Hi, Iím Jenny, from the Missouri Star Quilt
Company. We love our forums at the Missouri Star, and a lot of women get on there and
talk about lots of different things. One of those women was Shellscraps. She had been
over to Cozy Quilt Designs and seen a tutorial of something they called tube quilting. Well
I went over there and watched that and was pretty excited about it, and wanted to try
it myself. Her question was, could it be done with a regular ruler? So, hereís what we
did. So, the first thing weíre going to do on
this project, is cut two strips of contrasting fabric 2 Ωî wide. So, this would be a great
project for a Jelly Roll as well. So, weíve done that, and then weíre going to sew them
together using a ºî seam. OK, so weíre going to sew these two strips together using
a ºî, and weíll sew all the way down. OK, so now we have your two strips all sewn together.
You set your seam and then you press to the dark side, always to the dark side. Open that
up and these are cut the width of the fabric by the way, 2 Ωî, width of the fabric, sewn
end to end. OK, so now that we have these ironed, and pressed, and open, weíre going
to measure them and see how wide they are. They should come out to be 4 Ωî if youíve
sewn a ºî and these do! So, what we want to do now is weíre going to cut an additional
strip of fabric thatís 4 Ωî wide and this will also be the width of the fabric. It should
be a lighter contrasting color, you can see that ours is beige, and it will pick up the
red and green. So, when we put this together youíre just going to be amazed at what happens. So, now weíre going to lay this on top of
eachother and we are going to sew both sides of this ºî seam and make a tube. OK, so
we place these right sides together and weíre going to sew a ºî seam all the way down
to enclose it. I know this sounds kind of strange but we are doing is weíre making
a tube. When you sew long seams like this you want to be sure to change directions often
so that your fabric doesnít bow. This is only two seams so it wonít be bad at all,
but if you sewed all your seams going in one direction it would create a bow in the pattern.
So, weíre just going to turn these around and sew back down the other direction, with
our sides matched up, ºî. So, here we are at the end of our tube, letís just finish
this up. There we go, all done. Now over to the cutting table. So, you can see that this
is a tube and weíll lay it out here. Weíre going to use this Omnigrid ruler which is
a 9 Ωî square I imagine you could do anyone that has the fourty-five degree line on it,
and thatís the line that will give us our angles. So, you lay that line on your ºî
seam, so, that we can make a cut here that will give us the top point of our first cut.
Now Iím left handed, so, Iím doing this left handed and we will bring Natalie in to
show you how to make a right handed cut, a little bit down. So, the next thing we want
to do is we want to slide this down here and put it on the bottom seam line. See how easy
that was? It makes a point and we make a cut. Weíre going to slide it up, weíll move this
out of here, see this is the block that you get. Put it right along the seam line and
we make another cut. This is going to be so amazing when you see what happens when we
open these up. Weíll finish cutting these and really all we need is four for our demonstration.
So, this will be the last one weíll cut, before the magic begins! Alright, now we have
four of these blocks and you can get four more out of this tube. When you open them
up this is what you get a little piece of magic! Look at that. Now, whatís fun about
this is because of the way theyíre cut the entire center will be opposites and so what
youíre making is a double hourglass, set on point!
How cool is that! Letís go over and iron these so you can get an even better look.
So, we set our seams and then weíll lift them up, and press them over to make this
lay flat. I think if you had three of these blocks it
would make the most darling table runner. OK, so here we are back at the cutting table
with our nice pressed block, and we lay them out, and you can see once again that this
is a double hour glass, set on point. Three of these blocks with a little 3î sashing
around them would make the most darling table runner ever. Now weíre going to have Natalie
show how to cut it from the right handed side, because itís basically the same idea it just
takes a little bit different angle. So, weíll have her come over and show that. Alright, the only difference between a left-handed
and a right-handed cut is which side you start on. So weíre going to do this from this side.
Just the same as she did this before. Lining the fourty-five degree angle line up with
your seam, and making your cuts. OK, so now that youíve seen the left-handed
and the right-handed way. Letís see what else we can do with these blocks besides the
double hour glass. So, we figure we can put them together, and make the double square.
We could do something wild and crazy, and line them up so they make a kind of chevron
thing. We just never, I guess we can do all kinds of things! So this is really a fun technique,
and itís something youíll enjoy thatís quick! So, out of three strips of fabric weíve
been able to make two and a half blocks. And it takes very little fabric to make this,
and youíll have a table runner in no time with this tube technique. We hope youíve
enjoyed this from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. Happy sewing!
