Quilty: How to make your own quilt templates

quilty quilty is brought to you by a pqs handcrafted quilting machines autofill autofill Italian thread perfectly suited for all your quilting projects baby lock for the love of sewing cloth works inspiring creativity with art on fabric novel sewing when you need to cut it close choose hobbles P&B our fabrics your lifestyle float ology the urban club space quilty not every tool you use when you make a quilt has to be bought at the store my sister Rebecca is going to join me today to make a homemade template welcome to quilty thanks for joining us and Rebecca thanks for joining us thank you for having me here Mary thank you it's so great to have you here and we are going to talk today about some DIY method I why method do-it-yourself I'm totally into that that's great I like it too there are so many gadgets in the quote world there are gadgets and tools and quilters love them yes we love to have some things that the tools that make our lives easier but just like any artist like a paintbrush your tool kit for that that's really great example exactly but I know that you've been kind of looking around at sewing machines and you're gonna like what is going to be my sewing machine that I buy and when you are a newer culture starting out you may be hopefully buying a really beautiful sewing machine one that's going to last you the test of time like maybe a baby lock like we really like baby life here and if you buy a sewing machine it might kind of take a chunk out of your budget because it's really mean it's maybe the most important tool that you have and also it's like your core tool so that maybe like where you're gonna put your focus in when you're when you're buying stuff that's like maybe your first thing right and so some of the gadgets that make life easier you might have to wait on because your budget just doesn't allow for that so some quilts have they they need you to make a template not every quilt is just patchwork you know not every quilt takes pieces that you just cut from your rotary cutter and that's it some quilts require using templates and a quilt that's behind me now right it's called memories and it's a quilt that I made and I just love it so much really pretty and I found thank you I found it in this book of our moms I'm sorry in a picture yay that's marathons and Liz Porter and we just love them and so many people do and that's Mary Ann Francis or mom and in this quilt book that they did the fat quarter friendly book there's this quote called memories I saw this this summer and I knew I wanted to make this quilt and I did and when I was looking at the the pattern that they give you in the book I found Oh what is this we have some shapes that are not just typical square shapes or typical triangle shapes why you would use making you know with your rotary cutter so you need to make these shapes and and there are rulers that can help you do that or you can make your own template on templates your DIY template the DIY taught it so I wanted to do it okay so the first thing let's talk about the things that I need can you tell us what we have here let's see I'll try I can get part of the way you look like very important scissors I kind of remember when I was little mom had scissors like this and it was like do not cut the construction paper with my fancy heavy scissors so those those are memories right they are there are shears they're like Garmisch shears or just very important fabric only scissors okay I need the fabric my scissors and then these is regular all predecessors kind of yep this is your chalk pencil so this writes on fabric hmm a permanent marker exaggerate some fabric that's really cute masking tape easy straight a straight edge and then this is new to me yeah that is blue stencil film and you need to make your template out of something right so that is going to be what we're going to make our template out of it's I got it at the craft store so let's remove some of these things because what we're going to do is we're going to take out a piece of that stencil film can you take a piece out there and we are going to put it on this is kind of a crafty episode of sure because we're not sewing today we're just gonna do this template and show you how it works so here ones and oh you guys yeah that's in there too okay so this is how the template plastic comes and and what I would do is cut a piece out it's a little smaller more manageable got a more manageable and place it over your your pattern that shows you the shape that you need and I would take off a couple and I'm gonna do this one this be yeah do that you couldn't do the triangle okay see so I'm just gonna do this so it's like arts and crafts it's like it's like school cuz your retreats fun we're tracing today okay so I'm just gonna make this as so it doesn't skips around so did he slide around okay and then I would take your permanent marker okay and your straight edge okay and before yeah go ahead and do that and just just trace around it and you were asking me earlier yeah is that I was wondering if this is to size because this looks really tiny well it well that's and that's a great question because as you'll notice um you're tracing around the outer edge of that shape but there's that dotted line right can I get your little corner well there's two kinds of templates there are templates that are for machine piecing and there are templates that are for applique and when you have a pattern and it will always tell you what you need so when you have a pattern that says you know this is your applique piece and you need to make a template it's like a flower or a heart okay of something that is the finished size that means that that is to size it is to size because what you're going to so you're going to applicate remember piecing is like putting pieces together in a quilt applique is sewing something on top of another piece of fabric one fabric right and so if you have a template that is a applique template that's the finished size but for machine piecing there are these two lines and this is because this dotted line is your sewing line it's just a reminder it's not that you're sewing through the template it's not that you're you know it's just to remind you that when this piece is finished in your quilt it's going to be this big so do I need to draw on this one too i I would more have the the dotted line I think it's helpful and you can free you know that's that's okay rehan you just need to know that that you have a quarter inch seam allowance on this piece on this template and that you will be using you will be finishing up with that inside the dotted line got it that makes it that does make sense yes that's you're putting your quarter inch seam on the template and so for this since it's not two sides I could just make a like a blow-up of this at like Kinkos or like what well no that's that's a good question it this is the right size your pattern will tell you if you need to go budget got it sometimes the pieces are so big that they can't fit in the book and so they'll reduce and they'll say this is reduced you have copyright permission to take it to a copy center and enlarge it's just always read your pattern it'll tell you it'll tell you what I also want you to mark that little arrow okay okay and I also want you I need to make the little arrow signs to UM the yeah well yeah you can't yell yet the arrow and then put that letter B on there okay great all right so there we go so now I'm going to show you really quick you used a ruler to to mark as you were drawing we're drawing you as a straightedge I'm showing you the difference here this is the sad one and this is the happy one so I did this to show you if you if you try to do it freehand put your template plastic down and you're and you're tracing your pattern if you don't use a straightedge it's just K but it looks a little it's a little wobbly at it so I put a sad face there I see it as okay that's kind of sad what's better is to use a ruler so you give these nice straight lines now I like red with the dotted line I didn't worry too much because like I said that's just a reminder that that includes a greater interesting allowance but and a circle is kind of hard so if you want to and if it works for you you can use a cup turn a cup over and draw around the cup so you have a good circle sure but I'm use a ruler precision is always better we like precision because then your patchwork is getting easier yes you have like wonky cut shapes it's going to be harder for you like the rest of the way through I imagine yeah exactly so we would take our template off here masking tape is good because hopefully it won't hurt the book yes okay very good you can also do like um there's other kinds of tape that will be even better removable he says after dad and I cut one out he's gonna go I take this tape off or go ahead and take this off yep take a noggin and we can that's how and that's what the template looks like when it's cut out when you're cutting it out of the template plastic this is a little larger so we can see it um use all-purpose scissors okay all-purpose scissors are better your shears are for cutting the fabric okay so you don't cut the template with these shoes because it dulls them right just like any knife or anything like that right got it okay so let's quickly show you when you have your fabric out you always want to iron your fabric of course before you do anything with it it's cute little little sort of looks like raindrops or some things so just I'm just going to fold it here but you put you draw on with just one layer of fabric and you take your template and you put it down and the reason that it's it's thicker it's made out of this material so you can use it again and again so grab your chalk pencil okay thank you and hold your template down and we layered the fabric under there just because for timewise we're not going to okay that's okay right because the chalk fabric just it just washes right off or you can even like a chalk pencil yeah chalk yet so you're going to mark mark around your template and then using your cutting shears you cut out your piece of fabric you're going to cut that by hand once you have all your little templates your little triangles marked with your template and that's how you make a template on your own basis yeah yeah I mean it's we kind of faint but I I guess I get the idea that you would know how you would know you could cut that out yeah right with using that's not getting easy so that's a DIY template that's pretty easy it is pretty easy and you can make those for any shape that you need and you don't have to buy a special ruler you don't have to you might later right but but if it's like 2:00 in the morning and you are like rocking a quilt and you're like ah I don't have that shape you could make it at home it's actually not that hard you could just do it and then and then maybe later you could buy that special tool for your so exactly over yourself the one thing I didn't say is those little letters that we marked on it that's just to tell you which template you have cuz some some quilts use different like three different templates and so by marking them you know always which ones you're used to use yeah I almost forgot to say it but we got it thanks man so easy thanks Mary so make your templates join us on Twitter and Facebook and keep watching quilty for more good quilting stuff bye hi will tea is brought to you by a pqs handcrafted quilting machines our FL are a fill Italian thread perfectly suited for all your quilting projects baby locks for the love of sewing cloth works inspiring creativity with art on fabric pommel sewing when you need to cut it close choose hobbles easy our fabrics your lifestyle pathology the urban load space quilty

Channel: Fons & Porter

Views: 200,746

Rating: 4.6338224 out of 5

Keywords: templates, diy, mary fons, quilty, quilt, quilting, supplies, rebecca fons

Id: uDMQyerht9E

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2011