Simple Smoothie Time quilt using 2 1/2 inch STRIPS! 6th in a series to use leftover strips!

hi Quilters this is our sixth video in a series designed to use leftover 2 and 1/2 in strips of fabric at the beginning I did a great sorting and my two favorite strip buckets were the Halloween one and my Christmas one I've been looking for the right project to make with these strips and I found this pattern from Moda and Zen she called smoothie time I knew it would be perfect for these strips and since I couldn't decide to do Halloween or Christmas I decided of course to do them both the first thing I had to do was to sort through all the strips I pulled the ones out that best fit the Halloween theme some of the more plain Fabrics or neutral Fabrics I left in the bucket to make a colorful fall quilt in the future since the Smoothie time pattern is perfect for a jelly roll it also means it'll work for leftover strips you can use any color combination that you want just pick a more limited palette or combo to suit your tastes I thought about doing this this one in all Browns and creams or in black and pink but I decided to use the seasonal Fabrics instead when picking out your strips make sure they measure longer than 7 in once you have your strips picked out just start sewing them together into sets of two strips roughly the same length mix and match the designs and colors as you go to get a good variety in your quilt use quarin seam allowances throughout this quilt top when I was sewing strips together sometimes I would just trim one of the strips to match the other strip other times especially with longer strips I would just find another fabric strip in a different color and keep on sewing I can cut them apart later there is no need to press before you sew when we do the first seam press it'll also flatten all the strips and make them lay nice and flat so no need to iron twice I did not use my entire Halloween strip stash I just sewed until all the strictly Halloween fabric strips were used I figured I could always use some of the planer Fabrics later to supplement the sections if I don't have enough for the quilt top I love this kind of mindless sewing it's very relaxing for me and I get to take a trip down memory lane trying to remember the original project some of these strips came from sometimes I can remember and sometimes I can't we will leave a link in the description below for you to find the pattern to print at home once all your strips are sewn into sets of two it's time to head to the ironing board for the first pressing when I get to the ironing board first thing I'm going to do is press the strip set flat and then I'll open it up and press it towards the darker fabric some of my strips were really wrinkly or former binding strips with a crease down the center for those strips I used Mary Ellen's best press spray to help them lay nice and flat by pressing at this stage we can do all of the rest of the strip set sewing before we have to press again once all the strip sets are pressed it'll be time to head back to the sewing machine each of these strip sets should measure 4 and 1/2 in wide it's time to sew these sets of two into sets of six I tried to match them up by length as best that I could when sewing the sets to each other Nest the center seam together this will help with the final pressing it'll make it easier to press all the seams in One Direction sometimes I could fit two shorter sets onto the same long set I would cut it apart later and that helps me get a little bit more variety in my strip sets I would sew two strip sets together and then I would send another set of two through the machine I would then cut the first one off from the front open it up and then add the third set of strips to it to get six strips as a unit I tried really hard to spread around the colors and the designs in the strip sets occasionally a larger strip set was sewn to a smaller one it's all good I will just keep sewing them into sets that have six strips so far I'm showing all of the steps to you using the Halloween Fabrics but you'll also see my Christmas Version at the end you'll want to stay to the end to see the bonus projects too they were made with the leftovers from this project if you're enjoying our series of videos for using 2 and 1/2 in leftover strips we hope you'll hit the like button and subscribe to see all the future videos we will leave a link in the description below for the strip video playlist on our channel the Smoothie time pattern uses one jelly roll and has blocks that finish at 12 in x 12 in or 12 and2 in before they're sewn together but by using leftover strips you can make it any size that you want just make as many blocks as you need to make the size that you want the original pattern is set with four blocks in four rows so you have 16 blocks total and the finished size is 48 1/2 by 48 1/2 but if you wanted to you could make 20 blocks set it 4X five for a quilt that measures me 48 by 60 and it goes up from there you can do 5x5 for 25 blocks and the quilt will measure 60 in x 60 in 30 blocks set 5 by 6 would equal a quilt that's 60 by 72 36 blocks set 6X 6 would be a square quilt 72x 72 42 blocks set 6x 7 will be a quilt measuring 7 2x 84 use as many scraps as you want to make it as small or as large as you like once you've used up all your strip sets of two and made strip sets of six it'll be time to head to the ironing board each of these strip sets should be 12 1/2 in wide it's looking good so far if you nested all your seams in the previous section three of the five seams are all pressed in One Direction now you just need to press the other two in the same direction as the first three I usually press from the back side first and then if I'm afraid I've pressed in any creases in the front I will also press it from the front now that all the pressing is done it's time to head to the cutting mat we are going to cut chunks that are 6 and 1/2 in wide from each of these strip sets you'll need to trim off one end first to get a nice flat place to set your ruler from and then just cut 6 and 1/2 in sections cut as many sections as you can from each strip set sometimes I was only able to get one or two sometimes I was able to to get three or four when I couldn't get any more 6 and 1/2 in wide sections I cut sections that were 2 and 1/2 in wide or the largest size I could get and also of course I saved all the leftover pieces there was very little waste when I made this [Music] project now I have a pile of 6 and 1/2 in sections enough to make 25 blocks plus the leftover of 2 and 1/2 in wide pieces odd-sized pieces and then of course little pieces that I will use for something I don't know what yet but 2 and 1/2 in wide and other sizes for just playing with now it's just a matter of sewing two sections together they're all 6 and 1/2 in wide and then once you sew them together they should be blocks that are 12 1/2 in wide randomly choose two sections and piece them together with right sides together because they all have the seams pressed in One Direction rotate the sections as needed so the seams will Nest together as you sew if you have the seam on top facing toward the sewing machine it will help push the top seam to Nest into the bottom seam [Music] once all your blocks are sewn it's time to cut them apart I like using my handy blade saver to get the job done then it'll be time to head to the ironing board at this point you can press the seams to one side or if you prefer you could press the seams open next we will sew the blocks together to make rows alternating the direction of the blocks if you are making a quilt with an even number of blocks for example 4x4 just sew all of the blocks into sets of two if you are making a quilt with an odd number of blocks set set aside enough blocks to match the number of rows that you will have and then piece the remainder of the blocks into sets of two before I started sewing I pinned all the sets of two that way I knew I would do them all the same [Music] so the set of two into sets of four Once I have the sewn into sets of four I will need to add the last block in each of these rows three of them will have the blocks going One Direction and two of them will have the blocks going in the other direction three my quilt will have a total of 25 blocks five rows of [Music] five [Music] [Music] for my rows I am going to press the blocks that are parallel to the row towards the blocks that are perpendicular to the row once you get done pressing then it's time to lay out the rows and make sure you like how they're going to go together before you start sewing I like to lay down on the floor and take a picture of it and then look at the picture on the phone to decide if I've got it laid out correctly I always see something on the phone that I don't necessarily see when I just look at it in person I highly recommend pinning the rows together before you sew them [Music] once all the Ros are together it's time to do a final pressing I pressed it from the backside first first using a little Mary Ellen's best press spray to help those seams lay nice and flat and then I flipped it over to the front just to give it one final go over for my Christmas Version my box was a little bit Fuller than my Halloween version so I made a few more strip sets for for this one I tried to stick to the more traditional Christmas colors the greens and the Reds but I also threw in a few black and blue strips too my stack of 6 and 1/2 in wide cuts was a lot taller for this version and of course I also cut 2 and 1/2 in wide sections when I couldn't get the bigger pieces and the little odd sizes as well no waste for my Christmas quilt version I ended up making around 47 blocks so I decided to go with a 6 by 7 so it'll be 72 by 84 but then at the end I decided I wanted to break it up a little bit more so I added a border kind of between the last row of blocks all the way around I decided it was going to be a little bit too busy without a border in there so I just stuck a 4in border and I did it in a dark green just to give your ey a little place to rest so what did I do with all those extra little pieces that I cut I ended up having enough pieces that were 2 and2 in wide of both the Halloween and the Christmas to make a runner and then with the other leftover pieces I just sewed them together and put them in my extra block bucket to save for a future project my extra block bucket is the place where I put all my spare blocks left over from all my projects I add in any test blocks or extra parts or things that I just try for the fun of it it just has a little bit of everything in there the bucket isn't full yet but someday when I can't get the lid on it anymore I'll take out all the blocks and make something really fun here are the leftover pieces that I just sewed together for fun I also was able to make some four patches and a smaller section of the Halloween Fabric and I just had half of a block left over from the Halloween from the Christmas fabric I had five leftover blocks along with this leftover section of the various sized with the pieces and then I also was able to find some four patches to make I already have the runners quilted and bound I used fabric for my strip buckets for the binding and I think they look pretty fantastic plastic for just being spare parts I machine quilted the Halloween quilt with a big loop pattern done in a orange thread the Christmas quilt was quilted in a smaller Loop pattern with a green thread and here is the finished Halloween quilt it turned out to be five rows of five blocks and finished at 60 in by 60 in for The Binding I just picked out whatever black fabric I I had in the Halloween bucket sewed end to end together to make a piece long enough to bind the quilt so the entire quilt front and binding are all made for my 2 and 1/2 in strip bucket of Halloween fabric for the backing I used one of my favorite Halloween prints and I pieced it so you can't even tell where it SE I was really proud of that I like using big bold prints on the back so the quilt can be two-sided and here's the finished Christmas quilt this one ended up being six blocks across plus that border and seven blocks down so seven rows plus the border the finished size of this one is 80 in by 92 Ines and for this one I decided to use red for The Binding I just picked red strips from my Christmas bucket of various length sewed them together and end to get a piece long enough to go all the way around the quilt for the backing I just picked a big floral to make it two-sided and now it's time for an update on this strip bucket so before I made these two quilts the Halloween and Christmas versions I had seven buckets of fabric with 2 and 1/2 in strips I'm happy to report I'm now down to five buckets I think that is fantastic we will see you next month for another project using 2 and 1/2 in strips maybe we can get it down to four buckets we hope you'll remember to hit the like button leave us a comment share with your quilting friends and subscribe thanks for watching and happy quilting

Channel: The Quilted Forest

Views: 257,492

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Id: SYCgWI5oqME

Length: 25min 36sec (1536 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 29 2023