Quilting Tips & Techniques 247 - How to use some stripes for trees.

hi so I thought we'd have a little bit of fun today with some trees and stripes or possibly stripes and trees so up here behind me you can see I've already been having a little bit of fun I love stripy fabrics and I'm always looking for different ways of using them so I've used all the stripes horizontally some very nice even stripes some are not quite so even also definites some are multicolored and multi sort of randomly stripy somehow and then we've got some tree trunks again in slightly different thicknesses and Heights and I just thought of a fun little stripy tree forest might be just what it was that you are wanting to make so just thought I'd show you how I go about it I'm not going to be doing the sewing this time I am fusing them on I'm sure you know how to do the applique pipe maybe with a blanket stitch maybe you want to do just raw edge straight stitch maybe you want to use some decorative stitches on your sewing machine now there's a whole new thought so what I've done is go ahead and get some fabrics ready so these are some stripey ones these are the ones I've used that are on behind me so you can see that they're kind of fun they're kind of nice and different different colors different texture type stripes and I've put some paperback fusible web on the back side of them so I've just got a strip that's about 4 and 1/2 inches wide it's very approximate it didn't need to be exact the trees are not exact so I just thought I'd show you and random is good so they can be a little bit less exact if you want them to be so on this nice stripy piece here I'll show you how I'm going to cut that so I would cut one of the larger trees so because I'm approximately four and a half inches I'm going to sit it so that it sits either side with a center line approximately down the middle so I'm using the lines on my board to help me with this and then I'm going to position so I've got these I should mention first I've got these cut at slightly different lengths some eight inches some are nine inches just to give me a couple of different heights of the trees you can choose if you want seven inch six inches but we'll get a large one and we should get a couple of small ones out of out of this piece hit so you'll see that as we go cutting so I'm positioning this so that there's a line on my board that covers Lauren let's down the center of my piece of fabric if you line up along one of the lines going that way as well that's quite helpful so I'm just going to then lay my ruler so that it goes to where that line pops out at the top there to where there's a line in here and I'm going to cut along there so the base of the tree is going to be approximately four inches because we're going to be cutting through that line and then 1b without moving everything we can now turn the ruler and come back and so that it'll intersect at the top there and get you a nice point and then it intersects at that same line that's sort of two inches away from the centre so we've got a four inch base and then I'm going to cut that up there so if you don't move anything everything stays exactly where you want it and then you've got a really nice tree shape all ready to go and then you've got these pieces left over and it seems a shame to waste them so what I've been doing is lining this up there so that that two inch sorry it's a bit over two inches wide so that that point comes to an intersection on the markings on the board and then if I line up this line so that it's straight with a line on the board and then if I put the ruler on here and where it intersects this centre line and this line here so I can just trim off that little bit and then I can cut and get one of the smaller trees out of that side well I can also for skip another one after the other side so you may end up with more trees than you realize because these trees just keep on growing so we're going to intercept cut through the intersection of that center line that comes up there and the little one there so the same thing on this side so these two will be fairly similar depending on whether you in exactly the same places so that's kind of fun so you may just want three trees if I bring this up you can probably see so out of just one piece of fabric but four and a half inches by I think it was nine inches you can have three little trees if that's something that you just want to do however I'm going to go ahead and cut some other colors so this one's only eight inches same sort of thing I'm sure you don't need to see me cut loads and loads of these but we'll just do another one so I'm coming through this intersection here with the centre line up there and same thing swivel without moving your fabric and you'll find that everything sits nice and easy for you there so I'm going to come up there so there's another large tree we'll do a couple of these bright ones so that we can see where we're going so we're going to come here to the center I think you get the hang of this now you could buy them and do a couple at a time if you wanted to I get a little concerned when they've got the paper on them as to whether they'll slip so I tend to just cut singly when I'm doing this but it's nice to have a cup of these brighter ones in amongst our forest forests not always known for their colorful trees however mine are quite colorful as I said some of these are 9 inches high some 8 and then if I'm wanting those smaller ones then they'll come out of those side pieces my fence is smaller one here now the other thing is if you're working with a background that doesn't allow you to show things up quite as well as you'd like you could put a second layer I've done one of the trees up here not sure if you can see that behind this nice bold stripe I've got a second tree shape that's just a bit larger than the stripy one and in a black it's got a little dot on it just to give it a little bit more emphasis you're working with a background that didn't show things up nicely for you that would be just another option I'll just keep cutting chatting so I think something at this time of year we're thinking of things that are a little bit festive and trees are often used for that sort of thing however I have discovered the trees grow all year round so I don't necessarily think of them as only for the festive season but you may feel differently in which case that's absolutely fine I thought we should have a few little trees here we'll set it up set out a forest any minute now when I finished cutting these so if you just wanted even shorter ones of course you can shorten the pieces that are left over you could make much taller trees if that's what you would have to just pop you paperback fusible web behind your fabric and then you've got plenty to work with I'm doing that sort of thing so I'll bring over the iron hours and show you how I've done the positioning I'm just going to bring the ironing before I do that I'll show you the stems so with the stem is the same thing I put some paper baked fusible webbing on the back of a piece of fabric I'm going to use the same fabric throughout for the stems and then I've just cut a couple of different sizes of stems so I've cut some better half an inch wide and I've cut some that are three quarters of an inch wide for the bigger trees so really it's the same sort of thing cutting narrow strips like that needn't be challenging don't have a hugely long piece of fabric so you can just lay that again line up with your board and if we were going to cut a half inch one I line up my half inch marker with the half away line on the board and just hold it nice and steady and you should be able to cut yourself some nice strips for stems so I've just cut longer strips and then I cut them down shorter and then for the three-quarter inch one just the same thing line up your 3/4 mark using the markings on the board and you can get a nice 3/4 inch wide strip there and then we can just cut those to different lengths so what I've been cutting is a slightly random but I guess there's a little bit of method in it but maybe these narrower ones I've cut some that are 4 inches I've cut some that are 1 2 3 4 probably 5 inches and then whatever is left for some of the others and then for the shorter ones I've cut those to be about an inch and a half but there's mostly they're not tall unless you're wanting to make them tall of course this is your first you can make them as tall as you'd like to do so we can just cut some one and a half inch piece is there I've already got some there so that's a pretty good way of getting some stems and I quite like the one color for everything you may prefer to do different colors and that is entirely your choice so I'm just going to bring the iron over now put these nice woman Matt's to iron on and I wouldn't normally suggest ever using an iron anywhere near my cutting board I'm going to lay these on top however I do know that because they're wool the heat won't go through it what if I've perhaps if I was doing the sustained hours of ironing but in the short term these wool Mets are excellent the heat doesn't penetrate all is such a good insulator that we can do it this way so what I've ended up doing is perhaps I'll try and do these so that you can see them from your side some trees so my strip of fabric is twelve and a half inches wide and I've just got at the full width of the fabric at the moment I'm most likely we'll be trimming a little bit off so I won't go right to the edge and when I've popped the stains on so I've roughly placed my trees fairly randomly I don't know that there's any rhyme or reason in how they go unless your forest is a very orderly fire of course mine is not and then I've got some smaller ones here to come in between yeah a little bit and you just want some of those up and down there's really any number of ways that you can position these sorts of things we want this apply here so I put my sins so you might want to peel the paper off the stems and really the only order that I put into it as far as any sort of measuring or anything goes is that I was going to position the stems all the same distance away from that bottom edge so I just used my ruler and I positioned them one inch away from that bra edge I can see through the ruler so I'm just going to position my stem so that the bottom edge sits next to that ruler there and I can iron that in place so I've taken the paper backing off that piece there then I can iron my tree on but I found it was quite good to iron a few stems on first and then come back and pop the trees on but you kind of need the trees handy so that you know where they're going to go so same thing I've popped my stems approximately an inch from that edge and iron it in place I'm even for this taller skinnier trees I might have a couple of different lengths here hopefully hiss so the same thing peel your paper off your backing which leaves the glue of course on the right side or the wrong side pop your stem again so all the stem is are pretty much lining up where we'd like them to line up so I might bring this one a bit closer over this is why you need the bigger ones handy or I'll have them all in place so that things end up where you want them so I think that's kind of fun peel that one off like this one so I think you get the hang of it it was more to show you that stripes can be a lot of fun they of course you could make the trees out of anything you choose they don't all have to be stripy I just thought they were fun in the stripe and I thought I'd show you another way of using stripes because I know that stripes can be a little bit daunting at times so now I could position my there's no reason not to put the treat on it as you go I just kind of like to do it this way so you want the tree trunk to be more or less in the middle now there's a little bit of room to move you might want a really short trunk you might want a longer trunk really bear your trees you get them to grow how you'd like them and if you've ever looked in the pine forest because I'm sure their pine trees some of them are tall and some are short and some are skinny and some are not so you can just make those tree trunks work however you'd like them to so I probably don't need to go ahead and do the whole strip but I just thought you'd like to see just an idea how you might use some stripes in a slightly different way in a fun way quick and easy easy to cut you don't need a template you just need to use those markings on your board to help you line things up and so I'm going to continue on putting my trees on and but I just thought that would be a fun way to show you how you might use some stripes horizontally for some trees or you might make some trees and use some stripes thank you you

Channel: GourmetQuilter

Views: 34,165

Rating: 4.9620595 out of 5

Keywords: quilt, quilting, patchwork, sewing, craft, gourmetquilter, striped fabric, fabric trees, applique

Id: MI5CR-oHmjc

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 12 2019