Sew Your Stash Series #1 - 16" Scrappy Crossroads Quilt Block Tutorial

[Music] today I'll be showing you inside my closet where I keep my scrappy fabric stash in these larger baskets and keep fabrics separated according to color and in these smaller baskets on the top shelf is where I keep my strips that I've cut into various sizes the strip sizes that I cut are one and a half two and a half three and a half five and seven inches and I keep my scrappy squares inside my aqua cupboard and each container has different size squares now these squares are cut from the strips from the small baskets in my closet or from leftovers like when I'm doing an easy corner triangles in today's tutorial we're going to be using two and a half inch squares so this is what the inside of my two-and-a-half inch strips baskets look like they're the two that are on the left here I pretty much try to keep them organized by color and that way for example if I am just looking for greens I know that all the greens are in this stack and I don't have to go through everything now cutting two-and-a-half inch squares from this basket is super easy there are already two and a half inches tall all I need to do is take my two and a half inch square ruler and go ahead and sub-cut when my bin for two and a half inch squares gets low then I go ahead and just take a few minutes and cut off some squares of these strips and put in the bin this way I have an endless amount of two and a half inch scrappy squares and I love it I really enjoy sewing for my stash and I've made so many beautiful scrappy quilts this way now in this other bin I keep my background strips that are 2 and 1/2 inch and my two and a half inch squares but we won't be needing that today what we'll be using today from these prints are just two and a half inch squares I also want to show you inside my baskets of 5 inch wide strips now I keep these strips separated by color as well and because they're five inches tall you can easily cut two and a half inch strips by cutting two at a time okay let me show you the block that we'll be making let's get started this is my scrappy crossroads block here on the design board I've been teaching this block for many years in my scrappy workshops I've done tutorials on my blog several times and even on Instagram and today I want to show you how to make it on my new youtube channel it's one of my very favorite go-to scrappy happy blocks okay let's talk about the squares I take squares from my bin and put them in a smaller container to keep by my machine so that I can sew them together in between projects or all at once whatever time I have and when the smaller container gets empty I just refill it now I always have a ten inch design board by my machine would I keep my projects on for this block I need four patches that end up measuring four and a half inches square for the four patches I do press my seams open but you could press yours to one side or the other it doesn't matter remember you're the boss of your own quilt so you can do it your favorite way now you'll also need to choose a solid fabric for your blocks and for your quilt you'll need to cut them four and a half inches square and on each square you're going to be sewing an easy corner triangle using the two and a half inch squares on opposite corners now I've made this quilt so many times that I've used so many different solids and they're all beautiful for this quilt I've chose to use Riley Blake's natural linen it's got a really beautiful weave and I really love piecing with it it's not too thick and it's not too thin okay so now for each scrappy crossroads block you're going to need eight four patches and eight of the four and a half inch squares with the EZ corner triangles when cutting your solid fabric you can get eight four and a half inch squares out of one width of fabric so an eighth of a yard makes one block my scrappy crossroads block is made up of four segments all four segments are the same they're just turn so that you have the design going in a diamond shape see how the linen forms a diamond here that's what you want in your block [Music] so I begin by just sewing two two-and-a-half inch squares together and of course I use an accurate quarter inch seam allowance I like to chain piece mine so that I'm not wasting thread I [Music] like to press my seams open and I use my roller here to roll it first and then I just take it over to the ironing board and give it a quick press by the way under my ironing board here is where I keep my scrappy projects while they're in progress okay so I just continue making two patches and then I go ahead and sew two of them together so that they become a four patch so let's chat for a minute about pinning sometimes I don't pin at all but other times if I have seams that I'm worried that may not line up then I'll use my double pins I love these because they're thin and you can just pin them and they go on each side of the seam so there's no room for slipping you can sew over them and it's not a problem when I use the double pins my seams line up perfectly every time I really like to press my seams open because I feel like the blocks life ladder and therefore they're more accurate I use my ruler on a hard surface just give it a quick roll and then I give it a quick press and this really makes a difference in my blocks okay now we've made the four patches let's go on to making the EZ corner triangles you need one four and a half inch square of solid or in this case linen and carefully line up those edges evenly on the bottom corner you're going to be stitching from corner to corner of the two and a half inch square you'll need to mark your line with the pencil or use a seam so easy guide like I do and you can just sew from corner to corner by following that center line on the guide all you need to do is line up your corner on that line and it works every time [Music] so first I add one square and then I go around to the opposite corner and at the other square I like to clothesline stitch these as well not only to save thread but also to save time okay so when you've got two squares sewn on each side of the solid or the linen then you can go ahead and trim with some larger scissors and just use an approximate quarter inch seam allowance it doesn't really matter at this point they're already sewn on now as far as pressing goals for these I actually do not press these open I like to just take them and press towards the triangle I just make sure that it's open all of the way so I don't have any folded seams in there sometimes I will press my easy corner triangles open but for this block I just don't really think it's necessary I think it goes together with a four patch perfectly and they still lie flat okay so let's go ahead and lay out a segment on one of my small design boards I need two of these and I need two of the four patches this is the direction that you want to lay them in so when I'm laying these segments out on my design board I try to pick sections that don't have the same color of fabric touching so I'll just kind of go through an audition different pieces until I like what I see then before I sew these four pieces together I make sure that my background is running in the same direction and that's why it really helps to use a design board I've used them for years and I just can't sew without them now again here you can choose to pin or not to pin [Music] [Music] now I clothesline these segments together as well but when I run out of segments I just go ahead and sew a couple more squares together I'm always sewing squares or rectangles together in between my clothes line sewing I do this with every project that I'm making and then I end up making them into either a table runner or a quilt or sometimes even just a pillow I call these projects my bonus quilts or bonus projects and I've made so many over the years and it's really a lot of fun and I always use my stash now today I'm showing you how to sew my scrappy crossroads block but this video is only first in a series that I'm calling to sell your stash series throughout the series I'm going to be filming even more blocks that I like to make using my scrappy stash for some of them I'll continue to use the two and a half and five inch strip baskets or I'll move on to my three and a half by seven and even my one and a half I'll be talking more about my scrappy stash during the series how I shopped for fabric how I cut it up into strips and why I cut it into strips and why I store my fabric this way I'll also be talking about how I cut out the leftovers from each project what size I cut them into to add to my baskets okay so while we were chatting I got one segment completed and I'm so happy that all the points matched up I also press these seams open and I make sure that when I'm rolling that I go over where the seams match up and then just a quick press with the iron finishes it up perfectly okay so here we have one segment complete and you just need three more for a block four segments on the large design board here I have four laid out and all I need to do is sew them together and I press those seams open as well so I place these over on my design wall and I wanted you to see what the blocks look like when you put them together these are not sewn together yet but this is what they look like look how they form that secondary pattern of an X with the linen I really love how it looks my scrappy crossroads block finishes at 16 inches and each segment should measure eight and a half inches unfinished I'll show you my quilt when it's all quilted I'll chat with you next time

Channel: Lori Holt

Views: 335,713

Rating: 4.9605398 out of 5

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Id: JkU-JUs5vAA

Length: 11min 32sec (692 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020