REPLAY: Create a String Stars Wall Hanging with Misty!

[Music] hey everybody so happy to be here with you today and I hope you're having a fabulous week I'm really really excited about this project that we'll be working on today but as always let's see where we have people tuning in from Sandy from Michigan Eve from Washington State Nancy from New Mexico thank you guys so much for being here liz is behind the camera she'll be you know asking you all your fabulous question hi everybody yes piping in with tips and then we have Cole and Isaac helping run the cameras and and make magic back there so yeah that's the whole crew and let's just dive right into it so today this project that we're working on is called string stars and I really love string quilts I Jenny hold on let me make sure I get this right I can't remember who it was now but some fabulous quilter told Jenny that you should take a little bit of time every day to sew for yourself to have some play time why can I not think I literally wrote this down this morning it's gone it's left me it'll come back anyway take a little bit of time to sew for yourself and with the string quilting I find it to be really freeing and relaxing and fun and it's a great so one block in the morning before you dive into something else that you have to tackle just to feel like you're doing something for yourself and this one comes together really really fast so to make this quilt there's a couple things that you need to do this is done with foundation piecing so we do use these ten inch paper piecing squares and you can get these on our website and I have some open here let me show you they're just kind of a very thin paper and we're going to use this as the foundation to build our block and the reason that I love our ten inch squares is then you can take and put these with you know any ten inch pre-cut that you might have and all these possibilities are opened when you you know have this to work with and so it it helps it play nicely with the pre cuts and you can create some magic then we're also going to use this Roxanne glue stick or if you have a lapel stick that will work as well and we're gonna start just by choosing our colors and this is all done with square so you can see here I have just some Ziploc baggies full of different colored strips that I pulled out of our stash so I've got red white and blue and they're all different sizes most of these started as leftover ends of binding or just like the spare strip from a jelly roll that just was hanging around and so I just gathered those up and I do want to point out here there is a ton of variety and even in this like white pack there's cream there's some prints there's no really right or wrong yes list so we had a question is the is the paper like an onion skin paper how thin is that paper oh it's really thin right it's very thin but not so thin that it's gonna disintegrate like it will still if it's gonna stay attached when you stitch through it here let me show you I've got one here that I still have sewn through and so you can see it stays together when you stitch it but it's really easy to peel off and it's not too dense and so I guess yes onion skin would be just about the perfect way to describe it you're not doing it for that question yeah so then let's let me show you how we get started so the magic of this block is that we're dividing our strips in half and so we're creating this red and blue and blue and white to make our star instead of just making solid or scrappy total squares so I'm gonna use my pin and I'm going to start with a blue strip in the middle so I'm just gonna open up my scrap bag here and my personal preference is to just start with a thinner strip in the middle I find it easier I didn't do that every time but as I went along I decided I liked it a little bit better and the one trick that you want to make sure of is you just need to make sure on one side you're hanging over at least a quarter-inch because the difference in your color is gonna happen there in the middle so let me go ahead and put this glue on and I'll show ya I'm just gonna run a thin strip less-is-more not very much there to make sure I got it all and then I'm just going to make sure that my blue strip hangs over the end and at least a quarter inch over that point and I can look here and flip it over oh yes see I've got plenty of overlap on this side and so that looks good to me and then I'm gonna take my scissors trim off my excess because I'm gonna save that for another block this piece still has use so then now once I have that done you can press it with an iron but I actually go ahead and pick my next strip first and so you just have to kind of test it out and see which pieces are long enough and I'm actually going to work this way with the blue and come back and do this side with red and so since I want blue going this way I'm just going to lay these right sides together and I'm gonna take this to the Machine and I'm going to sew a quarter inch seam you can see here this strip is not cut straight I'm just going to use this one underneath that looks straighter to my eye as the guide and I'm going to sew a quarter inch all the way down so let's do that because you're you're working from the point your paper does kind of angle down and so you you can slide your strip down a little bit so that you have a little less waste which leaves more strip for later on in the project hopefully that makes sense and then I'm just gonna zoom down you do kind of want to take your time a little bit with the paper that's underneath on the feed dogs if you go too fast it can get a little slick so you just take your time when you're stitching and while you're stitching Linda Nelson asked what size width are the strips and these being scrappy there are all kinds of different widths right yes all over the place what would be the smallest width you would start with I personally don't like to go less than an inch because I think once you sew you know a quarter inch seam on either side of that it's going to get real small you're only going to have a half inch of reveal so you can see now I'm just going to take this to the ironing board and roll this back and press it just like so and you guys can see here this is looking pretty wonky I don't care that's part of the magic of it we're just not gonna die over that then got to find some strips that are long enough you see some variety in color this one's kind of fun because it actually is like a bluegray and so to your eye you might think that's not gonna work I've got lots of kind of gray blues mixed in here so I'm actually going to go ahead and use this one next I like that dimension and variety so I'm just gonna lay this in here and we're gonna sew it down again and Teresa asked what kind of glue stick do you use right here we have the rocks and glue stick just to hold that Center strip down so that you can sew from there yeah because you're actually not sewing through that middle the very middle so as long as you you know don't get crazy with your glue and have it pressing out into where your seam is going to be you can pretty much use whatever glue you have around it's really forgiving the these glues that this glue that I mentioned this rocks and glue it actually makes it really easy to still get the paper off that's gonna be the only difference with some of your glues that are gonna be a little stronger or tacky er okay and so see you can see here I just keep rolling this back and now I'm just gonna flip it around and we're gonna add a few red we're gonna pretend this one's this side is all the way done and I'll just show you how simple that is and I actually want to show you a different method so say you have just a wide two and a half inch strip like this and you don't really want to take the time to cut it down you don't have to so you can just lay this right on here and sew it down and I did this a lot when I was making mine just make sure we're staying lined up I might have slid a little bit much there we go we're just going to sew [Applause] our thread and then trim off this excess and now we're gonna press this back Treena also asks what temperature is the iron set on do you need to do something different because of the paper um mine is just on high heat just because I'm still pressing cotton on top of it and I haven't had any trouble you do want to pay attention at the end and I'll talk about this in a little bit if your your paper wrinkles too much just to make sure that you're keeping that 10 inch size but I just I like my iron at high heat so that's what I worked with so you can see here I press this back now you could absolutely leave this at two and a half inches if you like those wider strips for me I like some variety and you know different sizes and this is just a little bigger than I want so I can actually now fold back the paper lay this like this and I'll just take my ruler from this point and measure over let's see say I want an inch and a half of reveal instead of two and a half and then I can just trim that off and now it's not quite so wide and maybe I'll use this again who knows and then I can just fold my paper back over and find another piece and take this one to the machine that's so one more the other thing is now that we're talking about variety say that you've trimmed this and you still don't like the size and you still want it to be a little thinner you don't have to lay this top fabric right on the edge you can actually move this in a little bit and then sew right along here and as long as when you press this back it covers it that won't matter either so let's just do that just to show you basically the whole point of this project is there's not really any right or wrong as long as you're sewing your papers I mean your fabric to the paper here we go and you will notice I am starting a little before my paper and sewing a little bit off and that makes sure that I can trim it up with no problem later and so then we'll just roll this one back one more question on that the pressing are you using steam or no steam it is dry right now there we go so you can see how that's starting to come together and eventually you're gonna have a block that looks like this and you've taken all your pieces all the way to the end and so let me tidy this up a little bit I've got strips everywhere clean some of these up and I will show you how I trimmed it up so you can see here from the pressing and sewing I don't know if it's from the tension of my machine there's lots of variables that could come into play here this gets a little bit wrinkly and so there's a couple of things you can do you can just you know start by squaring one edge use your ruler make sure it finishes off at ten inch square we also have great ten inch square rulers which actually Liz would you mind handing me that one right there and I'll show you with that cuz that was my favorite method whoops thank you sorry she's all a-tangle perfect so we have ten inch square rulers that work awesome for something like this and you can see when I line this on top of it that I definitely did get a little bit of warping just with my sewing and and my pressing and so it's just something to be mindful of it's still such a great guide and now I can just you know flip this over use my my paper as a guide and just trim this down to ten inches square like so and it looks like you're warping even as it is would get caught up in that quarter inch seam so we're not too worried exactly exactly and honestly because you're sewing it I'm imagining that you'll be sewing it all on the same machine any of the that rumpling that's gonna be caused by tension if you were to follow just the papers your blocks are probably gonna end up the exact same size anyway because you're working on the same machine so there's a lot of wiggle room with this block it's very very forgiving and so then we just trim off that excess this is our our waste and we've got these beautiful blocks and they come together so fast and to make the star you're gonna need four that are done this way with the red and blue and that comes together in the middle here and then we make eight you show you that are blue and white to make the star legs and then I went ahead in my four corners you could do solid squares here but I loved the idea of continuing the strips around and so I actually strip pieced just the same with all white in the four corners so four of the red and blue eight of the blue and white and four of the all-white is what you need and then I put this together just in rows and then add it a five inch border around it so let me show you the layout here now that I've got these blocks ready so let's grab those Center ones and we will use the design wall over here which we don't get to use very often so let's start by putting our Reds together in the middle see if these will stay can you see it Isaac all right there's like that this one still has the paper on it let me pin that one on there we go and then our star legs come next and let me make sure I get this right so we want them to come into the middle and it kind of makes the blue start to form this diamond which is really really fun whoops I lost one of my blocks a couple other questions too while you're here doubt so Monica Cole best did you use cotton or polyester thread does that matter I used cotton just because I prefer to sew with cotton thread but I don't think it really matters I've heard Jenny say a lot of times that when you look at antique quilts it's not usually the thread that wears out it's almost always the fabric the fabric will wear through so anyway you can start to see here on the side where the star legs are coming together and then we'll drop one of our white squares in the corner just like that and then on the finished quilt here you can see how it all comes together it's just four rows of four and then that simple five inch border around it it's so so easy and so much fun and I can't wait to hang this on my porch for the fourth of July we always have a big party and decorate the house in red white and blue so it's gonna be really fun do we have any other questions or anything so Bernice Bella are there one and a half inch jelly rolls those are actually called honey bun yes and they do exist if you were going to do this not so much out of scraps yes we actually have a connection today we do there's a little tie-in so I don't know if you guys noticed but the daily deal today is a pattern called paper stories and it uses the exact same methods I just showed you but with two and a half inch strips jelly roll strips and so this is a sample of a quilt made using that pattern isn't this lovely so so pretty and Jenny fish from our team made this and turned out so beautiful and she was kind enough to share it with us so if you're afraid of all the scrappy free styling of this one maybe give this one a try it is the daily deal today and so be sure to check that out but I hope you do try it like I said I really enjoyed you know taking some time in making one of these blocks each morning when I first got to my desk to sew and so it was just a really enjoyable little therapeutic you know worryfree sewing which i think is a lot of fun and how big is that finished star quilt behind you I think it finishes right around 45 inches square that's my guesstimate and you could put any size border you want on that oh absolutely you could put an inner border and an outer border and all kinds of fancy you could put four of these together and make a big quilt please somebody do it I would love to see it you know all fun things and where we add on timeless so does anybody have any questions this one we flew through it went really quick so we have a couple suggestions folks they love the red white and blue but what other colors could you do with this and of course Christmas comes up yeah we comes up doesn't have to be a holiday though absolutely your favorite three colors well you know I are Missouri star colors are blue orange and yellow and so I was thinking how cute this would be you could even you know make this blue these orange and these legs yellow there's so many possibilities that you can do which I just think is so much fun so don't you no limit to your ideas ask yourself those questions and don't be afraid to play because all you're all you're messing with on this project is some little pieces of paper and some scraps so I want and speaking you with a paper could you show us when do you take off the paper oh yeah do you take off the paper great great question I almost miss that I have this one here that has the paper still on it and to be perfectly honest my favorite way to take the paper off is to tell my children here I will give you a quarter for every one of these that you take the paper off of so that is my number one method but if they're not feeling helpful or up to it then I do it myself and I usually just it's a great project to do while you're sitting and watching TV it's just pretty mindless and so my favorite thing to do is start in a corner and I just fold it back and kind of give it a little finger press and then it just rips right off and then the next one does the same thing I just fold it back give it a little finger press and then I just pull it right off and it goes a lot faster than you would think and you just sit there and because you've perforated that paper with your stitching it tears really easily so that also brings us to our next question is there a preferred stitch length to make that perforation easier that's a good question I do shorten mine a little bit I tend to be between like two and a half and a three and I bump it down below 2.5 close like you know just a little bit tighter stitch you still don't want anything crazy because mistakes can still happen and so when if you do have that happen you do need to be a little bit careful when your seam ripping because of the papers if you get too wild or pull too much it will rip your paper so you just want to take your time if you have any errors but I can promise you there were a few of those in here and they turned out just fine and so it's pretty forgiving but yeah it just it comes together really fast and honestly I was kind of dreading removing all the paper but then I was sitting watching a good show and it just flew right by and it was done so easy-peasy and abbie cornish asked how would or could you incorporate selvage edges on this so I also want to say guys if you have an idea for a salvage project tell us about that in the comments too well I actually had that idea originally and wanted to make well once I finished this I was like how cute would it be if I made a tiny Salvage star with just little all the salvages to make it and so you could absolutely use your Salvage edges to just stitch and make all your strips and it would be so stinking cute so stinking cute I actually think like that you could come up with like a almost like a quilters journal and just start sewing all your selvages and saving little pieces of your selvage we're getting really crazy with our stash now ladies it's fine but it could be so fun as a minute wait look back in in memory of all the quilts and projects that you've worked on so yes save those salvages if they make your heart sing there's lots you can do with them that's awesome anything else folks are asking about the quilt wall that you hung the pieces on and we actually have something on our YouTube channel yes Jenny do from Jenny yeah Jenny put Jenny and Ron well mostly Jenny then put together a great video on our design walls that we have here this is the it's actually from cave it's it's this grid flannel and we sell it here at Missouri star it's available by the yard and we just hang it on the wall with some some foam behind it so be sure maybe we can drop a link to that video that Jenny put together for you guys and you can see how we made it but they're so handy and amazing and one more question Rebecca asks if I rip the paper before it's time to rip the paper can I still use that or do I have to start over you okay if you accidentally rip your paper let me talk you through that again don't panic there's plenty of extras in this pack there's there's fifty in each package and I think there's probably even a few more in there there's just a lot so if you accidentally were to rip one of your papers you can just use your glue stick run a line along the backside and just add another paper to the back even having that second layer of paper is not going to cause any problems and then that will again give you that foundation to work with and just keep sewing and also you know it might so misty we're we got a couple questions around that just also as you're gluing that together are you using a regula stick or can you still use that Roxann glue stick can you just do that or do you need to do you need to do something else to kind of stick that together and then related question does that make it harder to tear off later do you need to change the way you're stitching on it if you have multiple layers you got me now okay sorry about that guys so some great questions that came through on that is hopefully you heard Liz I know you couldn't hear me during that but so questions about if our paper were to accidentally tear what can we do I was just demoing that you can use that same glue stick on the backside add a second piece for your stitching I I would not really change my habits too much I would just keep stitching you can the other thing I wanted to say is a lot of times a terrible just be a little piece it's just gonna be a little tiny chunk and so I will just fold it back over maybe even press it with an iron and keep going if I haven't lost an entire section of my square I'm not even going to bother with this I'm just gonna keep stitching and it will all work out fine in the end and so that is my recommendation did I miss anything did I get them all just the last question just for clarification you do go ahead and rip off the paper before you sew the blocks to each other yes actually that's it that's another great question you can do it either way I prefer to rip it off before I piece the blocks together because I find it tricky to get that quarter-inch little paper piece out it's just a lot of work especially as your rows and seams come to come together those ones are trickier than the actual you know on the back here that we're working with but because of how you're piecing you do get a little bit of bias and stretch and so if you are one that worries about bias keep the papers on when you stitch them together because then again you've got that foundation and you're not gonna get the stretch in the wonkiness that you would I don't worry about it because I work with bias a lot and so I just you know don't pull and tug but if you're one that finds yourself pulling and tugging it can warp a little bit so keep the papers on that's a great question and then can you tell us about this the stitching that actually quilts this beauty together okay so we just sent this to our fabulous quilting department here at Missouri star and this is quilted in Stars and loop which i think is the perfect finish for it and we just did a cream thread to blend which I think looks beautiful a lot of people worry about using cream on dark colors but I think it still just lets the pattern shine which is what I really wanted and I love how it turned out I think it's really really cute and they did a fabulous job as always love that quick edge-to-edge so thank you guys oh yes thank you I almost forgot I'm super excited we have a really fun project for next week I'm gonna tuck all of my my finished blocks into this but I'm gonna teach you guys how to make this really great project bag so tune in next Tuesday and I'll see you there thank you

Channel: Missouri Star Quilt Company

Views: 55,477

Rating: 4.9289804 out of 5

Keywords: missouri star quilt co, missouri star, msqc, how to sew, sewing project, easy sewing project, missouri star quilt company tutorial, easy sewing home decor project, diy home decor, string quilt, string stars wall hanging, scrap busting project, foundation paper piecing, diy patriotic decor, how to make a string quilt wall hanging, how to make a mini quilt, star quilt, how to make a string quilt, how to use foundation paper pieces

Id: GZFmOl1exMs

Length: 30min 29sec (1829 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020