost or the decorative layer of your quilt today we'll be covering two different piecing techniques that will give you a soft push into your quilting fantasies we'll start with a basic four square panel which you can duplicate and then produce an entire quilt out of and then i'll teach you how to do a basic stripe um something where my stripes go where my stripes at front front to back a basic stripe like this you can do this at any size and then i'll share with you the project that i've been working on for the last few days if you have been following me on instagram as you should you will have noticed that i've been doing a lot of sewing lately it started out as just a demo piece to share with you all and it turned out being my latest quilt and i haven't made a new quilt in some time it's snowing a lot outside right now so it just feels right so i'm gonna start by selecting some fabric and getting my space ready and then i'll be right back [Music] there are a lot of different ways to do everything in quilting and some people swear by specific methods and hate others and back and forth this is one technique in producing a foursquare that i learned by watching this little lady on some video i'll link it down below so you can see where these instructions come from and it just kind of blew my mind because it seems so simple so i've got my four squares exactly how i want to arrange them the next step is going to be stitching these together all we're going to do is stitch one seam from here to here and then a second from here to here and we'll do the whole thing kind of in one pass on the machine i know that i want these two together so i'm going to place them faces together now this fabric doesn't have a facing side necessarily because it's the same there's no pattern there's no difference in texture but i have my two pieces here i'm going to stitch once here and then i'm going to run this directly under the machine and continue that stitch here and this is going to help us to keep our four square corners really tight and precise i always start with a back stitch because i think it's good practice you don't need those little tiny stitches coming apart for all the quilting i do i use a quarter inch seam allowance this is pretty standard in quilting it seems but obviously this can change depending on your project and what your actual goals are for everything that you see me stitching today i'll be using that quarter inch seam allowance i've got conjoined pieces which is exactly what we want this little tiny stitch is going to make our lives so much easier in a moment so this seam is going to go toward the right side this seam is going to go toward the left side and you can finger press this finger pressing is just a little technique where you use the pressure and the heat from your fingers to press the fibers into place and usually it holds pretty well at least long enough for you to stitch down obviously you can press it with an iron if you prefer and then we're just going to flip it down and i'm going to make sure that my seams are aligned so that i can do one more stitch across the top again pay close attention to your seams and that they are going in opposite directions because once you start stitching you want to make sure that that is maintained we've got this little seam here in order to get this quad to lay down as flat as possible the first thing we want to do is just find this little thread that's across the top and cut that guy just one thread that's just right there at the top easy peasy now i'm going to take my fingers into these two seams here and i'm just gonna twist that open do you see what just happened now you can see all four of those colors again i hope y'all can see that that is one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen in my life when that lady showed me this on the video i thought i was going to pass out it's just so perfectly flattened and so of course when we continue to open this up now what we get is this beautiful twist in the center of our seams and then we'll of course press this out with an iron so that it's really flat which i'm going to do right now for pressing you can starch these i do enjoy using a starch on my quilting projects because it helps keep things stiff and crisp and that's always a benefit when you're working with small pieces but you can see how precise this cornering is on this little quad this is the sort of thing that for me as a sewist i could just stare at the steam all day i probably would so obviously you can take this same concept much further by adding additional quadrants or squares together some people this is how they piece an entire quilt just by making squares like this and then stitching all those squares together the next thing i'm going to show you is just some basic stripes i love how this meets up here and there's like a nice dynamic color thing happening so what i'm going to do is cut this into thinner strips and then alternate them and that's going to be really easy to do with just a few straight stitches now obviously if you are doing a fully striped quilt you may want to be more precise this is a really easy thing to do and in fact you can buy strips of fabric in a roll so i'm going to stitch this together so that it gives me that illusion then i'll just run a straight stitch all the way down how cool that looks pressing your work as you go will really make a difference in how clean your line work is and how nicely and neatly your seams line up it's just a matter of paying attention to those little details um they do make a difference i also find quilting just to be incredibly relaxing once you get into the mood or into the groove oh my goodness you could just sit and stitch and piece little things together all day long now we've got this lovely striped panel which we could duplicate we could cut it again and make more we could do a lot of different things with this panel we could join these together obviously they coordinate with one another and this is how easy it is to start your own quilt all you have to do is continue to add pieces depending on where you want certain seams and what sort of shapes you're trying to achieve you may find yourself planning out a very complex quilt that requires you to piece things in a specific order like a log cabin quote for instance that's where this project came from i started working on a log cabin demo and it's a lot of fun i'll share with you down below the demo that i followed then i started using all this the fabric strips and like the scraps and and here we are i just i i never knew that this could be real so something like this panel where i've taken this beautiful joanne fabric is just a series of first squares so if you start there you just see a four panel and then another and then i tacked on two more pieces down here and then this piece here is essentially just strips of fabric like this that i cut thinner and so i'll continue in this fashion until we produce uh in this case a pillow sham um but you could do an incredible blanket this way or any other kind of item you want it's a really good way to incorporate a lot of color or a lot of different textures or if you're feeling more artistic you can certainly make something that's monochromatic and has a totally different vibe those quilts are all over places like pinterest and youtube and instagram and i encourage you to check them out the last thing i want to show you is this panel that i've been working on here this is comprised completely out of scraps and it's just the leftovers of what i've been cutting off from the quilt that i've been working on the one that i just showed you it's the sort of thing that i would love to see hanging on a wall maybe even framed or something it reminds me of you know what this is this is if blanche devereaux and martin lawrence were best friends in 1993 and fraser came to the party for some reason [Laughter] right like it's like it's definitely inspired by that era this may end up being a piece that i actually frame i do like that it's just a small piece and so of course your quilt doesn't have to be a functional item that you build but it can just be art obviously there's a whole lot more to cover in quilting and we've just scratched the surface but we will return with more quilting soon quilting can be your best friend if you are prepared for the responsibility of this all around your house if you are finding yourself with a surplus of fabrics that you don't quite know what to do with pair them up and see what you get when you start building a quilt out of them it's great for scraps it's great for leftovers i hope that you have maybe found out that it's not quite so intimidating if you start small you don't have to take it all the way to the full king size blanket just yet but there's certainly no reason why you shouldn't feel like you can all you got to do is start somewhere and then keep going please don't forget to subscribe if you enjoyed this video and share it with your friends and family let's get some more people quilting why not if we're all nice and cozy then maybe the world will be a much nicer place and i encourage each and every one of you to go and learn something you didn't know about your black american brothers and sisters right now is an especially important time to do this and if we can all understand each other a little bit better then maybe we can all move forward together i hope that you have a wonderful weekend and that you are finding lots of color and brightness in your world today until next time bye

Channel: Mister Larrie

Views: 903

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Joann Fabric, Quilting, Piecing, Black History Month, Quilt, Fabric, Africa, Black History, Gee's Bend

Id: qJjgcA2EsmI

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021