Sorting Fabric Scraps and String Piecing on my Juki DDL 8700

[Music] so [Music] hello youtube friends i woke up in a sort of organizing sort of mode this morning it's saturday i'm going to make a video for you today i've got an idea about what i'd like to talk about and um i've got all my boxes and bits and pieces of fabric but first of all i've got to decide what i want to make i had a couple of ideas about what i might make and then i got all the fabric out and all those ideas changed so i've got um the tables full of boxes and bits and pieces and scraps of fabric uh that were just upstairs in the spare room and so now um i'm looking at them i'm actually thinking about the the project i might do quite differently but before i talk about that i'll just move my cup of tea to one side i wonder if any of you would are doing the mitre square blanket uh that we talked about a few weeks ago i'll be leaving some links i'm sure but the link i'll leave straight away is the link to um when i talked about casting on this mitered square blanket because in here it's got a bigger box since it was a small basket i think the last time but these are all the scraps and bits and pieces of um fab wool that i have left over from all sorts of other projects now so i cast on my mitered square blanket and i'm knitting them with i don't know why i am i should be knitting them on knitting needles really because they would be a bit longer but i'm really really liking the smoothness of these um prim they're 3.25 that makes any uh difference uh that works well with the sock yarn and it also works with this stuff which is is four ply that's that's like four ply or fingering weight let's call it and then we've even got a little bit of double knitting or sports weight in here i think that's what it's called but anyway there's a lot of different uh wools in there and i cast on let me see if i can find it because i've done loads i really enjoy knitting this in an evening time when i'm just watching a bit of um tv because you barely you don't even need to look i have a stitch marker in the middle stitch there that reminds me when to knit two together on the right side that's the only instruction you need and then starting a new square is just picking up along the two sides of the squares you've just knitted so like here for instance this l shape here i shall pick up these stitches here 24 there 24 there put a marker in the middle and then just do the decrease it's so easy it's i again uh i've found this pattern on a a lovely website called the knitting squirrel now since i showed it or cast it on i've done loads and what i'm liking about it is how organically scrappily weird it is because i'm using all the bits of wool that would just end up well in the in a big bag with no destination and when um so if i feel like it i'm trying to find one where i've done that uh of course i can't there but if i feel if i just feel like switching up the the color i can just cast on just i just get another strand of of missing going now it's not um like all my stuff it's not a prize winner it never will win prizes this sock yarn here and here is a bit thin and some of the other stuff's a bit on the thick side but do you know something i don't care i've got how many have i got along the bottom i think i've got 12 or 13. one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven i've got eleven across the bottom and i've done three runs so far but of course if i wanted to i could cast on and make it twelve or thirteen or fourteen i can make it as wide as i like that's what i love about this no sewing up using all my it's going to be really colorful isn't it and i'm guessing it'll just end up shoved over the back of a sofa to be something to snuggle up with when you're watching telly which is where it's all come from now i'm using these double-ended prims here these needles here for which i am not sponsored but because they're short sock needles i was finding and i like but i like using them i was finding that the live stitches were dropping off the end so can you see i've just stuck an elastic band around the end of both needles so that the need that when they've got 48 stitches on there they're all nicely grouped up so i wonder if you carried on knitting your mitered square um blanket from the knitting squirrel or from i think you can probably find the pattern for this one in all sorts of places but i liked her uh um whoopsie daisy what's going on here live stitches live stitches hello norma now i i use these boxes there's a green one here and a pink one here i use them for a lot of things you know they're useful i got them from ikea i think and because they're pink and green they suit my purpose perfectly i'll tell you who else's purpose they suit perfectly yours don't they so if i've got projects like this one norma thinks oh thanks mum you've made me a lovely bed to sleep in you're so kind i mean look there's another one over there and another one so everywhere is a is a cat potential cat heaven so i'm going to put that over there for now because i really don't want her to sleep in it she's got lovely places to sleep beautiful prague mat that i made for you the other day which she's using a lot by the way i think cat rita's asleep on it right now so the knitting i'm really enjoying i have it just handy there get it out when i feel like it now i've been bringing all the boxes and baskets and bits and pieces and this is confession time i've just found this one whole beautiful sock and one whole beautiful cast on and one hole beautiful ball of wool i'm not sure how long that's been in there i'm knitting the sink simple sock pattern that comes with this wool uh i've got a few copies of it and it's it's a very very simple i can almost do it out of my head now it's a simple pattern uh but because it's a simple pattern the heel does and the toe they do the heel goes really quickly in these so unless you're very good at darning or you weigh like nothing at all then this is this is not a great sock pattern for someone who's heavy on their socks like i am so i think i have a person in mind for forgiving these two but i have to finish them first don't i so that that little has come down from being shoved in a corner somewhere and will be uh alternate knitting when i'm in the move for that now another of my green boxes here is full of all the all the things i need to make the hexagons for agnes's quilt now agnes quilt is off the board at the moment it doesn't mean there's been any progress on it it what that all that means is i'm working on other things and i needed the space agnes quilt is in two big pieces at the moment and is waiting for me to join those pieces up which it's stored out of the way of cats but i'm going to be getting on with that one again quite soon so in here then this box is it's full of made hexagons it's full of fabric to make more hexagons and then in here i'm not sure what's in here i have one of my what i call my soft boxes um i think i've done a tutorial on these about a thousand years ago uh so the soft boxes and that's full of not quite sure what really but it sits in there quite nicely so that is not a box i want to concern myself with today and neither really is that so they can sit there behaving themselves which is more than you're going to do today isn't it no i've got these boxes here which are full of fabrics so i'm going to have a drink of tea this is red bush tea in a big bucket it's delicious i'm going to move the camera then so that you can see uh some of the fabrics that i've got here and some of the ideas that i might have this is all part of the big house clear up that's what i'm telling myself so i'm going to move the camera angle so that you can see i'm going to get them out i'm going to put them into well my plan is to put them into piles of this could be this this could be that that's my plan we'll see how far we get with that plan what do you think yeah she's as long as you make a nice box for me to sleep in i don't mind i'll move the camera angle [Music] do [Music] well i've just filmed about half an hour of me sorting out these fabrics and none of the footage was any good but that's fine because i was just picking up individual pieces and looking at them lovingly and saying i remember that one it went on for an awfully long time what i've done in tipping out those boxes doesn't matter that we've lost that bit of film start again what i'm doing here now is i've tipped out the um there's one more big box but i've tipped out the second box and i'm sorting them into color strips piles of color and then we're going to make a decision about what we're going to do with these i always say we i mean me so very quickly now sparing you all the stories about pieces of fabric that are an inch square i'm going to just finish this little task very quickly so that we can get on and sew something now there's this pile to do and then that box as well and i am going to do all of them so i'm going to say that i'll get back to you once i've finished sorting these different piles it's going to be easier that way promise you oh look this is cotton and steel fabric little tigers in pink now i've got an idea i'm going to put that to one side and make agnes a pair of summer trousers with those and maybe some pink cows as well so they're going to go off to one side and then this is something that's a big strip of green something or other i'll put that over there so i'm going to carry on though and color organize them there's some more cats i had a pile of cats it's disappeared i'll put the cats with the cats over here this box goes back a long long way so there's a big piece of something that would be the back of um a cut quilt or something like that if i was able to make those again and then oh it's another big piece of spotty fabric and then this one so i'll keep going with the colors because then we're going to decide what we're going to make if anything let me get back to you when i finish doing all of this because i could be a long long time this new [Music] i've got a plan and i've been sorting these fabrics into colors now and what i've done is i've put away the green and the red pinky red and also all these neutrals the black white the neutrals all of those i put those all to one side i don't want to use those i have plans for the green and the red later on and i don't really want to use those so what i've sorted out instead is all the blues all the yellows and i've stuck the oranges in with the yellows because orange isn't really a color i use that much but i think for this for what i'm about to do now let me tell you the whole reason why i started doing this apart from the fact that i wanted to get these colors out but about six months ago something like that i bought my new sewing machine the dukey and i've been using it on and off and just this last month i've been using it a lot and really really enjoying it so i thought i'll do an update on how i'm enjoying using the dukey and use some of these scraps up so i've just cut this very boring fabric uh which is um it's just dull cotton fabric uh into eight and a half inch squares i could have got them a bit bigger but i thought a finished square of eight inches would be about right for what i want to do so those fabric squares then i cut all of those i can make more but i've got those for now into eight and a half inch squares and then i'm going to just do some simple string piecing now you can do string piecing of course onto paper a lot of people do i know bonnie hunter's preferred style is put to paper to do it on uh you know pages of old catalogues and things i'm going to use uh this fabric as the base piece here aren't i norma yes i am there are already a lot of strips of different widths in these scraps of fabric i'm going to do them diagonally and i'm going to do i think this is how it's going to go i'm going to do all the blues on one side and all the yellows on the other so the re the whole reason for doing this is to give the dukey a good old workout for me i'm going to have a lovely afternoon because i'm going to put my headphones back on and carry on listening to my soundtrack music i'm going to get set up with my ironing pad which is right here bring you along for part of it and i'll show you at the end how many of these i've managed to do this is a really good chain piecing exercise and so we'll see how far i get with this what do you think she says as long as there's something soft to lie on i don't mind doesn't matter to me okay we're gonna get on and do that now then take three [Laughter] so i'm in the corner here with my sewing machine it's all set up here i've got my ironing pad here my little iron which is all i need really to uh smooth out the each of the seams i've got my eight and a half inch squares a little pile of them here put them on my knee and what i've got here and this is a few bits that have ended up in the throat of the machine but mostly my yellow strips are in this drawer and my blue strips are in the drawer below and they're all different widths so and sizes so i've got a little piece like this that'll go into one of the shorter runs of fabric so i think i might be um preaching to the choir here i think probably everybody knows how to do string piece strips i'm doing yellow on one side of the square and blue on the other and i'm not using the same central strip which would that's a lovely thing to do if you use the same color or pattern or a solid in the center strip you can make the finished squares all linked together beautifully but i'm not going to do that we're going majorly scrappy here and so the thing to realize when you place the first one so let's get a piece of blue because that's what's going on here and we need so we need to find a piece of blue that's long enough to go from corner to corner and i've made a few of these already and the more i do this the fewer of those there are what's that one like there we are that one's great really nice long blue and here's my square let's move my iron over so you can see what i'm doing and i'm going to place the strip of blue so that it extends beyond the square everything's here on my table so it's really easy to work out what i'm doing now as soon as you decide on what your center strip is and you place that face up face up and then get another strip if what you're doing is blues that one's too short uh that one's way too short but these will come in later i may have to go into my drawer see what i can find that one's perfect now i put the next strip then face down so that they're right sides together and then picking all three layers up the backing layer the face up strip and the face down strip i'm just going to sew approximately a quarter of an inch from the side now i'm chain piecing them with themselves here i've got a couple more i'll put those down there so there's not to confuse us i have one here with those two strips and then all we do with the little ironing setup that i've got here is i just uh fold that one open and press that one open so what i've got now then is two strips of blue on my base block now obviously every time you pick another strip up it can be smaller than the one before it so but it has to be long enough to extend neither of those are any good so we'll try for what we got here you see that one looks like it might be long enough but it isn't because there'll be a little bit at the top and the bottom and i don't want that so i'm going to choose this one i think um even that one's not quite long enough let's go into my drawer here where i've got more fabrics to choose from this one's plenty long enough sometimes i save those because they'll be long enough to go down the middle strip so i might use that one it's about this one okay this one's a bit wrinkly give it an iron this one's fine it's a little bit wider than the ones i've used but if i sit it there it's just about right so i'll pop that under the machine so let's just sew this one and then working on two at a time means i can press this one open now and i'm doing all the blues and then i'll do all the yellows that one's pressed nicely now and we're going to find another blue which is long enough there we go there's a a long enough blue face down just have it sticking up over the top a little and then the nice thing about this because i'm not measuring the strips it doesn't matter if my if my quarter inch isn't exactly right as long as it anchors it down always working on two at a time and eyeing this one out now you get the idea i'm not really thinking too hard about the color combinations as long as they're all blue and all yellow this one's a bit shorter now that's not long enough oh no that's not long enough this is though there we go that'll fit there i'm not going to concern myself with trimming them off until the very end well that's quite cool little dots next to big dots i quite like that so all of that side's covered now so now it's time to do the yellow side so i thought i would tell you how i'm getting on using this fantastic machine now it is fantastic i like it very very much there's a couple of things about it that i still haven't quite got the hang of and but they're all underneath the table here the needle lifts up with my knee which is fine i like it a lot but because i'm short my knee doesn't fall in the place where the lifting thing is and i've got it extended down the the um metal shaft thing as far as it'll go so i can't make that needle lift any lower down which does mean that it's a little tiny bit uncomfortable to lift the needle small thing one of the things i love about it and i think this was a comment uh that someone left for me which was to do with winding the bobbin because when i first started using the machine there's no way to disengage the needle when you're winding the bobbin and i thought that was a real disadvantage until someone told me that if you put the bobbin on to wind while you're sewing it just miraculously it fills itself up while you're sewing and so i do that anytime i have an empty bobbin i put it on to wind and then i pop it up there i've got bobbin thread up there it's absolutely brilliant i love that um i like it here in this corner i know there's a lot of debate about how i wasn't in natural light because i'm sitting i've actually closed the curtains this morning because it's far far too sunny for filming i don't usually film myself when i'm sewing it has to be said but um right ronti oh no little tiny bit more blue there let's see what do you like uh let's find a little bit that's a lovely little bit that will go there excellent so i have a light i don't know if you can see it it's uh there's a cat now not the usual cat either get down sadie she's just trying to push the camera over get down please get down come on get down get down good girl she was just about to push the camera over because if you could see how i've got you balanced on a load of boxes old school um the dukey doesn't come with a light which i was initially quite cross about because you think well a light's so important i tried a different couple of lights i bought one of those leds that go around here and it was the worst investment ever it was a terrible thing it kept falling off and i didn't like it i think i didn't buy a good enough one and so i got rid of that pretty quickly but now i've got this lamp which i don't think you can can you even see it if i turn it off you can there now brilliant such a good light i've got it right down stuck behind the machine so i don't keep tripping over the base of it works perfectly it's not in the way uh casts a great light it's very good yeah what else can i tell you it doesn't do fancy things like you know zigzags or decorative stitches never really use those very much not for this kind of work it whizzes through the work like nobody's business and it would do much thicker stuff as well so at the moment i'm just sewing well i'm sewing three layers of cotton together aren't i it's hardly a big strain for any machine let's get some more yellow we're a bit low on the yellows now let's get a bit more yellow out so i've got this yellow strip i'll just give it a little press put a fold in it there here we go then there it all is so we turn it over and see the the back of it and where the pieces are protruding i'm just going to cut it back down to the size of my eight and a half inch block that has been loads of fun i've really really enjoyed it uh you can see the uh effect that it has i think that we could try some different layouts uh and try making a zigzag you know all the different ways that you can play around with quilt blocks as i say i was trying to finish something to show you today but i don't want to rush it so i'll carry on working on it through the week and we'll have another look at it when it is finished but i want to just give you a heads up for something that's happening next week uh is the shop update and um anna and i and my other daughter-in-law rita have been working really hard on getting these um bits and pieces together for the shop update and we're going to do a giveaway so i'm going to give you details about the giveaway now because over on the website and there's always a link to the website in the description below there is a mailing list and if you join the mailing list you will get one only one email a month telling you about the shop updated products which means that you'll know when it is we're posting it in the shop and what it is and all of that so the mailing list is there free to sign up to when you sign up to that just as an aside um you say you want to sign up to it and then you just have to confirm you'll get an email and then you just have to press the subscribe button you don't have to write an email uh it's not important to get in touch that way you just have to press the subscribe button or the join button or whatever it is that the mailing list gives you that'll save you you a bit of time uh but the giveaway is going to be for everyone on the mailing list because that is the easiest way to do the draw uh so join the mailing list because this time next week i'll be drawing a number maybe this time next week so the dukey's been given a good old run for its money there this morning uh and yesterday this has been two days i've it's taken to sort all these fabrics out get everything sorted and do some filming for that yesterday when i was stitching some of these i had my ipad and i was watching a live stream from robin at rs island crafts and she was making a lovely little bag it was great and so i had the live stream going i was stitching it was really really good so um check out robin i'll leave a link in the description below so that says finish for this week norma and i thanks so much for watching uh check out a couple of links i'm gonna put a link to the uh the day that i got the dukey when my son came and helped me fit that with baby agnes and then i'll put a link in the description below to the knitting squirrel and uh don't forget to go over and join the mailing list and we'll do that giveaway next week for the shop product but for now i'm going to carry on and make some more of these i know what i'm going to do with it now and i'll tell you uh next week when it's finished i've i've definitely got an idea about what's going to happen with this so i'll see you next week and um take care you

Channel: The Last Homely House

Views: 114,010

Rating: 4.965446 out of 5

Keywords: Juki DDL8700, juki, string piecing, fabric scraps, stash buster, mitred square blanket, the last homely house, the lime green sofa

Id: aQminomlYAk

Length: 35min 9sec (2109 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021