Sew Simple Shapes Series & ReMix #4 JUNE Block Tutorial!!

[Music] [Music] well hello everyone and welcome back to my happy place today is friday june 18th 2021 and this is episode number four in my sew simple shapes remix series so i can't believe we're already into block four and i'm loving this series i'm loving seeing everything on your social media that you guys are posting on what you're doing with these blocks you guys are so creative and that's exactly what i wanted to do with this series i just wanted you to be able to play with these shapes and you know just be creative with it so just as a refresher here is block one and i do have all of these tutorials on my channel so all you have to do is look on my channel you know you can just like click on my picture the name of my channel and then my playlist come up and you can see the remix blocks playlist so you can see all of them if you need any refreshers so this is one again this is still my original i really need to put a button on that bird's eye and here is two and that's a really fun one here is three and of course i just did this exactly four weeks ago because i do these on the third wednesday of every month because you get this pattern there released in the riley blake designs newsletter and that comes out the third wednesday of every month so i filmed the third friday of every month that tutorial so if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet you can go ahead and sign up through the link that i'll be leaving in the description and so today this is block four and so i'm sure you saw my so simple shape series quilt on the wall in the opening of this video after i explain all of this i'm going to clear off the table pull down the quilt so i can kind of show you block by block but this is kind of styled after that all of those blocks are 12 inch size finish this is a 12 inch size finish i pieced the background and i'll talk more about that in a minute and it's just kind of more of a traditional applique block which i really really love to do i love symmetrical things as well and of course it involves flowers too i i don't know if i'll ever do a block that doesn't involve a flower of some kind just because that's just who i am and how i roll but anyway so this is the block that we're going to be doing this month i've used the cozy christmas so simple shapes and let me slide that down can you see all of those okay and i'm going to try not to ask cassidy all the time if you can see things i'm just going to expect her to move things around if she needs to and then i just used one of autumn love because i decided i need needed a larger circle right here for this yellow and there wasn't a larger circle in the cozy christmas set so i just grabbed one from autumn love i usually have circles in every set of all different sizes so those are the sets that i'm using now the shapes that i'm using let me kind of put this here grab the shapes so i can explain which one goes to where and again this was from autumn love this is f2 and it is the largest circle in the center of the flower and then this is from cozy christmas it is b11 and of course it's the four hearts here so you'll need four of those and let's do this biggest one first this is b20 which in cozy christmas shape is actually the christmas wreath but look how it can be a flower now so that's b20 you need one of those this is b6 and i have used that for the medium circle in red here so one of those but then it's the same circle that are the denim flowers here so you need four denim flowers one circles excuse me and one red so you need to trace five of these on the interfacing and then i've used five of the b5 they're the four yellow flower tops and then the center circle and then the remaining one we have is b10 and it's eight leaves okay so that's all of those now if you need to know what size to cut your interfacing and your fabric pieces remember i showed you this last let me pull that in so you can see it so this is the so simple shapes i showed you this last time the cutting guide and the sewing interfacing guide and it's just for fabric interfacing so that you know what size to cut your fabric and each shape is in in there with the order that the shapes come in now cozy christmas is number two so here's all the shapes here and so you know the i you know i use b11 so you know that for those hearts you need to cut two and a half by three piece of the sewing interfacing and then of the fabric and then you go ahead and trace that heart you just put it on the interfacing and just trace around it with a mechanical pencil just whatever you need to see i use a mechanical pencil because it has a nice thin line and that's easy enough for me to see when i'm sewing if you need something darker go ahead and use something darker and so this guide i'm hoping you are finding it very helpful thank you for all of the kind messages that i've received that you know for doing this because it does help keep things organized and if you know me i like to stay organized now on the last page of this guide we have the bias tape maker measurements and what i cut it so for this for the stems we're just using the quarter inch bias tape maker and so it tells you here that four quarter inch i cut my strips five eighths of an inches wide so i'm going to show you again today how i run that through the maker because it's been a few months since i showed you so i'll show again so that takes care of that i do want to talk about fabric used in here because i always get that question you know what fabric are you using so for the stems i've been using the same fabric throughout so far that doesn't mean i'm always going to but it's just convenient because once i cut them and press them then i put this you know on this spool so on this side i have ones that i've cut on the bias so i know that they're stretchy and these are straight bias so i just keep them one on the other and then i know if i'm doing bending stems then i use the one i cut on the bias and if i'm just using straight stems as in this block today then i don't need to worry about bias cutting but what i do when i'm cutting is i just cut the 5 8 inch strip off the top you can see right here this is my piece of fabric okay i'm going to put it up here so you can see the whole thing so what i did was i just cut that one strip off the top here so that i could demonstrate and show you guys so this is 5 8 of an inch wide now if i need on the bias i just cut 5 8 of an inch wide from here now how you do the bias is let's refresh this again okay so this piece is 9 inches tall so that means i'm going to measure 9 inches in i'm basically cutting from a 9 inches square so if it's nine inches tall you don't have to make it into a square you just have to know how tall your strip is and then i will measure nine inches in and kind of put a pin there and that's where i'll make my first cut from here to here and then i know from from then i just cut 5 8 of an inch wide or however white i need to for the bias and so i'll just keep using this strip until it's gone and then i'll probably change colors or something but that's what my strips look like if i need way long strips then i'll just do a taller piece but you know so far cutting stems from that long of a strip it has been fine and it will be fine for this block and so i'll run that through the iron in a minute i just want to talk fabric okay so these two are from um this is a b background this is my aqua canning jars and this is for my b cross stitch b background fabric both and i chose one in red and this is aqua and i will show you how i piece that background so that it's you know half square triangles like this on an angle and how handy that is and why i like to do that and as far as fabric goes let's continue with that this is from my prim collection this is from my b basics collection this is for my b basics as well same print for the hearts i use the same print for these these are from my flea market collection this is also for my flea market collection and then this plaid that i used for the leaves is for my prim collection so that's all the fabrics that i'm using in this block as you can see we'll bring that back in as you can see i've sewn most of the pieces but i am going to sew at least one of every shape and size and show you how i shape those and things like that so you can see that i just don't think it's necessary for you to watch me sew and shape all eight leaves for instance so i'll just do one of those and for the backgrounds i forgot to say for one block you need an eight inch square two eight inch squares from each print so i've got two of those and two of those okay and then i just picked two of them i don't need to do this on the red ones but on the blue what i did was i drew a line a quarter of an inch away from the corner so here's the corner of the square right here so you can use like a little half inch skinny ruler if you want or you can just measure a quarter of an inch away from the corner on each side and draw a line and then i'll show you more about that when we get to the machine and sew but that's how you prep those again cut those eight inches square this is the exact same way that i prepared the backgrounds for all of the blocks in the quilt that you see on the wall that still remain you know that tutorial still remains on my blog and i will link to that in fact i'll probably link to the last um tutorial for this quilt because it's called the big finish but because of that i have all of the links for all of the blocks within that last tutorial so it's just kind of like a one stop shopping blog post where you can get all the links in that one all right so let's set this aside for a minute and let's talk supplies for a second these are the pins that i use they're magnetic so that's why they're kind of stuck in the bowl there but these are called my applique pins this is for when i'm laying out the block and of course i always use a design board that's big enough for the block so the pins the design board i use sue daily glue which i love to call sue glue i use long rulers or tape measure to measure and let's see i've got showed you my bias tape already this is the quarter inch and okay i think that's enough about supplies let's set those aside i'm going to pull pull this cutting mat in first because i want to show you something on it and um and then i'll run the bias strip through the maker but i haven't shown you how i trim up my blocks so those background squares that i told you about they are bigger so that when you sew them together you will need to trim down the block so this is what it looks like after it's already been appliqued okay but here's my 12 and a half inch treatment ruler i love these rulers and i developed them so that they have a center line going this way this way and diagonal lines and then this right here represents the quarter inch that will be the seam allowance after you trim it but after you sew it into the block within this window you'll see what that block looks like and then you know you're not cutting any parts off of your applique and they really help when you're laying out your block now i love doing backgrounds this way quite a bit or pieced backgrounds number one because they add interest to the block but number two it's very easy to lay them out and get them symmetrical when you're doing blocks like this where the design comes out from the center and so what i do to trim up is of course just grab the ruler grab you know the rotary cutter whatever's close at hand and i just line up these lines number one on the seam and then it lines up right here on these seams and it just makes it so easy that automatically centers that block see you can see by the little flowers in here all the little flower everything that's blue is the non-slip part of the ruler and so what i do is i just like to do one at a time one side at a time because see how this is dimensional so it kind of stacks up so i kind of push my ruler down on one side and you know you can put as much weight on it as you want to to stop it from slipping but this size is a pretty you know heavy ruler so it's not going to slip and then i've got one side there and then i'll just turn let's see if i can turn this mat without um knocking anything off the table but i just think it might be easier for filming there we go can you see the whole thing so i'm going to have to slide that's great okay so then i'm just going to do the same thing now normally when i'm not filming i have a little bit more room so so i don't worry about that and of course you can move your block and move your ruler that's not going to matter you already know that you've you know trim this side and this side but i just think it's just as easy to turn turn your mat no matter what size it is even if it's a bigger block like this you can see i kind of pushed on that at the end and you know slipped it off of its markings but that doesn't matter i just know i have this edge to trim these are already trimmed so i simply just lay the ruler exactly on those edges whoops you know because i'm trying to do this on camera and then i just have to line it right up on that seam and there we go all right so now this block measures 12 and a half inches square and once i sew it into the quilt of course it will finish at 12 inches now i do know how i'm going to finish this block i know this is supposed to be you know your creativity and however you want to finish it but i just kind of wanted to talk about my beginning quilt on the wall because a lot of people since i showed it in block one have you know asked me questions so i kind of wanted to bring that up again so i thought it would be a great idea to design another block that's different from the blocks that i put into this quilt but yet you know would fit into there but i do have an idea of how i'm going to finish this one and so i'll show you that at the end of the video so i will put this back on the design board and that's nice and trimmed up so that i can sew my little borders on there for my project since you want to set that over there and okay now i'm going to slide my ironing board in here so i can i'll show you how i'm just gonna put it right on top of there okay now i think that's in the screen enough with my water my pins all of that stuff background pieces all right so again this is the exact way i do it for all of my my strips now i call them in my sew-along guides for my quilts i call for either straight bias or on the bias so when i tell you a strip to cut in the quilt it will either say in parentheses on the bias or it will say straight bias and so i explained earlier straight bias means you just cut it along the width of the fabric and if i say on the bias that means it needs to be curved or bent and so you're going to cut it on the diagonal here but either way that you cut it it's run through the maker the exact same way let me grab my let's see i've got a spray bottle here okay whoops okay so the first thing i do is i do spray this okay now in this bottle right here i have half water and half mary ellen's starch best press starch i think this one's in the non-scented but you can get all kinds of fun scents and so i do use that for starch and that kind of helps hold the shape a little bit i don't like it real heavy thick starch i don't like my fabric to be real um you know real thick when i'm trying to do applique because of turning and shaping and things like that okay so once i get this wet i take my iron and i just press the end so that this point i keep that as a point because that's going to help go through that first and i like to keep that as a point and i like it to be dry because if i keep that wet it's going to be too flimsy to run through there so i just push that through and you can see in the top that you can kind of guide it if you can't get it through all the way i'll just grab some scissors let me grab a pin until i can reach that point there we go okay so since i'm right-handed i'm going to turn it this way and what i do is i just pull that through and i try to make this even see how this is coming even from the top and the instructions on this box say to do it like this so that you can see your folds at the top and you can hold on to this and pull it out as you iron i do it completely opposite i have found i mean obviously if you like to do it that way you can but for me personally i have found that if i pull it through with my folds underneath and my smooth side at the top i can iron out that crease so that's what i start doing and i just follow along with the iron and then i take this hand right here and kind of use it as my other tool keeping the fabric straight and i go slow because i want to saturate this strip with heat from the iron and of course i don't use steam once i've already got it wet and i don't want to get it wet again and get that starch out and i like vintage irons because they don't have i only use the ones that don't have the steam holes in the back i only use vintage irons i've told you why in my other episodes but i like to control what moisture and you know water and things goes on to my fabric so that's why i always use a dry iron now as i'm running this through i do not touch the tip to this metal because i'm holding this and then i've done that before like watching tv and absent-mindedly and then all of a sudden it's like oh that thing's so hot i can't touch it and then i just run it until it gets all the way through make sure that i leave the iron on there long enough to have saturated it and then i just leave it here usually to cool off now at this point you could grab some clappers and put on it to help it cool faster but that's what i do i try not to do anything now for straight i do it straight when i'm doing it on the bias i will go ahead and as i'm pulling it through i'll kind of iron it on a curve and that kind of helps with the curve once that's cool i'll go ahead and you know wrap it around here and then i have it all ready for use and so i've just cut these stems i'll tell you the length that i've cut them and things in layout but i've cut these stems according to the length that i need to let's see how i've got my notes over the sewing machine so i'll tell you then during layout what size to cut those stems all right so i'm going to clear this counter off so that i can pull the quilt off the wall and pull it under the camera and kind of talk about a few of the blocks and just show you close up you know each block and uh you know just chat about it a little bit so i'll be back in just a minute okay here we are with the quilt off the wall and onto the table so i'm going to try to show you these a little bit close up i i did this starting in june 2018 it's still on my blog if you wanted to do this but i did different b backgrounds in all of the blocks but i still do the same way that i just showed you by cutting eight inch squares and then you know piecing them in the back well i showed you the fabric i haven't shown you how to sew it yet but i will i've just had a lot of you asked to see this on my youtube channel and talk to you about it a little bit more instead of just showing a picture of it and saying yeah that's the quilt that was on my blog so here we go i know this one was from autumn love because i recognized this shape as we used it for the scarecrow hat but i turned it upside down and it's become flower pots so i used all of my shapes up into the point of autumn love because that was the my most current set of so simple shapes so when i made this quilt it's using every set that i have up until autumn love hang on just a minute let me see this let's see okay so autumn love is f so that means this uses six my first six sets and because obviously i you know put them in alphabetical order so this one's made out of autumn love and let me just start sliding this down a little bit this one i know was made for my fruit salad because of the pear shapes and the hearts this one looks pretty similar to what this this month's block is i know that this is cozy christmas because you know of this flower and because of the hearts the leaves are the same only have one leaf shape i think and cozy christmas but i added the smaller circle here and then i added a stack of circles here i think it's really fun to stack circles in these applique quilts i love the texture the applique i don't want these to lay flat and so you know piecing is supposed to lay flat but applique should have a little bit of texture to it i love how you can see that it's kind of raised up from the surface now of course that's really accentuated when you quilt behind the appliques now i've done both ways i've done you know an overall pattern and when i say me i mean julie because julie stubbs is one of my really good friends she's in my peep group so she's one of my peeps but she quilts my quilts for me for my so simple shapes and so i just you know ask her and we talk about it and ask her can you do this can you do that and she's just you know lovely she just does it for me without um you know worrying about what it's going to look like because she knows it's my quilt and so that's my advice to you you should ask your quilter to quilt it the way you want it quilted if you don't really know then that's okay if you trust your quilter tell her go ahead and do it but the one thing that i do know is when i want my appliques to pop like this especially in a traditional quilt i will ask julie to densely quilt behind the appliques and not on the appliques and then they will automatically pop up now when there's a larger piece like this i don't want it so popped up that in the middle it rounds like this so i did ask her to quilt around this circle right here so that's quilted down and you know for larger pieces like that in the center then you know we'll pick one thing so for this quilt i did all of the same stems this was for my cozy christmas collection the gingham and then one thing i did was i used riley green confetti cotton and i for all of the leaves throughout every block let me move this one down so you can look at another you've looked at that one long enough right this one's also for my autumn love because of the sunflower shapes but in every block i used a solid of riley green somewhere and i took my green aura floss and i used um two or three strands is what i usually do i know it says it on my blog but off the top of my head i'm thinking it's three strands but it may only be two and i just did this little you know running stitch all the way around the outside before i applique the piece down before i even glue basted it or anything i did that little running stitch and it just kind of added a little detail you don't have to do that i just you know just wanted to show you that sometimes it's just the little things that you change up sometimes that make each quilt unique now i did pick the same fabric let's fold it this way so i can okay how am i going to do that all right i did pick the same fabric that's kind of bowed underneath here let's we don't want to hit the camera okay maybe that's a little bit flatter that better says okay yep let's unfold that you know trying to fold a quilt into a little piece on a table is a little bit hard okay so this one see i i used an oval in the set and then cut it in half after sewing and that split and became the leaf so it's really fun to be creative with the shapes and look at it in maybe a different way so that's one of the things i did the same to make each block kind of go together is the same stems and one piece somewhere for the leaves or somewhere in each block be the riley green solid and then all the b backgrounds are different i use scrappy sashings these are cut two and a half inches by uh 12 and a half inches but then i went ahead and did the same fabric which this is one of my b basics as well these are all of my fabrics collections just most of them be basics and then just pull different colors and then i went ahead and used one of my ginghams and i believe this is in my polka dot stitches now this is in my my bake sale 2 collection gingham for the border and then i bounded in red and then i used my wide back my green baby chicks for the back but i love i love the texture of this quilt meaning not only the actual texture because of the appliques but because of all the different b backgrounds and the colors and you know the texture of each print okay i'm just going to kind of slide this down so you can see each block again this one i used four hearts from another set it's kind of similar but there's a lot more leaves okay now i'm going to fold it this way so hold please while i kind of try to make it so that you can see these blocks as i roll them down okay i hope this is in full picture so here's another block and so there's if i remember right there's 20 blocks let's see there yeah there's four across and five down so i did 20 different 12 inch finished blocks so there's that one with the fun little circles this one i remember is from my fruit salad set because of the cherries and those hearts then i've got this one right there i think that's really fun with the gam in the middle that one right there i know this one's from autumn love i recognize that because this that i used for the tulip shape right here was the corn husks for the corn on the cob and this shape under here was for the corn on the cob but i just cut it in half so that i could push it down more okay so that's half of the blocks now let me turn it this way i'll show you the other half let's get this straight okay so here's another one from fruit salad because of the strawberries okay i'm having a rough time pulling this over there we go there's another simple but fun as you can see some of these blocks are simpler than others and i think that's what makes an applique quilt fun this one is more elaborate meaning more pieces to it than this one hope i'm not sliding this too fast so you get like motion sickness but see how simple this one is and then back to that one how simple that is and so when i'm laying them out and deciding you know where to put them in the quilt i'll kind of separate the simple ones and put a little bit more you know elaborate one there in the center okay i'm going to turn this whole quilt around so i can show you the last row of blocks okay starting with that one this one was fun because i put a yellow gingham circle behind this flower and that's also a fun idea to do and then i just simply added a small circle onto stems i i could have left these stems off or and just put these circles here as an accent but i thought it was kind of fun here's another one that i've used with stars i use stars and hearts and flowers and lots of gingham and polka dots in this quilt this is another one for my fruit salad because of the apples and we've got this one that is kind of the same ideas i just showed you where i did my light yellow gingham this was from so cherry too and i put it behind this large flower and that was really fun and so and these circles i just made almost like a low volume print in there so they're so they're there and they add texture but they don't pop out at you and that was that was fun okay so i think i've shown you all of these blocks and chatted about it talked about the quilting and everything again i'll leave the link and this use eight uses a through f of my sets of so simple shapes and now let's go over to the sewing machine and i will show you how to sew this month's block okay here we are to the sewing machine and i'm sewing with miss doris today and here's the block that we're gonna make and let's talk background first so this is what the background block looks like before i've laid out the applique okay and i've pressed all of the seams open and again it's bigger i started out with eight inches squares um two of each print eight inch squares makes this whole block and what i do is let me grab these off of here again the two ones with the red cross stitches on i didn't mark but this back one i just mark exactly from the corner one quarter inch from each side okay so i'm just going to sew one so i can show you how i do it so i just put right sides together you can pin if you'd like but you know me i just don't pin very often unless i i'm really afraid that the seams not gonna meet up but and because these are gonna be trimmed down they don't have to be exact so i'm just going to sew right on the line and then i'm using my little scraps of fabric for starters and stoppers today and then i just turn around normally i'm doing you know more of these so i would just chain piece but since i'm doing one just turn it around okay there we go basically just sewing right on those lines you know let my machine do the work thanks miss doris and then i just grab some scissors you can do this obviously with a rotary cutter but it's just as easy to grab scissors doesn't have to be exact and then i just cut between those two stitched lines okay now i've got these two and they're half square triangles so then i simply bring them over here to the machine coming to the ironing board now while i'm doing this i'm just pressing these seams open i do also like to use my my seam roller here a lot when i'm pressing seams open i usually do that on a hard surface and i'll do it first before i press but this is a very helpful tool once i've done that i'll just put the clapper on there so it will cool down but i know um a lot of you are so sweet and you are really worried that i'm gonna you know set my curtains on fire with this iron but really i mean cassidy's standing right here i'm sitting right here and the iron is not as close as you may think so it looks a lot closer when we're filming but um it's the angle of the camera it's it's not that close yeah it's really far away but also when i'm sewing at my machine for longer periods of time or in other words when i'm not filming i do tie my curtains back and so i don't even have to worry about that but i know during filming it does a weird glare from the window and so i keep my curtains closed during filming so just to let you know i promise i'm not going to burn down my studio my iron's totally safe and thanks for thanks for worrying about me but it's all good all right so once these are cooled pressed then i simply lay them out in a pinwheel so you can see the pinwheel and the red and the pinwheel in the blue just use a quarter inch seam and again i just press open and that's really going to help us when we're laying out the block remember how normally when we use one fabric i have you press it in half and then in half and then this way in this way you don't have to do that you can just um when we go to layout we've got these guidelines and it's really going to be fun okay so let me throw all of these pieces back on there and we're going to get to the shapes so again i've already sewn all of these shapes in prep but i forgot there's only one flower so i'm going to go ahead and sew a flower as well now let's talk about sewing because i'm going to fast forward this a little bit so that you can't hear me i do use a regular stitch length normally but if you're worried that your stitches are too long you can always make them smaller i would not make them larger because that's really going to gather it up you don't want to you know sew very tight that it's just going to kind of gather up the fabric and interfacing you know how sometimes when you do too tight of stitches but i would definitely use a smaller stitch if you feel like it's going to be more secure on your points and things like that and so all i do is simply trace again with the pencil or something that you can see on the top and so that is up and your fabric is right side up and i simply just lay it on there and i start stitching in and i stitch around right on the line and then i sew past where i began stitching by about a half inch or so and that sets my seam so i don't have to back stitch or anything and then instead of pulling it out and cutting my threads and wasting all that thread and time i just sew right off of this and we'll be feeding the next one right in now some of you again have been asking me about circles and sewing on them i literally just go as slow as i need to it always looks fast here because i'm speeding it up for you because it's kind of boring just to watch one little stitch at a time just me and miss doris but um i do slow it down on the circles and i do kind of i've got to the point where i just use one hand because it's easier for me to see my line just pivoting but you don't have to just use one hand i've had people ask me that like is there a trick that you're using one hand is that easier for me for some reason it just is sometimes um and i just keep feeding them through i go as slow as i need to this one's going to take me longer because it's got you know those curves that i need to go in but you want to make sure that you sew right into those intersections and not away from them try to sew on the line as much as you can so that's why it's important that you're able to see the line and i i do have my seems so easy guide on here just because i keep it on here but i don't it's not necessary for this part of the sewing you know i just use it for quarter inch seams and um easy corner triangles which i'm not doing either of right now but i'm just i'm not going to take the time to take it off because it's just as easy on there so that's what i'm going to do just sew all of these right on the line and feed them through one at a time okay ready set sew [Music] so here we are with all of these sewn right on the line i need to clip these apart right here and um one thing that i've mentioned several times before on my other videos but um that i forgot to mention is that sometimes if you stray off the line just a little bit can you see that i couldn't see very well because i couldn't lean in because i was afraid my head would cover up the camera but i just kept it going as smooth as i possibly could but i'm looking at that now going you know what i really should re-sew that so before i start to trim it's really easy that if you're off but it's on the outside it that's not going to matter because you can just go ahead and resell those shapes so you may want to check your shapes right before you start to trim them this time i'll lean in a little bit more and hopefully i won't block your view i think the shape would have turned out okay but because there are four matching ones i just wanted to make sure it was the same size circle because that would bother me so that's what i do there and then um i'll just go ahead and sew on this again and then one more thing that i thought about when i was sewing that i didn't mention in this video but i have several times before is i like to use a foot um this is the foot that comes with the featherweight i call them i've always called them open toe i don't know what they're called but whatever kind of foot that you have that you can actually see where your needle goes into the fabric so that it's not hidden from the foot whatever that is on your machine i highly recommend that because it's really important you don't want to just guess where your line is so all right so now what i do with these pieces is i just simply grab my scissors and i trim around them and i always say an approximate quarter inch but i usually do it you know smaller or way smaller than quarter inch but that's bigger than an eighth of an inch too so in between those two and i just go ahead and trim these all right so now i'm all trimmed and now the next step is always i separate the pieces that need to be clipped before i turn them circles never have to be clipped they're outer curves these are the two pieces in this block that need to be clipped both of these pieces have cleavage areas this is what a cleavage area is when it goes down in like that it only needs one clip so i just take my little scissors i like to use little scissors for this because big ones you can't really see you know where the blades are going to end and i just do one clip you see that to the thread all the way to the thread but not past it now another thing when you clip this if you happen to whoops i clipped through the thread no problem before you turn it just run it through your machine a few times and strengthen that before you turn it and that won't be a problem so one clip now that will lie flat and then same thing for this just one into each little little cleavage there we go okay so the next thing i do is i put my little x in the interfacing knot the fabric of course i want to keep the fabric away from that so i'll pull them apart which is pretty easy on the you know pieces that are as big as this and so i'll just go ahead and do a little cut first on all of them that's what i do with the big pieces sometimes small pieces as well let me push her out of the way for a minute or my other option is a seam ripper i'll just put the tip of it in there make sure by feeling it that it's not there and i'll just start you know just kind of a little um area so that i can get the tip of my scissors in there and that one went all the way through the fabric so i pulled it back out there because i don't want to go through all this and then poke a hole with my seam ripper so however you feel the safest to do you can do it on a surface as well just get it started but you still have to pick it up and fill on the other side so i usually just do it in my hand okay so what i'm going to do for this is i'm going to then just cut an x and i'm going to show you how to shape one circle i'll show you how to shape this one that i re-sewed all the circles are the same obviously so i'm going to shape a leaf we'll talk about that so you can see how i shape all circles are going to be the same so i'm not going to worry about that the heart with the heart i can kind of do it like a little slanted x whoops and these don't have to be real big they just have to be big enough to turn and then i'll shape this flower so what i do is okay let me roll roll this truck out of the way what i do is i just go ahead and turn it pushing it out with my fingers now obviously these larger pieces are easiest and then i just kind of shape it as much as i can with my fingers pushing out gently i know it's hard to see on the camera how you know how gentle i'm actually being but i am i'm not really pushing real hard i'm just kind of letting it do its thing and just guiding it now that's you can get it looking you know pretty good like that when they're bigger shapes but you can see there's flat parts and things like that i would like it to you know shape out exactly where i sewed it so this is where this little handy dandy tool you know we're only as good as our tools and this is a great tool i've loved this from day one this is the clover point-to-point turner i love how it feels in my hand and i always turn it this way with the interfacing towards me and i'm not pushing on the interfacing i'm behind that interfacing seam and i'm just pushing on the cotton fabric and i'm just kind of smoothing and pushing at the same time and that's what's going to give it a nice curve now this is why i don't like to have a real heavily starched fabric when i'm doing applique for piecing you know that would work great but for this i don't really like to to do that because i want my cotton to have give to it and once you put a lot of starch into your cotton that's the point of it is you know making that give go away out of your cotton so that it won't stretch and things like that but i actually want this to have a little bit of give and so when i go like this let me see if i can that's kind of what it looks like on the edge see as i'm going along and that cotton has a memory so once i do that then a lot of times i'll just take my shoe you know my thumb and my finger and push on it and that's basically gonna stay exactly how i shaved it out so i hope that helps and i do like to push it out enough barely so i can see that thread um you know from the seam that i sewed or you know miss dora sewed let's say when i say me i really mean this doris right now that one looks a little bit flat to me so before i take it over to the iron or use the seam roller i'm just gonna kind of push that out now i know a lot of you get a little bit nervous about this part and pressing them out but i'm here to kind of hopefully make your fears go away now remember if you shape it out the best that you can you can only shape it out so much right and um remember that once you roll it and then press it let's say i left my roller over here okay so i just go ahead and i like to kind of set the seams before i apply that heat and make it flat remember that when you put it on here and have applique or machine applique you can really cover a lot of mistakes that you think are maybe not so smooth by just manipulating with needle and thread you know by hand applique you can like push that point in and do your hand applique so it's smoother and the same with machine um you know your little zigzag or your buttonhole stitch or whatever you want to use around the edges you're going to cover up those imperfections so remember this is just one step do the best you can and don't worry you know if you think it's not gonna be perfect that's you know it's it's all gonna be perfect because it's your block and you had fun doing it if you're not having fun doing it then you know what's the point so don't worry too much about perfection because there really is no such thing you just want to make a cute little flower shape out of some interfacing and some fabric that's all you're trying to do okay so there's the flower the heart i kind of do the same way i'll just push out those basic pieces and then we'll get this as close to the heart shape as we can and then remember we're going to have fun and say look at that cute little heart and not worry that it's you're doing something wrong or your quilt's not going to look good or you know something like that that's just that's no that's no fun just um you know visit with your friends while you sew and and uh or you know listen to a book or watch tv or music and just relax and have fun with it i forgot to roll that but you know there we've got the heart now this leaf shape is very if there's they're not very pointy so you don't have to worry about you know pushing out points or anything like that and so i'm just very gentle with that now when you are doing curves you you do want to be extra gentle because that is on the bias and so your threads are on the bias and so it's easy to poke those out so most of the time when i've made a mistake and poked something you know poked poked this out through the seam it's usually on a curve not on a point as you may think because i'm more careful on points but sometimes in curves you know you're just kind of going along oh forgot to roll again sorry sis made you take the camera the wrong direction and again i do use my um clampers too at this point okay circle now hopefully we won't poke out of this because look i've i've sewn over that twice just to get it the right size and you know i've never really done that on purpose before but now that i'm thinking about it if you're worried about your circles and they're poking out and you feel like your fabric isn't stable i mean this is this is good quality fabric but if you happen to be using something that you feel is too thin or i don't know something like that maybe you could just sew around the seam twice i've never done that before but it's going to take twice as long and twice as much thread but that means it's going to be twice as strong as well so you could try that if you're doing something very you know intricate or very curvy that you're worried about now see i think that shaped out pretty good and again okay okay so i have those there to cool but i did want to show you when i was sewing these yesterday in prep i believe it was this one and i didn't fix it yet because i wanted to show you and i know i've said this before but remember the part where i said if you poke something out see i had poked that came out and so what i do is instead of resewing this whole thing i know that i'm going to be putting thread around the edges and afflicating again either by machine or by hand i take the sew glue put it on here a little bit and just fold it fold those pieces back and that's still nice and secure meaning it's not going to fray anymore i you know obviously didn't apply the glue but that will stick there and then that's not a problem so there are you know there are ways to fix things and i guess um during this tutorial i just kind of my point i want to make is just to have fun with it don't worry about this is applique you're just shaping these shapes again just try to take a deep breath if you're worried about it and just say i'm just trying to make a shape with a piece of fabric and a piece of interfacing and it's all going to work out great all right so we're going to go over there to back to the work table and set this up but i did want to show you i told you i'd show you later so maybe i'll hurry and sew this up um and show you what i'm going to do with this block so i've got this all trimmed up this is the one it was previously done and i cut so this is 12 inches and so i cut these three and a half inch squares to go in the corners so i cut four three and a half inch squares and then i cut four little outer borders i went through my red bins and thought this is for my farm girl vintage collection and it had all the colors in it so i thought that would be great so these are three and a half by 12 and a half because the block is 12 and a half right now and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to sew this together that will finish at 18 inches let me put that up there and i'm going to make this into another pillow i know i'm always making pillows for my patio but that's why i used these colors in this pattern because it's summertime and this looks like a summertime pillow to me so i'm going to hurry and sew these together real quick before we set up the block and i'll meet you back over there all right so look here i sold the borders on this for my pillow now this finishes of 18 inches and i am in love with this i think this is so cute it looks very summer i love the colors that i chose and obviously you know these are some of my favorite colors because i use them all the time but i'm even thinking and i always say this but look how cute this would be for a quilt just doing the same block over and over again you could do four of these blocks and use these for the sashings and the cornerstones and i'll probably bind the pillow and something in one of my denim colors that'd be really fun that'd be fun for the quilt if you did it four blocks and did it that would be square and it would be the cutest table topper or you could do like three blocks across and do this do the sashings and stuff and make it a fun table runner it's just a fun very versatile block to finish in traditional ways so i'm glad i took the time to sew that together real quick and so that i could show you what that looks like all right now let's talk about this whole thing okay cass i'll just have you move it into the screen if it's not and so now here we've got the stems all ready to go and cut so i have four three and a half inch long stems and i have four two inch long stems all right and i've got my background here now the first thing i'm going to do is center my flower now there's two ways that you can do this you could put the curve on the lines or you could do the cleavage on the lines which is how what i'm going to do now this is what i'm talking about loving these backgrounds meaning i just line up on the inside right there and that literally is all i have to do i'll pull my pins over here and i'll probably just stick you know three or four pins in i don't want them all the way to the edge so that i can glue but i do want to have room for my circles now the one thing i didn't prep yet for you i just thought i'd show you instead of taking shortcuts how i do this whole block when i lay out so i want to center that this one's not too hard to center because it's so close to the same size so that's pretty easy to eyeball but i always have my little handy dandy short ruler here and it is should measure quarter of an inch all the way around okay and then you can see how much of this sue glue that i put on here i just dot all the way around that circle now i'm going to center this here and this should measure quarter inch all the way around as well these three circles that's how they kind of nest and then if i do it that way then i can turn it over go ahead and put glue this glue is coming out kind of fast today so those are bigger dots that i normally use but that's okay it's not a big deal and then i will place these in the middle and this is where i want to measure so what i'm going to do is that's one inch from here to here and i'm going to measure one inch over here to make sure that's what it needs to be and it does it just needs to and so that's what i do now i know it needs to come this way and cash you can probably tell from the top of the camera if it's yeah it's pretty good it looks like it still needs to come down just a little bit now again if you um and that means it's going to be one inch you know to every cleavage area away if you get to this point and you pin this down i'm going to go ahead and move these pins into the circle because the circle has all the circles have glue on them and now that leaves that loose so that it's not going anywhere but now i can put the stems under there but what i was going to say is if you see that this is off a little bit again i love this glue because it is repositionable meaning you can gently just pull it off and re-center it and re-glue it again it's not going to hurt the fabric you just you know just pull it off a little at a time and it comes off very easily and doesn't tear anything so that's that's the first step i do is get the center going on these blocks now these longer stems are the ones that go in the corner so what i do there is i'm gonna i'm gonna glue it all down the center of this line and just tucked under by a quarter of an inch and how i do that is i set it to the side so i know how long of glue that i need to use and i'll just start under here and this i really try to do a very thin line and i just stop right there and then i move it over and i know this stem is exactly where it needs to go because it's right down the center of that seam you can unfold that so you can see it's down the center and then i'm just going to move around and do the same thing real quick and then i'm going to do the same thing with these so i think i'll have calf speed up the camera here but i'm just going to be doing the same thing all the way around all right so now i've got all those glued down and i'm going to go ahead and lift these up because i don't need to tuck anything else underneath the flower and i'm just going to go around and put a few dots there and again i i don't need too much glue i try not to do it too excessively and then once i've glued that then i'm going to move the pins out so that they will glue into place i usually like to put like a pin in each petal or each intersection or something just so that it stays down and you know so that the glue and this fabric and the interfacing all meet together okay so now i'm gonna let those be where they are and um the next thing i'm gonna do is i can either do all four hearts or the flowers so i'll probably just grab the hearts and what i'm going to do is i take this and measure how long it's going to be from this concave cleavage part to this cleavage part okay so let me i already figured this out so i'm just going to glue it i mean i'm going to measure this so that looks like it is two and three quarters so i'm going to put my ruler here and move this down i almost had it just right to two and three quarters and the point of the hearts there so from here to here is two and three quarters and if i put this on this seam and this point down the center of that stem there's just no way it can you know be in the wrong place so for right now i'm just going to put three pins in there and go ahead and do the same thing so i'm just gonna set that there wait did i say two and three quarters yes okay i'm like what if i do this wrong now okay two and three quarters and if you wanted to you could always just measure from here to here but sometimes your hearts you know maybe be shaped a little bit different so i like to measure the whole length so that's why i'm going with the two and three quarters inch measurement okay three pins i hope it's okay with all y'all that i just um i'm showing you this whole block instead of doing it you know really quickly i just do shortcuts sometimes and but this one because it's symmetrical meaning i wanted to show you how i do all of that when they're symmetrical but you know most of the time i'll do shortcuts because it's really repetitive and we all like shortcuts but i just felt like i needed to be a little bit more detailed with this block so i hope that's okay it's always better to have too much instruction i guess than not enough right so i know this is going to be a long video so i hope you're not getting too tired of the sound of my voice but okay so there's the hearts they're all ready to glue now i'm going to do the same thing with the flower so i'm going to take that and i know that from the end here and to i'm not going to do to the tip of here i'm going to do it differently i'm going to do from here to the bottom of the flower and so that's exactly two and a half inches from here to here okay so that's going to be easy i'm just going to lay my ruler right there bring that set that on the two and a half now this one you kind of have to eyeball going i'm just i've just moved over and stood this way so that i know that i have my circle evenly on both halves i hope that made perfect sense and so i like to use you know you can obviously use any ruler but i do like to use you know this seems to be my handy dandy one sometimes i use my square ones but i like to use small ones so that you can get into these places in between the pins and things that you already have so these i'm just going to stick a couple of pins in to hold them in place two and a half from there eyeball it so it's halfway i'm really trying to take my time so that i get this correct and i'm not um trying to rush through it too much and then also you can see the stem how much tucks under there i like to have a longer stem than necessary because there's nothing worse than a shorter stem because you can always trim it down but i think that's just going to tuck under there fine i don't need to trim it down you can always trim it down but it's pretty hard to add onto a stem so okay so there those are ready and then i'm going to go ahead and do these smaller yellow circles and what i'm going to measure there is from the bottom of this to the top of this yellow circle is two and a quarter so i know that this circle is going to stick up a quarter because this is a two inch circle this finishes at two inches so i'm just gonna grab this remove this pin maybe i should have put them on the side that would have been smarter see okay if i put the pins on the sides you see that then i'm going to kind of put that up to what i think is about a quarter of an inch lay that down and yeah that's exactly two and a quarter make sure it's centered and then just stick a pin in there go ahead and do the same thing all the way around this is that one that i needed to fix so i didn't do that yet so here i go to that point so i'm just putting a little glue on there folding it over kind of rolling it and letting it dry onto that interfacing and there i go okay same thing there so ask me how i know how to do all these fixes right because again there's no such thing as perfect sometimes we make mistakes if we even want to call them mistakes i don't know if they're really mistakes or if it's just the process you know of making things that's just how it is now i'm going to tuck this under where i fixed it and stick a pin there so that it dries nice and under and i'm going to continue on okay remember to put your pins on the sides of your circles and not on the ends like i did because that's going to save time okay that's going to come down a little bit okay one more to go and then we can add our leaves and the leaves are always the easiest i think okay it's a little bit hard for me to see on this angle so there we go i hope you didn't get the top of my head in there trying to reach over all right now those are all ready to glue down and now with the leaves you kind of just basically you can eyeball this because it's such a tight little space in there meaning what i kind of like to do is pick a point like i kind of like this to be about a quarter of an inch right here and about a quarter of an inch there and then i'll just stick two pins in it so i'll bring this down to where this curve is about a quarter of an inch about a quarter of an inch there so it's basically about the same distance now if you wanted to you could say okay i want my leaves up higher you know closer to my flowers like this and you can totally do that but i kind of like how they looked down tucked in and let that wide part of that heart you know kind of shine a little bit and so it's not doesn't seem so crowded and you know that's just my eye but remember you're the boss of your own quilt you're the boss of your own applique block so you can basically lay out your block as long as you want i mean however you want as long as it doesn't go past 12 inches square now i don't use the tape measure as much you know for this i'm going to put my lid on my glue don't use the tape measure as much for this but i when i'm doing symmetrical like this because i'm doing the measurements coming out but um you know i'll measure it at the end just to make sure and you can bet i'll put my 12 and a half inch ruler on there just to make sure that i didn't miss something especially you know get distracted when i'm talking to you or something like that or you know somebody came to the door or oh i've got an extra leaf okay so again i'm all ready to glue but before i glue i'll put this down center i realize i've got my pins there but i can still see that that's not going to be past 12 and a half and i do know that from the top of this heart to the top of that heart is 11 inches and so from the top of that heart to the top of that heart is 11 inches as well and so then you can just check your measurements this way this looks like it's for almost 14 and a half and this is the same thing it looks like it's a little bit shorter on this one so you know you can kind of tip it and look and say okay maybe it's this yellow square that i didn't i mean circle that didn't bring out quite enough okay and then all i do is i just glue them all down lift them up leave my pins in and again i either hand applique or machine applique um i will link to that tutorial where i show you how i do either one and there's the block set up there's the pillow again and uh let's see i will be back next week with it's my turn to do my tutorial in the riley blake block challenge and so that will also be part of my sawyer stash series so i'll be back for another episode next friday in my sew your stash series and then in july i've got a lot of things that i've been meaning to film that just haven't had time to film in july i've got that on the schedule one of them is i'm going to do floss tube i'm going to do my episode on all of my featherweights i'm going to bring out all my featherweights and put them here on the counter and just show you what they look like and you know talk to to you about featherweights and why i love them a little bit but mainly it's going to be a show-and-tell on my featherweights and things that i do i'm also going to pull out my chunky thread and do another crochet tutorial i'm going to show you how to make a little flower for the top of your sewing machine under your spool for out of my chunky thread and of course i'll be doing number five and the remix block i'll have a whole other block design for you and so hope you um stay tuned to my channel and i so appreciate you you know tuning in and watching me and sewing with me i really do honestly feel like you're just here in my sewing room chatting away with me as we're sewing and having a great time so thanks again and i'll chat with you later

Channel: Lori Holt

Views: 51,147

Rating: 4.9498005 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: dofxjnRrwjk

Length: 79min 32sec (4772 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021