Sew Simple Shapes REMiX Block #1

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well hello again and welcome back to my sewing room today i'm really excited to bring you the first in my sew simple shapes remix series so i'm going to be doing a block with my sew simple shapes once a month these blocks are going to be called remix meaning i'm going to be taking all of my so simple shape sets picking a set to do a block out of or picking a few pieces from a few sets to make a block and the block is going to be coming out the third wednesday of every month in the riley blake designs newsletter and that comes right to your email i will leave a link in this video description so that you can sign up for the newsletter so that you can be sure to to get that block and see it so that's the third wednesday of every month and then the third friday of every month because i film on fridays and today is the third friday in march i will be filming on how i put this block together what shapes i use you know that kind of thing so what this is meant for is i want you to be able to think outside the box when it comes to my self-simple shapes and because i know that many of you have them in your libraries already because you know you've been selling following me along with my sew alongs and doing several of my quilts with me and i just don't want you to think that these so simple shapes are for one project or in other words a one-hit wonder and then you just put them away they're so easy to be able to bring out and do different projects with and so i'm going to be giving you a block every month in different sizes this one is going to finish at 14 inches next month i don't know i haven't drawn that up yet but it could be a 12 inch block it could be six inch it could be like eight by fourteen so they're not necessarily meant to go in one quilt they're supposed to be so that you can take this block and use your imagination and do anything with it so i mean obviously you could use your scrappy stash and make several of these blocks and do alternate blocks and make them into a quilt so of course you can still make them into quilts or you could make a wall quilt by putting small blocks around it piecing it and hanging it on the wall you could do table runners by you know making two blocks and each block would go on the end of the runners you could put patchwork in the middle obviously you could do a pillow and you know again wall hangings but what about things like project bags i think these would be perfect i know i do project bags and y'all are doing project bags with my quilt blocks why not with applique and what about things like notebook covers or tea towels or just you know different home decor items and i just want you to have fun with them and realize that the so simple shapes are very versatile and are not just for the sew along quilt that i designed them for so um before i show you how to do this block and talk more about it i'm going to talk about my so simple shapes and so what i have here are all my sets and you saw them in the opening video so far i have 11 sets and this is number 12. this is set number 12. this is called my happy place it's going to be making my happy place quilt for my sew-along that starts in august that comes with my fabric stitch that will be here in july now i i'm going to insert a picture here of the quilt of what the my happy place quilt looks like so you'll know what i'm talking about but this is the set that will be coming out for that so this is set number 12. okay so i said i was going to insert a picture but i thought this would even be better i just grabbed my storyboard the storyboard is what riley blake designs makes so that you can see everything that comes with this collection and view the collection for the first time so this is the quilt called my happy place you can't really see the whole thing but i'll turn so here's here's the prints of stitch these are all the prints let me move it this way so you can maybe see everything now come may i'll probably be showing this again along with my new collection that i can't tell you about until may look at this cross stitch print i'm really excited about that and then here's here's a cheater here's the wide backs here's a better picture of the quilt okay cows can you see that if i have it in the hole okay so here's here's the my happy place quilt that we'll be doing with stitch all of these blocks and the corners are pieced all of these blocks are pieced the sewing machine is piece and these spools are pieced the rest like the these doilies here and the crochet the yarn the applique and the button jar the tomato pin cushions and all of these shapes right here the ironing board are all so simple shapes so i'm super excited about that this sew along starts in august let's see here's here's the invitation right here so it starts in august and it is going to start on the 23rd it's always on a monday and so if you want to know more information about that just in a couple of months when the fabric starts rolling in you can pre-order kits from your quilt shops just search my happy place quilt kit and you'll be able to find one so my very first set i did this is so big let me show you i really need to get another one of these but this is what the outside of the binder looks like but you can see right now look how wide that is i obviously need to put half of them in a second binder but honestly the binders keep going in and out and i have one and every time the binders are reordered they sell out immediately and i have never got my hands on a second binder so i need to get a second binder and then i'll be dividing these but i just put them all in here for this video i normally don't keep it this full this is the inside of the binder here's the back so this is my beekeeper binder and then with the binder comes three of these little pockets for the so simple shapes or you know projects whatever and then you can also let me grab this to show you you can also buy these beekeeper pocket inserts in a five pack separately so see you can use these little zippered pockets that fit perfectly in here to to do your notions your maybe your already traced pieces or something like that but um three come with one binder and then you can add as many as you want but for this video i stuck them all in here so that i could show you the order in which my self-simple shapes came out just in case you didn't know so that you would know if um i get a lot of emails saying i'm i'm missing letters so i know i'm missing some so simple shapes and what i mean by that by letters is this is my first set called bloom and i lettered it with the letter a and then a dash and then it goes each shape is numbered numerically now i knew that i was going to be doing a lot of sets of these so that's why i started out with a letter so so bloom is a this was five years ago this is what i started with and this is cozy christmas and so that's b and you can see that it's a different color so that if you mix these shapes up which i would really like you to mix them up and do fun things with then you know because of their color and because of the letter that's on there you know the set that they belong to so you can return them back to their home so this is fruit salad this is my be happy set and you can see each set some are small meaning not small in size yes some are small in size but each set may have you know 22 pieces and some may have you know 50 pieces just depending on the quilt this is let's bake this is autumn love this is farmhouse star this is farm sweet farm this is granny's garden and this is vintage housewife and this is prim so this was what we did for the prim quilt and this is the set that we are using to make this block today but before i show you that i thought because i showed you all of these sets that i might um show you just kind of like a slideshow i'll have cass put together a slideshow of some photos from the sew alongs that were made from these so simple shapes just like maybe two or three pictures from each sew along so that you can kind of get an idea of the variety and you know how versatile that these really are but while i'm talking about my binder i do want to show you one thing before we go into the slideshow so this binder or this thing is heavy now but you can see it's a three inch it's very wide i wanted that so that you could you know hold a lot of projects in there or you know several sets of so simple shapes at a time and then this was my first one that came out and then so subsequently i have planned to do so many um i mean so many different binders meaning one with each collection of fabrics so that it will fit the sew along guide so this is the next one i came out with this is the flea market binder and this is what we are working with now i'm just now finishing up my flea market flowers so long and this is how wide that is and what this was designed for is just has a print from flea market and another print on the inside is to hold the sew along guide and so it does that perfectly fine but i've had a lot of people and including myself after i started using this thinking this one really needs to be a little bit wider as wide as this let me pull this one back in i mean yeah i designed it specifically for the sew along guide but if i made it a little bit wider like see how this is wider can you see how much that is then maybe i could be more you know versatile with this and it could have more uses as well and so from now on the next the next binders that we do are going to be this wide they'll still only be this narrow here because that's all you need i don't want to make them all really you know thick but so i'm going to be doing one with stitch that's got my vintage ladies print on the binder and so that will come out this wide and i think that will be helpful and so i just kind of wanted to let you know that i think that will work even better and so that's what we're going to do all right so right here is where i'm going to kind of slip in that slideshow of the pictures of the past sew alongs and then we'll get started on this block [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so here we are back with this block and let's talk about how once again i'm taking several shapes and making something different with them i never did tell you about the quilt that was hanging on the design wall here in my sewing room that you saw in the opening of the video that one is called my so simple shape series and i did that on my blog it's still on my blog it was a sew along that we did a couple years ago and it was basically the same idea that i did with this meaning i started with my bloom shapes and then my cozy christmas and i went in order and i did two or three blocks that all finished at 12 inches that that i made them with that set and then i moved on to the next set and made two or four or whatever from that set and i moved on up until my autumn love set and that's what was current at the time and so i ended with that so i have let's see yeah so it's 20 blocks in this quilt and like i say they're all on my blog and i will link to that as well like wink week one or you know the big finish or something which has links to the rest of it so you could you know if you have my sets up into to the point of autumn love then you could do this quilt as well and i just used fabrics for my stash and my b backgrounds to do that quilt all right so here we have this block again it finishes at 14 inches but we cut the background 16 inches and i pressed it in half here are the shapes that we need from the prim set and then i've added a bonus one in here too i'm going to sew this little heart that's in the set this is k33 i'm going to sew up this heart because you know you can always put that on the basket if you want and so i'll show you that in a minute but this k37 is for the basket can you see this whole block cast so if i lay it there okay so that's what that's for this k-61 is for the two flowers and then for the center of the flowers i have the canine and the k10 and then for the basket handles is this cattail k22 this was for the cat in the prim quilt and i'm using those and see how they meet there's a gap there but you can't see that because you place a flower there so that's how i doubled those as basket handles here's the bird k-42 and we'll talk about adding this little piece for the beak and then this k-43 which was a leaf is now sorry that's the wrong one k-51 which was a leaf is now the wing for that bird and then this k-43 are the leaves here and then i've got stems and we'll talk about those too so i want to show you what i did for the trim of the basket which is k16 what this is is two of them exactly side by side so what i did for that is when i go to trace it on the interfacing let's see let me grab my interfacing i should talk about this real quick so this is the sewing interfacing and um i developed you know after a couple years oh probably a year year and a half i was partnered up with rightly blake designs and with pell-on and using some of theirs and packaging it for my solo longs but it still was just a little too thin and then some of the other you know pellon was either too thick or too thin and it really wasn't i don't know i just really really didn't um i don't know there was just reasons that i didn't want it really thick and reasons that i didn't want it really thin and so finally i came up with this weave and riley blake designs are producing this and i really like this it's a really good stable one and it's just so in interfacing and i love it i will never look back i love this one it's just it's not too thin so it's not really flimsy and it keeps the shapes really nice and so this is what i use and so what i do when i go to use my shapes this is kind of what the piece looks like here's just a scrap piece so i'm just going to show you how i traced these on let me grab a pencil i just use a mechanical pencil when i trace my shapes and so i'm just going to put it right here can you see that castle okay and then i'm just going to trace around the whole thing this is kind of far away from me so you guys can probably see this better than i can but it's just you know a matter of tracing around the shape and when you put it on this interfacing it's really nice it doesn't slip around so i still make sure that i trace that line but then i know that i can set this right next to it and just continue tracing and so that's what this basket width ends up being so that's how i start to sew my shapes as i just trace them first on interfacing and then i can go ahead let's see where's my little board i'm layering things here so that i can have everything at my fingertips for you but they're kind of piled up okay so then i just grab this let me grab some scissors or my rotary let's see where'd i set my rotary here's one in the drawer here you can just use scissors or a ruler and you don't have to be you know real exact but i want it to be about a quarter of an inch bigger now i don't want to cut around this whole shape like this you know to go around each thing before i sew the trimming comes after i like it to stay either in a square or a rectangle because that adds stability to your piece when you're sewing the and that's the point of having it square or rectangle so that you sew it first before you do that trimming and trim things out on the bias it just keeps things lying flat and they don't distort while you're sewing so that's what i do with that that's how i trace that and i end up having a piece here already traced and that's just what it looks like so i keep this right side up i want to be able to see this line and then the piece of fabric i just put right side up as well and then that's ready to sew so what i've done with these shapes right here is if they're repeated shapes meaning we have four leaves in the block so i already sewed three of them and we have more than one piece we have double the amount of these so i did half of these and here's my background cut 16 inches square and it is pressed in half let's fold it in fours right now but i did press it in half one way so that i can kind of start centering the block when it's time to lay that out when i do all the pieces so before i go over and show you how to sew the pieces and how to shape them i'm going to going to show you about the bias so what we do for the bird let me unstack this again okay so what we're doing for the bird's legs is one quarter inch bias and what we're doing for the stems is one quarter inch bias now this is straight bias meaning i just cut it i just cut a strip 5 8 of an inch wide and that's what i always do for the quarter inch 5 8 of an inch wide and i'll show you how i run that through my iron and and run that through the maker to to make that size but if the stems are curved or anything needs to be curved with the bias then i will cut that out on the bias so that's i'm going to show you what i do now let me grab my jar so this is by clover and this is the quarter inch bias tape maker it says number six on it it says clover and it's green i have several sizes all of the sizes i think that they make and i use several different sizes sometimes in some of the quilts for different things not just for stems but for straight lines or for trims on tops of baskets or bottoms of vases or things like that so let me well first i'm going to show you how to cut the bias okay so this is a straight one 5 8 of an inch wide this i think is just um at the top of a fat quarter so it's like 21 inches but i really want to show you and i don't know if i've shown this before i know i've shown you several times how to make the quarter inch stems but i don't know if i'm showing you how to cut on the bias so here i have a piece of fabric let's see it's 10 inches tall and so it doesn't i can start with a 10 inch square if i want i only need to make a couple of stems or i could just save this whole piece and cut on the diagonal all the way across and that way it's cut on the bias and that means you can curve your stems and make them look really pretty that way it's when you cut it straight and you try to curve it it just does not lay nicely so no matter how tall your fabric is if you're starting out with the fat quarter 18 inches tall or whatever this is what you want to do so this one is 10 inches tall so i measure and i take my ruler can you see that counts i take my ruler and i measure 10 inches in and i grab a pin and just stick it there for a second so i know that that's 10 inches so here i have 10 inches here i have 10 inches so i know that if i cut from point to point that's i'm cutting a square and that's directly on the bias and that's going to give your best curve and your prettiest fabric now you could just cut a square but if you want to keep this wide so that you can keep cutting strips across okay sorry my camera stopped for a second so i'm just going to pick up where i left off so i've got the pin in here 10 across and it's 10 tall i'm going to lay my ruler here and it's going to be right here on the corner i can take my pin out and then i just use my rotary and cut the first corner to corner strip now i can just turn this around and measure in 5 8 of an inch right here and there's one stem cut that i can run through the maker i'll cut another one for this block see they're not very long so these first two cuts would be fine for these two stems but while i have the stuff out normally i won't do that today because you know of course because of filming but while i have it out i usually will cut this whole piece and just keep going and running them all through and that's why i kind of like to keep this wide so i can keep cutting as many strips as i want then i have this old spool of the color peony a vintage trim that i used all of it so i kept this and i keep it wrapped around the spool and pin it on the end and i keep it with my applique and you know in a container with with these so that i know that when i'm doing blocks they're all ready to go so i already had this and that's why i chose to use this fabric from my prim collection for this stem because i already had some made but anyway so let me make the second cut and again i would just continue to cut this if you don't have the time to do it since you already measured at the time that you're doing it you could always just fold the fabric up since you've already started it and put that in the same container or with the kit so that you know you've already got some diagonal you know cuts going so let me move that mat out of the way pull my iron in and show you once again how i press these in case you have not caught a video where i've shown this before so here i have a straight one and here i have one that are on the bias now look what happens with the straight they have a little bit of give to them so you you can curve a little bit with straight bias but not very much but look at these what these do they really have a lot of give i could really stretch those out and that's what makes it so that you can bend them and they're very you know lay very nicely so the first thing i like to do is i like to spray my strips with a little bit of water and starch i have i like to use mary ellen's best press starch and i always starch my fabric with mary ellen's before i cut my pieces out because i don't want to shrink them after i've cut them so i'll just take this mr bottle by the way this is my new mister bottle my sew vintage mister bottle and it just sprays out a mist and this will be available this month so i just like to you know get that on there so that it holds its shape once i start to press it through so for the straight what i do is grab these scissors on either end i like to cut a point first just so that i have something that i can start with you know what it's so flimsy and wet i'm going to put the iron on the end so it dries real quick there now because i've got a little starch in there you can use the point of your scissors or a pin to pull that through so when i once i've got that through and started i simply just keep the maker up this way it's upside down then the manufacturers suggest that you do i like to keep it this way upside down your seams your fold is showing on the top it just shows smooth and i find that if you start on the top where your seam is underneath you take the point of your iron and see you can really press that smoothly let me grab my cord out okay so can you see that in the screen okay so then i just follow along and i'm just pulling this through the maker i try not to touch the tip of my iron to the maker because they're both metal and then they'll soon get very hot and so that's all i do i just continue on going through i let it sit there and dry so see if i was doing it on this side it may i'm i can't see on the other side if it's going smoothly or not so that's why i like to do it with this side up so that i can see that it's smooth so i'm just going to pull that out that's long enough for right now to use for the bird legs so i'll just set that aside and then for this i'm just going to press that and dry it i'm going to do the exact same thing use those scissors okay there we go and now when i press this because it's on the bias i do like to press a little bit of a curve into it and i usually just do a slight curve like this and that's enough to just kind of keep it going but you could still make it into a really you know it records caught on something okay here we go you could really make it into an intricate curve or wider curve or narrower curve if you wanted to and then i usually just let it sit like that and then after it's dry then i can move it but i do like it to cool off so that i'm not stretching it out and that way i can just use that for my stems and glue it however i want if the stem is curved this way then this will be the top if it's curved this way then i'll make this be the bottom so either way this curve works however you do it all right so now i've got my pieces i'll cut i don't need two of those i just want to show you how to trace that one i've got my pieces all ready to sew i've got my pieces that i have already sewn and i'm going to go over to the sewing machine and show you how i sew these and turn and shape them and then i'll be right back here and show you how i lay out my block okay so here i am with all of these shapes ready to go and this is how i lay them on my design board after i get them all traced and get their fabric cut now i'm going to start with the bird and the reason i'm going to start with the bird is i want to show you about the beak part right here so what i do with that is i put the beak fabric in here so i remember to sew this together before i sew the shape so what i do is i simply just do a quarter inch and i sew the yellow onto this side because this is the side the beak is going to go on and then i come over here to the iron and whenever i piece before i make it so simple shape i always press my seam open because i really want it to be flat at this point i can use a clapper these are the riley blade quilters clapper and makes your flat your blocks flat and more accurate because i've pressed my seams open okay so now i've got that joined on and all i do because this is see-through i can set my shape wherever i want it to go so if i put it clear over here you can see that's how deep the beak is going to be i don't want it quite that deep you know probably i don't know i kind of like how that looks so i just set it like that you can grab a pin but you don't always have to pin these unless they're great big because this really kind of does stick to the fabric and it's nice so when i start my shapes i don't start in a corner or anything like that i just kind of like to start in the middle and i sew right to the shape i have a regular stitch on my machine on the featherweight it's a 12 but this is just like a regular stitch that you would piece a quilt with not too small you don't want to gather up your pieces and you don't want it too large because then that will also gather up your pieces so i just do a regular stitch and then i just literally stitch right on the line easy peasy i stop at the corners just pivot now a really good tip and trick to this is to always have a foot i do this when i'm piecing and everything that has like an open toe or even if it's not called an open toed foot a foot on your machine that you can actually see where the needle goes down into your piece whether you're piecing a quilt or sewing on the line or anything i like to see exactly where my needle is going i never like to guess so i just continue around going as fast or slow as i need to to stay on the line when i get to the end i just pivot i need to cut off my little starter and stopper scrap there now this is where i started so i don't want to backstitch because that adds bulk to my seam i just over stitch meaning i just keep going by about a half inch or an inch and then i don't take this out i do take my pin out though i'll use that again if i need to and i just sew right off of the piece and pick up my next piece and i'll just do the same thing i don't want to start at a point i just sew right into where the line is and start from there and then i'll just cut that out this saves time and thread just chain piecing them i like to sew all of my shapes at the same time okay so before i i'm going to speed up the video and just sew all these pieces i don't think you need to see me do it in real time but before i do that i realize i forgot to tell you one thing about the tracing i know i showed you how to trace this piece together special like this but i forgot to tell you about this cat's tail that we're using for the basket handle you can see one goes one way and one goes the other way so i have already sewn one that went this way so this one is traced the other way and how you trace it in reverse that you simply just turn your so simple shape over and trace it so that it's going the other direction okay i'm just going to continue on and sew all these pieces and then we'll talk about the trimming when i'm finished [Music] [Music] okay so i have this last piece but i wanted to show you one thing because you can see through this it's really awesome so i've got this piece of gingham right here and i wanted to show you that you can kind of line it up so this straight line goes across the game so it's going to be straight and it's going to look really nice so that's what i that's what i did i lined it up right there and i'm just going to grab a couple of pins and pin it make sure it stays in place so i kind of like you know to have things straight when i can and it's really nice that this is see-through so that you can really set things on your fabric and kind of uh you know you if you're a quilter you know what fussy cut means this is kind of like fussy so you can lay your applique your traced applique shape onto your fabric and line it up to exactly what you want your shape to look like with the fabric showing through all right so i finished sewing all the shapes and i've put my little scrappy fabric in here to save on thread and time and i'm just going to go ahead and clip an approximate quarter inch seam around all of these pieces [Music] okay so now they're all trimmed and now this is the point where i separate the ones that i need to clip the inner curves or what i call like a cleavage piece so this would be a cleavage piece right here and so i'm going to set that there that's an inner curve these are outer curves i never need to clip those this one has a cleavage piece outer curves don't have to clip that inner curves have to clip that don't have to clip that don't have to clip that and i will have to clip the inner curves here so the reason that i need to clip these it's not difficult at all you just need to know that when you have an inner or a cleavage area that if you just go ahead and turn this right side out without clipping the seam allowances right here it will not lie flat and you'll just be fighting it the whole time so i just grab like a smaller pair of scissors and on the inner curve right here i clip just a few clips to right to my stitching line but not past it you know or into that thread and that's just going to help ease that when it's turned you know right side out and you know this is sort of an inner curve so i maybe do one clip there and same thing here just kind of one clip so that's how i need on that on these all i need to do is one clip on each cleavage area and i just go right to my thread and not past it and that's really going to help when i go to turn that so i'm just going to continue on and clip these and then we'll talk about turning okay so now that all the pieces are clipped what i do is i take my scissors or my seam ripper i'll show you both ways that i do it and i just separate i make sure the fabric is clear over here because i don't want to clip into it and i'll just do a little clip so that i can cut like an x and i just feel with my fingers on the other side that i know i'm not going to be cutting that so this one this x size right here is going to be plenty to turn that so that's all i do when i do the seam ripper you know you kind of have to be brave to do this but i like to use a seam ripper as well and i just start with a piece like this i'll i want to keep this intact i don't want to go all the way and cut that to the ends so probably about an inch and a half up i'll just start right there and move along move along move along and i stop about to that point okay so i don't do an x in that that's all i need to do on that piece and sometimes i'll just use my seam ripper to just start it like that just like to make a little make a little opening and then i can cut a little x and notice how my x doesn't go all the way to the threads i just want to make it a little bit wider to open it but i want to stay away from those seams so once i've got them clipped i simply just take my fingers and start turning them and i'll kind of shape them with my finger as much as i can kind of like that that's totally normal that's what that's supposed to look like but that's why we you know we're going to shape them this is just the turning part the next step is shaping so right now i'm just turning now i always just use my fingers and just kind of shape out like this and but for some pieces these are you know there's a few smaller pieces in here if you have a problem turning them i've never had to use these but i put these out so i wouldn't forget to show you but these are hemostats and a lot of people use these hemostats because you can open these and then lock these into place and you can you know pull your fabric through so you may want to find a pair of those if you have a problem turning your smaller pieces but i don't know i've just been doing this for a long time so i don't seem to have a problem with it and sometimes you can kind of shape like that a little bit [Music] all right so now i have them all sort of turned but you know they look kind of strange to reshape them but i want to save that one till last to show you that it's really not that big of a deal this strange of a shape i just take this end and turn it and then i just take the other end and turn it and then this is where my best little buddy here this is by clover and this is the turning tool and i love this i sometimes use this end but most of the time i use this end i've used so many tools over the years and this is the one that i found that i love the best i love how it's wider here and it goes up narrower to a point here and it's thin here so i can really get into those points so i'm just going to show you how i use this tool so i always have my interfacing towards me and i just take the tool and very gently push out now this this end is the one that has the curve so you know you have points out here so i just kind of go to the points and push out gently okay not real hard you don't want to poke a hole through but keep in mind that this will be underneath see it will be hiding under the basket so even if you did happen to poke a little hole here that's going to be covered by the basket trim then i go around here and very gently on a curve i'm just pushing out using it as an extended finger because my finger couldn't get all the way in there so i'm just using that i'm not trying to force it i'm just trying to turn it and see how i just kind of turn those so i've got these and then i take it over to the iron to do the rest and i'll just do one side first and that's you know and then i worry about the other side so what i do is i just kind of roll it out and then i start with the iron and just use the very tip of my iron and i'm just pressing those creases in okay so now that's going to hold down and then i just do the same thing with the inside curve and so you know you just manipulate your piece you know that you sewed the shape so you know that's what it's going to end up being like if you just you know during the pressing portion so just start at this end now that this is the last part go all the way up and this one will be a great one to use the clapper on as well you can well i could use this longer one or i can use two shorter ones together but this way it will cool off and be flat so i'm just going to let that cool off and i'm going to go around and i'll i'll shape one more piece just to show you kind of how i do the points so the leaves they always have a point at the end here and what i like to do is turn this sideways see so half of the interfacing is on one half and the fabric's on the other half and that really helps to push that point out and that's why i like this part to be really flat i don't want a rounded pointy piece i like this flat because it really helps me to shape things and then i just continue around in a curve in a very slight curve now when you're going around if you happen to poke a hole through you'll get like some threads from the fabric like some frayed edges and all i do with that is i take the su daily glue that i use to glue base this block which you'll you'll see in my next segment but i'll just glue a little bit and i'll glue it down onto the interfacing and just let that dry and usually you can save your piece that way so you know ask me how i know that i've had to do that before but after i shape them i can either take them over to the iron but i wanted to show you that i can also and i do quite often use my seam roller here and all you do is just you're just trying to crease these edges so that the cotton fabric kind of creases against the interfacing and look how nice that is that works out great after you roll it you can still you know do a quick press if you want but this works great as well so i'm just going to continue on shaping these pieces when i do this one it's going to be the same way i just push these out now getting into those spots where my finger couldn't get into and i find because i'm right-handed it's much easier for me to go into a motion this way when i'm shaping those circles it's really awkward for me to try to go this way but if you're left-handed that's probably you know what you want to do but where i'm right-handed i just it's just easier for me to turn my piece however i need to to make and shape those scallops so i'm going to continue shaping this piece and then i'll press it after and then i'll continue the rest [Music] okay so i'm back because i stopped the camera for a minute because guess what i poked a hole right there through the last piece that i was doing that circle so that's what i meant about now you'll have those little pieces there so all i do is take this glue and i put a little bit right here like dabbed on the interfacing and the thread and i just kind of roll it onto there and let it dry kind of gets a little bit sticky and then it dries not sticky and it doesn't dry real stiff either just a little bit and so i'll just kind of roll it over and keep it there let it dry and then that's how you fix a circle so when you go to stitch it down you know that's not going to show underneath there so i haven't pressed it yet i'll do that right now okay so it stuck up after i pressed it because i didn't let it dry because i was trying to hurry because of filming so i'll just simply do it again and let that bend over and then also if you didn't want to apply the glue right here to fix it just remember that when you are stitching you can take your needle if you're hand stitching and just tuck those extra threads under and then stitch around it and if you're machine stitching you can just take your um like your tailor's all or even the point on your seam ripper and just tuck those edges under right before it goes under the machine and that will cover that up so don't worry too much and you know these aren't meant to be perfect and see i use this one the roller on this one and it's easy after the roller or before it or never you can just you know you don't have to use the roller at all you can just use only the ruler you can just go ahead and do a quick press and make it a little bit flatter but when you stitch it down it's not going to matter how flat it was so now here we have all of the pieces all ready to go let's see i already showed you how to do the stems and the legs so let's go back over to the work table and i'll show you how i lay out all of my self-simple shape blocks all right so here i am at the work table and this is how i always lay out my applique blocks i love this part of the process because all of the pieces are already you know have the seam allowances turned under which is exactly why i designed so simple shapes in the first place so it makes it very easy to lay out your blocks because you know how everything is going to line up before you even applique and you don't have to guess because otherwise seam allowances would be sticking out and you can't really tell this way you can tell exactly what it's going to look like and you can just go for it so the first thing i do is i get a design board because i'm going to be pinning to it and then i smooth out my background onto the design board now i usually press my background block in half at least one way and or this way if i'm doing something symmetrical like the quilt that i showed you in the opening in my self simple shape series that way i would press this way plus corner to corner corner to corner and then i have all of those creases to use as a guide to line things up but for this i really just want to press in half and so i know that this is halfway because i measured this and so i know the same amount sticks out from this halfway point and so i just i haven't glued anything i just stuck a few pins in i have pin cushions this is a magnetic uh pin pinball that my friend jody painted me several years ago and um so i used that and so i i put the handles up here but i was able to put a little bit of a space because i'm going to take my little scallop piece and end up laying on top of there you know anyway so i want these handles to be you know kind of long kind of tall just to make sure i can fit everything in the next thing i did was sometimes i like to glue the centers of the flowers on beforehand so it becomes one piece and then i don't have to do all of that in this process so these are already glued on and so i've got my basket here i've got my handles and i try to put them in about the same you know distance between the corners but what really helps me the most is i know that this design when i drew it up is going to be 12 inches tall and this is 12 inches wide so i know it's going to be 12 inches tall 12 inches wide and then i'm going to trim up the block afterwards you know that's why i always cut the background a little bit larger so that i can trim it up after but i know that i'm going to trim it up to 14 and a half so i hope this ruler doesn't glare too much but this is what i do is it too can you see it or is it just okay so i use this to lay out my pieces a lot so i use this and i use a measuring tape so i automatically know this is going to be 12 inches wide obviously because that's what the piece finishes at but before we started filming i put this here and it was like 11 and a half inches tall so then i knew that i could move my flower up a little bit and so these are the first things that i started pinning okay so now i'm looking at my bird thinking yeah that's about where i want it it's not going to extend past this point so i'll put it there and i just kind of tentatively set these here you know to kind of lay them out before i decide to pin them in this flower i want to be kind of sticking past the handle kind of looking like that i just want to make sure i leave enough room in here for a leaf so i might need to bring this down just a little bit so that i have room for my leaf here and i just kind of set them here like this before i put the stems in to make sure i don't need to you know like say okay maybe i should move my bird out a little bit so i have a little bit more room for this leaf now i cut this stem about six and a half seven inches long and it's already curved so what i'm going to do is just kind of tuck this under i guess the first thing i should do usually is i'll just stick a pin in here i forgot to tell you about my pins even though i told you about my cute pin bowl but um these pins are my applique pins and they're probably part of my pretty pins i have several sets of pretty pins to do different things these are called applique and the reason they're called appliques because this is what i use to set up to to prepare for applique i do have some mini applique pins if you're not the type of person that wants to glue based and you just want to pin them in then you can use those as well but these are my very favorite and so that's what i use for these and so i just kind of temporarily stick a pin in there and i go like that this one you know it's like three inches long so i'm going to tuck that under there and see if you know that looks good there i still think i want my flower over a little bit because i want this stem a little bit farther away from that one so just lay out like that now this leaf is going to go right here i'm going to move this pin down so there's room for it so that's sort of how it's going to look another thing is remember this heart i wanted to show you that you can put this heart right there right in the middle and you can tell where the middle is because of this scallop right here and you can add that on if you want to that'd be super cute if you wanted to do that and so once i kind of get things set up i start pinning them in so i'm gonna i'm like yeah i like that bird there like the wing there maybe pull it out just a little bit now when i pin i don't like to pin all the way to the corners because i'm gonna lift these up and glue so i'll usually just put a couple of pins in so i know it won't shift and that's all i need to do with leaves i'll usually stick a pin about right here and then i know i can pivot it however i need to to get it to the point where i want so that since those centers are already there i just really only need to put a couple of pins in that flower so i know it won't shift now i want this stem to go into that flower naturally and then just kind of curve down so now i can go ahead and glue that and what i do is i just put a thin little thin piece of glue there of the sioux daily glue and then i just tuck the remainder i could trim that shorter if i wanted but i just took the remainder under the flower and now i know i can bring that leaf closer or i can push that stem over you know there's always a lot of room for leeway so i got that i usually really like to do my stems first and then i can make everything look nice from that point so this one i'm just gonna just kind of a natural curve coming down and really you can't once you have your parameters of knowing okay i want it to be 12 inches wide and it's good to go then within those parameters you know you don't have to be so perfect or anything you can just kind of set it up how you want i kind of want that to have more of a natural curve so i just kind of push it out a little bit now i think that leaf looks good there and then i can go ahead and pin this leaf here and i'll put it right between the flower and the bird so now i've pretty much got everything pinned down except for i think because this is such a long strip i want to make sure there's a pin there then i take the glue and i just start lifting things up like this if i had a lot of pieces that were going out towards the outside i would just keep taking my ruler and making sure they're staying within those perimeters but because i know already this is 12 inches wide as long as i don't have anything going out past that point before i glue the bird i had cut these feet to be these legs not feet to be you know a couple inches long so i can just apply a little bit of glue on the back and just tuck those underneath that way and do the same thing so when i'm doing these pieces um i usually just use little dots of glue but for for the um bias strips i usually use a very thin line okay so back to just lifting pieces up just a dot there a dot there a dot on the tip a dot there and there and i just leave that pinned once i've glued that end down i want to make sure that it's going to glue all the way down so i might stick an extra pin but i just continue lifting pieces up you know the basket everything and just put a few pieces i'm pieces not pieces of glue dots of glue just where i normally would stick a pin so i just continue doing that i go all the way around until it's all glued down i keep my pins in until the glue dries about 10 or 15 minutes then i take my pins out and i'm ready to applique so when i want to applique i can either do it by hand or by machine i just want to use matching thread i do have a tutorial here on my channel of how to applique by hand and how to do it either by hand or machine and so i'll leave a link for that if you want to get familiar with that if you're already familiar then there's no need to click on that link and watch it you can just go ahead and start your applique also on this block that is already finished that i showed you before notice there's no eye on the bird because i'm not sure if i'm going to sew this into a pillow a project bag a mini quilt or whatever but i do have my quarter inch cute little buttons they no longer no longer come in a jar the jars of that hold the buttons the jars that hold my cute little buttons are discontinued but the buttons are not discontinued they just come in packages so you could just pick one of these little buttons you could do a gray one if you wanted to and so on there i kind of like this darker steel one so you could do that or you could just do a french knot for the eye or you could just leave it primitive and not have an eye at all so that's what the block looks like with a heart on the basket this is what the block looks like with no heart either way i think they're really cute you can change it up use your scraps make different colored flowers you know do a different color bird you can do a darker bird and a different color basket if you wanted it to look like a crow for the fall change out the color of the flowers for the fall but i'm really excited about this series and i hope you are too again it's called the so simple shapes remix series and i'm super excited to see what you're going to be doing with these blocks and i'm kind of excited to see what i'm going to end up doing with them too but i think it's just really fun to do one block at a time and just see you know if we can think outside of the box and really you know become creative with these shapes so thanks so much for joining me this week and i will chat with you later

Channel: Lori Holt

Views: 81,923

Rating: 4.9412899 out of 5

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Id: gvAcenve3Co

Length: 66min 24sec (3984 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021