Sew Your Stash Series #15 - Quick Broken Dishes Block

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well hello again and welcome back to my sewing room today is number 15 in the sew your stash series now we're going to be talking about cute little scrappy things today and my goal for this is to teach you in this video or show you in this video that it really is worth it to save your small scraps because you can really make some beautiful things so remember a couple weeks ago this is my quick dash block and i showed you that this was the last step that we did we did these easy corner triangles and then i have this little pyrex container that i've been saving these trimmings off of and i showed you because these were three and a half inch squares you can cut one and a half inch squares from these and that's what these leftovers are and i love that because you have a background and a square and i just cut them at the same time and then i have a background and a print that are paired up and i can use them for leftovers which is perfect for this now sometimes i will just take these and sew a seam even before i trim it like i'll sew it a half inch away from here trim it apart and then i can trim these up and i've showed you that before in another one of my sew your stash series how you can do that usually when i make half square triangles out of my leftovers is for a specific project that i know exactly what it's going in because with half square triangles you really kind of have to know what you're doing with them even if it's just as simple as sewing the same sizes together but i find you know i've just i've been doing this for years and years and so i have just found that it's much easier for me just to trim squares because they're more usable for me they're so much more versatile they can go you know in anything and i just have my square bins you saw my one and a half inch size square bin and my two and a half inch size square bin in the beginning of this video and i just love to have all different sizes of squares and then have them already cut just for blocks like this this whole thing right here i have i mean i can make that into a pillow but i'm going to be making another doll quilt out of this or i could just keep going and making a table runner but it looks very very intricate and tiny but i want to show you that um this block is made the same way as this block by adding the easy corner triangles last so it's really going to be quick so i'm calling this block my quick broken dishes block to kind of pair it up with my quick quick dash block so that you know you understand that that's how i construct those there's so many different ways to construct small blocks and you know that's another reason that i'm doing this series not only to explain how i save and shop for and make my you know strip baskets from scraps but how i use them and how i use different sizes so if you've been following along with me here on my channel on this series you understand that i've been showing you different blocks on how you can make with different sizes of the strip baskets that i keep now i've been sewing out of these strip baskets for a long time here's my books over here and i wanted to i brought these over here because i wanted to show you this is my first book called quilty fun and i don't even let's see i i can't remember how many how many years ago i did this but i just wanted to show you that this whole entire book is sewn for my uh strappy script baskets i mean my script my scrappy strip baskets that's you know say that three times but so this is the cover quilt but i have many more quilts in here and every quilt so you can kind of see the pictures at the end here is literally done with my strip baskets and so it's amazing what you can do with scraps yeah there's another one of my featherweights it's pink i'll have to show you that one another time but anyway so so this is one of my books that i did with completely my strip basket this is my second book great granny squared this happens to be one that i used my vintage happy collection and so this is made out of one entire collection this book but i do design my collections to make them look like they came out of my scrappy baskets does that make sense that's why i have such a variety of colors my happy colors in my collection so that they all go together so this is one that i did with olive with one collection this is my uh number one farm girl vintage book my first one and the cover quilt and all of the quilts in here which are a lot here's a lot of them stacked up here are um completely sewn from here i'll turn to the back that's usually where we have more pictures um let me see if i can open it better it's completely sewn all of these projects are sewn out of those baskets so if you need a refresher on how and why i use those baskets then just go to the tutorial here in this channel the introductory tutorial of this series so okay so that so that's my book all out of scraps the next book i did was spelling bee and this is another one that is completely out of scraps just out of my basket so this is a big book so i have these are my flash cards that i did all the alphabets in so i can literally spell anything out but look at all of these projects in here this is full of 6 and 12 inch blocks and this is full of 6 and 12 inch blocks and then my next book i did after that is 6 and 12 inch blocks this is all out of my cozy christmas fabric but again i've designed it to make it look like you know it's all my same happy colors and it's you know vintage christmas style i didn't realize how hard it was to hold up this book with just one hand but anyway so it's all still my happy colors this is christmas print so the entire book is sewn with this but you wouldn't have to you know you could throw some christmas prints in and then just keep the same happy colors this is my farm girl vintage 2 book we'll be talking a lot about this one in this video today this one is sewn completely out of my farm girl vintage fabric collection now all my fabric collections are produced by riley blake here's a few pictures in the back of just some of the my word i'm failing with holding this up with one hand these books are like this is over 200 pages there's a lot of stuff in here so i wanted to get to the pictures i have lots and lots of different quilts this one's 6 and 12 inch sizes so that you can use the different settings in here and different settings in here and you can mix and match them you know per books now for my newest fabric collections my latest ones i've been doing these smaller books like these booklets this is my quilter's cottage and this is my prim and proper so this is done out of my vintage happy 2 fabric this one's done out of my prim fabric but i really wanted to show you okay let's get these heavy books out of the way let me set these back in here so in the introduction of the video you saw a lot of small quilts made with very small pieces on my design wall and so that's what i'm going to talk about here's the doll quilts right here here's the picture in here this section in here i have doll quilts and pillows the small doll quilt the small alternate block doll quilt a medium doll quilt large doll quilt and doll pillows and it all starts on page 187 so let me turn there and i just kind of wanted to explain to you that that's my barn stars that i really should have put bookmarks in this one but last time i tried to do that it didn't really help okay here we go so here's the doll quilts and pillows so because i have six and 12 inch size blocks these are actually this this is would be a six inch block or a 12 inch block but if i sewed this in six inch size that means each of these segments end up being three inches finished all of these little ones are three inches finished and so that's what i made the doll quilts from these right here and these are the ones that you see you know that you saw hanging on the wall there and i actually pulled them out here let me put that back here so i can show you and i'll talk to you about this in a minute so that's what i've got going on here if you're wondering why i'm gabbing and chatting you up so much about my my book i wanted to show you that i do have some small ones made up that i can show you an example of of beautiful and fun things that you can make with small scraps um otherwise you know if you'd like to you can just toss them but i like to keep them and make beautiful things so this all of these right here are from my book and so all of these blocks right here these individual ones are three inch size now in the book this is it comes as four blocks and that's the six inch block but that's how you get the segments same thing here i just put sashings and cornerstones around that one same thing here my house is upside down so you can't really see but same thing here these are all one and a half inch squares cut there's my cross stitch block there now i also brought this p piece of flannel here to show you that when i am doing doll quilts or mini quilts so these can be doll quilts or they can just be mini quilts for your wall i've hung many quilts on my wall for several years and these have been hanging in my hallway for quite a while so i just use flannel for instead of batting even if it's thin batting i just find it's a little too thick for a doll quilt especially if you got you know a little one trying to wrap up a doll in a quilt it kind of ends up looking like a burrito if you can if you can't bend the quilt so i just use flannel i use white flannel and this is all pre-shrunk and i just pre-shrink it and then i just use it as the batting so that's what's in here and it's also if you're hand quilting easier to needle and these these are done with the sashico machine so it looks like hand quilting but anyway so that's those are those doll quilts i'm going to be adding another one here by just doing a few more rows and i started making this a couple weeks ago when i wanted to show you what i was going to do with these leftovers so i still have some here but i have some sitting out here on this little design board and so this is the stages that they're in so i have all you have to do is have the same size square so really you can make this block any size that you want just all the squares have to be the same size today i'm going to show you one and a half square sizes and two and a half inch square sizes because it's kind of all about those smaller pieces and using up those leftovers that you thought why am i saving this small piece well here's why so you just need two that match this is the actual broken dishes block this is one broken dishes block right now it measures two and a half inches square when you sew it into your project it'll finish it too so that's what it looks like but this is how i do it i do it in the same method that i showed you meaning i add my easy corner triangles afterwards so if i didn't do it in this method i doubt very much i would be making one and a half inch half square triangles and then sewing four of them together so all i do is i'm taking a you know four patch i'm sewing a four patch i'm pressing it open especially because these blocks are so small i want this part pressed open when i get to this part adding the corners i do not press open i press towards the outside and that seems to be just fine but anyway this is what i do i stack up sets of two sets of two backgrounds okay and then i just kind of mix and match now i know that i've showed you that when i do these tutorials i'm just sewing with a scrap in between but this is normally what i call my bonus sewing that i do with you know when i do it when i start and when i stop in between my chain piecing these are the kind of things that i sew so i'm sewing them at the same time so what i'm going to do is show you how to sew the two inch size and then i'll be sewing some of these in between my chain piecing so that i can explain exactly what i mean by that by in between i'm sewing different segments for a completely other quilt but first before i get set up to sew i grabbed some pictures off my computer and made a little slideshow for you of these quilts during the photo shoot for the book plus pictures that i took during the farm girl vintage two so along that we had um when the book came out um a couple years ago so um i'll let you enjoy the slideshow and i'll be right back [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so here i am set up with miss dolly and i've got my seems so easy guide on here i'm going to be using this line right here for my quarter inch seam and i'm going to be using this center line right here for when i do my easy corner triangles so the first setting i wanted to talk to you about was you know i just have two different ideas these blocks can go so many different ways you can just sew them together you can put sashing in between them with corner stones but for the doll quilts i really like to just grab another alternate square and do that and so i just grab my two and a half inch scrappy square bin and so these are two and a half inch squares and i just sew them every other one and just keep going down now you could make less rows or less blocks across depending on what doll bed you have or if it's like a barbie bed or a smaller one that's what i love about sewing with these scraps you can really do whatever you want another idea that you can do with this that i think would be awesome is to make a sewing machine mat see this is just simply out of squares and i've you know had this forever so i could just keep going with this and make it into a doll quilt but that doesn't mean i can't double it as a sewing machine mat as well so maybe i'll do that maybe when i finish this up i'll switch it out and put it here and all you have to do is bind it just like you would any other quilt and i just i just think it's so fun and rewarding to make something beautiful out of just you know small scraps that you have saved or otherwise would have thrown out because you thought they were too small to use so that's the first setting and of course you can do this with the two and a half inch blocks too i mean the four and a half inch using two and a half inch squares but what i um i'm doing with those and i'm sure you saw these in the opening video is this is the setting that i'm doing for those so these are some of the few of the blocks that i have finished using two and a half inch square so again here's the blocks this is the actual traditional broken dishes block and this is what it looks like in one inch squares and two and a half inch squares so you could do the same thing and you know do a four and a half inch square to alternate just like i showed you with that first little quilt or you can set them like this which i think is really a fun setting as well so let me put those down there and i'm just going to quick so you show you how to sew these two blocks so basically i did a shortcut meaning i here here i have my two two and a half inch squares that match up in prints as well as the same size and backgrounds so literally you could make this block using any size squares you could if you have a bunch of two inch squares you could make this block they just all have to measure the same size to start out with so what i do is i make them into a four patch and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to add these on to the white so you're always going to add the print onto the white and then i'm going to take a background and add on the other side so let me throw those there so i'm just going to put right sides together line up the corners start right here sewing in the corner and then i'm going to have this corner right here line up with this line [Music] otherwise if you don't want to use a guide like this you could just mark it with a pencil now normally i have in between here so well here let me do my other one first because usually i'm chain piecing way more blocks than this so just make sure that you don't put a print a color on a color you want to put a color onto a background and then you're going to do the same thing start in the very corner okay so say i've sewn a whole bunch of blocks and it's ready for me to take these out and trim them up then what i'm going to do is i'm going to take the one inch start making okay i'll just do that i'll just grab these and start making four patches so i can just grab two squares sew them together [Music] then i can cut all these apart and do the other side so grab the same print and do it on the other side same thing here [Music] normally when i'm not filming i'll have like six you know half a dozen to a dozen anywhere you know around that number sewing at a time all stacked up here individually cut on my design boards and that's how many i'll chain piece and then in between i'm sewing a bonus project so what i do with this i don't worry about pressing this yet i'll put it back over here and when it's time to end then i can sew my next set together and when i'm finished with my chain piecing or my project for the day you know i'll usually just press these open you know all the same time the smaller pieces okay so now that i have these sewn on i'm just going to trim an approximate quarter inch seam allowance i don't really need to measure that it's already sewn these pieces are too small for me to use even if i did them you know like sew this right here in quarter inch and trim them up they would finish maybe at one and a half inch square but for me that's much too fiddly i would rather do it in a quicker method like this like making my smaller you know easy corner triangles to make my half square triangles so all right so now i've got my two darks on my light and i could have started with the light ones it doesn't matter i just do opposite corners and i bring them over here you do want to have a good hot iron i do not use steam at this point because i've already cut and sewn my blocks and i do not want to be shrinking my blocks which will happen if you steam after because what happens to cotton after you apply moisture to it and then heat it shrinks up so then i'm going to go ahead and use use these clappers to get it flat so just grab it over here and let these cool now the next thing i need to do off this board is i've got two of these and two of these two and a half inch squares and then as soon as these are cooled down a little bit and the blocks are nice and flat because i've used the clapper this is what the block looks like at this point which is pretty cute too but that's not a broken dishes block that's not how it's you know going to look so i'm going to grab these and now i'm going to add the background squares on to the print [Music] and then i just keep the same squares next to each other so i know where the match is and i'm not looking everywhere for it that's where these design words really come in handy so then it's time for me to grab another one of these let's say i think i'll use this little star background and i'm just starting by making the four patches [Music] and these bonus projects you can you know just have them laid out on the design board a few at a time and you'd be surprised how much you can get done just by sewing this way now it's time to add these you just have to make sure these are all lined up here trim those off okay my last okay now i'm going to grab these so you can see this is how i'm sewing my bonus projects in between my other pieces when i'm doing like a bigger main quilt i guess i should say and i just kind of always have a bonus project going i just decide what pattern is going to work the best i usually just pick the very simplest pattern so i don't have to think about it whether it's just making four patches nine patches or whatever it may be so i can just grab the scrappy you know things and so that i can concentrate on my main project and the bonus projects just become secondary as i'm sewing them until i get so far and make so much progress on these and then i'll turn these into my main project and focus on that until i get it finished up but i've made so many quilts like this and and all different sizes and it's surprising and sometimes it's just fun to just sew squares together simply just sew squares together and make some really fun projects that way throw a clapper on there these i find because there's four easy corner triangles it's just much easier to press away instead of pressing those open but it does help to have you know this part open in the four patches it still helps everything tonight to lie nice and flat i think these are so fun look at the star that it forms kind of like a secondary star okay so like that was really easy peasy fast right so here i have two quick broken dishes blocks this is a very traditional block my grandma made these a lot and her sisters made them out of scraps and they make the most beautiful scrap quilts now let me grab okay i brought in one of my large design boards so this is what i mean by this setting you can just how you would set these is you put the colors let's see where's my other two that i have done so maybe i would put the green here maybe i would put the blue here in the corners or switch them around however you wanted to do but when you have these of course this is going to be smaller when i sew it together now this block will right now measures eight and a half inches but when it's sewn into your project it'll finish it eight inches let's turn that that way i just kind of want to show you the secondary pattern what kind of comes out of it and so right now you know this may not be perfect i might want to play around with a little bit and turn things around some but look how cute that secondary pattern is you have this and this with the backgrounds and isn't it fun using all those scrappy backgrounds and um so you've got this that looks like a whole different block when you have it set like that and then just the star points around but i think that's really fun and also this would be awesome if i cut two and a half inch just background strips and did a cornerstone and put sashing in between them where you can just sew them together so that they you know you know it's a different perspective when you look at them it causes your eye to look at different design elements at the same time and it's just very interesting to look at so that's the other setting is to turn them so that all the colors are made in the center and then the other one let me grab this again is to just simply use alternate blocks and i hope you have enjoyed just you know talking about squares letting me talk to you a little bit about my small projects and what i do with them and i hope that if you were a person that maybe thought that sewing with small pieces was a little bit too fiddly but maybe you'll try it and you know try using your smaller leftovers to sew up some projects it's really not that hard it just depends on what you're doing with those pieces and my other advice is not only when you're sewing small blocks to press them open to have more accurate seams and to not use steam but you really want to cut accurately and have your accurate quarter inch seam allowance on these smaller pieces i don't pin a lot but you can feel free to pin whatever works the best for you but my advice is is just to be free with it and just try and i often say you're the boss of your own quilt you're the boss of your own scraps you can save the sizes that are most popular for you the size strip baskets that i keep because i have been quilting my whole life i know those are the sizes that i use the most and that most quilt blocks use and take and so that's why i save in those sizes and i'm going through and showing you different scrappy blocks that you can make but i hope that um sewing scrappy makes you as happy as it makes me and thanks for joining me in this series and i will be continuing on showing you more blocks and i'll chat with you later

Channel: Lori Holt

Views: 120,514

Rating: 4.9211578 out of 5

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Id: lFdRyVRh7L4

Length: 34min 17sec (2057 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021