Using Gridded Interfacing to Create Perfect Patchwork Blocks

hey guys it's robin r silent crafts and welcome to my studio today i'm going to show you how to make a perfect patchwork block we're going to be using this two inch quilt fuse fusible non-woven layout grid really all those fancy words it just means that it's a piece of interfacing and it's got the grids already printed on it for you i had a partial charm pack of moda nostalgia by april cornell so i thought i'd go ahead and use that just to make a little block here i think it's going to be about eight and a half inch square so i've been cutting these up into two inch squares so let me show you how to cut this out and we'll chat along the way and i'll give you some tips and tricks as we go so when you go to purchase this quilt fuse now this one i believe it's made by a specific company and that's why it's called a quilt fuse i've seen a bunch of videos i've been watching online and when you purchase it from quilt shops sometimes they'll call it after the quilt shop's name like they'll say robin's a fusible grid or robin's quilt grid or something like that so they do have a few different names but if you just search online for a fusible quilt grid or a interfacing with a fusible interfacing with a grid somewhere along those lines they're really easy to find they pop up everywhere i'll put a link to one down below on amazon now you can buy it by a package so if you only need a small amount you can go ahead and do that or you can go ahead and buy it by the yardage and this is just called quilt fuse so it's the same thing it's just like you can buy interfacing in and heat and bond they have them in small packages and they have them by the yardage so it's going to be the same thing it's going to tell you what size grid it is this is a two inch grid but just because it's a two inch square we can use it for other things now to match my other piece i did a five by five piece that i cut out now the reason i went with the five by five grid just because i had this little weird chunk sitting here and it was actually ten by five so if i can cut it out by two sections that worked for me i don't have an actual project in mind for it let me move this so it's easier to see you can cut it with your rotary cutter but i find it easier to see if i don't have a mat underneath with all of the grid lines competing for these grid lines so i'm just going to count and see what i have so i have one two three four five one two three four five so there's my five by five grid so if you need to cut anywhere and i'm just going to cut directly on this line again you can use the rotary cutter if you want [Music] but it's not hard to cut through at all if you've used interfacing it really it is just interfacing that's been run through a printer and had the lines put on it it feels exactly the same it behaves the same now this piece it's kind of folded up here it's got some crinkles and stuff like that i didn't worry about that i had the same issues with the other piece i just worked around it i would imagine if it's bit of a really scrunch up mess what you can do is you can use a teflon pressing sheet this one's a fonz and porter one that i picked up at joann's really all it is is a baking sheet these are just a little bit thin so you can see through to do your applique what happens is when you use this to iron nothing sticks to it so if you're finding that this has got a lot of crinkles that's going to cause an issue and not get your project done properly decide you can tell the which side is which because this side with the printing on it is really smooth and we're going to be sewing from this side we are going to put our fabric down on this side where you see all the little little white dots there those are all dots of glue so if you needed to iron this out to get it to be able to use it what you can do is you put it glue size down on your teflon sheet do a very light light press of wherever you need to get the wrinkles out but for the most part you should be able to just use it as is i have glass head pins here that i use what i was doing is also i have a fan that's always blowing in here because it's always hot in this room i put it so that it is fusible side up and that now with my wool mat it does stick nicely but to make sure that all of those creases stay out and that there's no issues i went ahead with my little glass pin so if i hit them with an iron it wouldn't melt i just put them a little bit diagonally in the corner just enough to grab each corner and i put diagonally so that the pin the heads would stay out of the way and this would just give it that nice little bit of tension now you see i'm not really stretching and tugging or anything i'm just getting it to kind of lay down so that i don't have to worry about any of those weird creases maybe this fold here is bothering you you can always put a couple extra pins over here as we get going you can remove them or you can iron i can put my iron right up onto this part here now i've got the two inch grid i'm just going to put two inch squares down but you could also put a four inch square so if you had one piece and you wanted a specific center piece or something and you're working away around it and you wanted to use all the same fabric i know that these are all different fabrics but you could just put one four piece down there so that this would be the whole entire fabric right there and then you can just put your two inch squares around maybe if you're going to be doing a larger piece and you're going to be turning it into a wall hanging or you're going to do large sections and then sew them all together to make a quilt see then you might want to use your four inch piece of fabric there another four inch square there and just kind of make it around and then add in your little two inch squares all the way around if you're very careful you can also use one inch squares because you can put four of them within this square right here and if you just line it up against your little dotted lines here they're a little bit hard to see on camera but now you see how i can get it really close and you just see that shadow of the dots right there when you're working on it in person you can see these lines a lot easier but you can just put your one inch one inch one inch one inch and then when you sew it the only thing different with that is when you're using the one inch ones instead of just sewing on the line here you would also have to sew in between so i find it easier just to go ahead and use the two inch squares majority of the videos i watched they either went with the two inch squares or the four inch ones then you just take your fabrics and you're going to put them right side up so that you can look at your block and see exactly how it's going to look and then you just pop them down if you have a pattern if you're doing a trip around the world this is a really good tip and trick to do the trick around the trip around the world that way you can lay out your colors and you can do because it has that like of a diamond and just the way the colors are all stepping and stuff it's a really easy way to work on a project using this you can line up all your colors exactly where you want them now on these outer ones it seems on the outside edges of this interfacing there's a little bit extra can you see that little bit right up there i'm lining all of my squares up on the lines i'm not lining it up against the edge so that way whatever extra there is there's extra i'm not going to worry about it i'm just going to make sure all of my squares are lined up at the two corners down there and that extra little bit i'll just trim off afterwards after you get these all laid out you can go ahead and remove them and move them around because we haven't ironed it yet these aren't going to be exactly where they are until we give it a good pressing with the iron this being a charm square it does have all of the little serrated edges along there i just if i'm a little concerned about whether it's an exact lined up or not as long as it's in the square i'm okay but i try to take my cut edges then i can just line those up to make sure they're sitting within that grid work you do a little scooching over on some because you do have that little extra space make sure everybody stays within their own little square if for some reason the way yours was cut if you bought it by the yard and there was like you had three quarters of a square down here but there was all the part on the right was missing as long as you have enough to fuse this one section down i would say maybe even just a quarter of it three quarters of an inch up to an inch something just to where you can fuse that square down so it's going to stay in place it's okay you don't have to have the fusible underneath every single bit but as long as something is fused down to hold your square in place you'll be okay so we know when you pick up things at the store they're always not cut exactly perfect when you're buying yardage i'm going to go ahead and just speed this up so you guys don't have to sit here and watch this after you have them all where you want them if you want to move anyone around you can always shift them now so you didn't want to have these two together you can always move them now what i notice especially with the little zigzag cut on the charm pack you're going to see some of the interfacing through there several videos i watched they recommend that you put your pressing mat down again like this and to give it a good press and that's just going to guarantee you that you're not going to get any of that sticky residue on your iron of course always follow the directions that come on your product i have a nice hot iron at the cotton setting and i do have the steam on i'm going to avoid this area up there and you set your iron down and you just hold it firmly for the 5 or 10 seconds whichever your directions say lift it up we are definitely not going to go like this because that's going to take all of our pieces and just rush them all over to place and make a big mess once you have them sticking just enough to hold it and take out my pins i'm just going to take this and trim this off with the scissors just the interfacing and not the fabric because you know i'm going to stick my iron on it now while i don't worry about my iron too much i do worry about my nice wool pressing mat so i will put down my sheet you can also use so you can always lay down a piece of parchment paper if you don't have any of this or a brown paper bag or just something to protect your mat and your iron then i'm going to give it another good press give it some steam i want to make sure these are all going to stick really well show you what it looks like if we put the mat on this side now with the mat on it it's really easy to glide because i've already got everything all pressed down nice so i just let it kind of i still don't want to scrub it i do notice that if i have the steam on with these mats it does get some water bubbling up and it will make my iron glide on its own and i don't stay in one place for very long remember i do use this for my appliques and stuff so i can already see some of the glue that was on it from before when i didn't clean it very well which is another reason why i don't do that this is usually just fine for me couple presses i like to press from the front and then from the back and then the front again make sure it's nice and steamy and ultimately what you want is for everything to be nicely stuck in place so that when you pick it up nothing falls off see nothing falls off everything is nicely done and in place so the whole exciting part about this and what makes it great is you take this and you could start doing it from top to bottom or left to right i don't know why but i just like to do the sides and then i do it in the other direction but i take one side and i fold it onto the other and we're folding it right on that line some people say you should go ahead and give it a nice press i find it hard to press from the interfacing side i always like to press from the other side when i'm making bags and everything but you give yourself that nice crease so if one of your squares went just a little bit over and into that little area it's going to fold it and it's going to be good now another thing this is really great for is if you're a beginner or even if you're seasoned like me and you've been doing you've been quilting for over 10 years if your quarter inch isn't perfect and dead on if you struggle with making your star point show up or if your flying geese lose the tip this is a great project for you because what we're going to do is we're going to use the same stitch length we're going to aim for our quarter inch because that's what these are made for and we're going to line this up on our presser foot wherever our quarter inches on my jukey it's on the side of the presser foot and on my little brother it's on the inside of the presser foot so if you line it up wherever you need to get your quarter inch and you're going to stitch down here then we're going to take this and open it back up you can bring it back over we can iron all of these at once if we'd like give these all a nice press before we go over don't worry i will take you to the sewing machine just in a moment just want to get these i find that you can give them a nice good press and they'll show you that nice line to sew on really easily some people put clips on it still some people put pins it's technically a pin free project but if pins help you then i don't see the problem with using them it's not going to hurt anything [Music] so i have all these pressed nicely now let's go over to the sewing machine and we'll start stitching on them i can use whichever color thread is going to work for your project i'm using white for mine i'm sticking with my 2.0 inch stitch length i did notice that in a lot of the directions that that's what they suggest to use quarter inch now for me on my presser foot here i have this line on the side then there's the foot of it right here and a little line right there and if i follow along this foot and right along that line in that general area that's going to give me a quarter inch on this sewing machine every sewing machine is just a little bit different depending on the foot and the way everything is set up and how it is so find where it is on yours and again as long as you use the same your quarter inch is what a lot of people call it as long as you use your quarter inch on every bit of this so that all the seams are the same it's going to turn out for you maybe yours is an eighth of an inch smaller than mine or an eighth of an inch bigger or could be perfectly set on there when you go to put it together in a quilt as long as all of the pieces are the same it will come out to be the same now i have my little scrap piece of fabric that was already underneath my foot i keep a little pile next to my machine that just allows me to start right off without having to pull out that piece of thread and holding that it doesn't get sucked down into the machine it's a form of chain piecing so when i'm done for the day i just throw one of these underneath it and i'm ready for my next day of sewing so i'm just going to go through and i'm going to sew wherever my quarter inch is i said you could put little pins in through here if you'd like some people like to backstitch at the beginning in the end it's got the interfacing everything like that and i wouldn't backstitch if i were making like a nine patch or something so i don't backstitch here i just stick another piece of scrap fabric under it and i trim this one off you see i'm not wasting any thread that way i'm not pulling any out if i was doing several of these blocks if i wanted to have a variety of nine patches maybe i wanted to have one with red and one with green one with blue i can just go ahead and get all the pressing done and then just chain piece them through so i'm going to continue this all the way over to the end [Music] see i have that bit of an accordion fold looking thing to it so i have all of these seams done now some people will take it and just fold it over in the other direction so this one we did top to bottom right to left so then you can either turn it if that's the way you like to work or just go like this way and we're going to fold it down but now that's going to give you your seams and when we do patchwork we generally nest our seams and have them pressed in alternate directions just to avoid all that bulk now to do that on these take something that has your scissors a really nice sharp point at the top if your scissors are sharp down here it's not going to help you you can still do it but it's a lot easier if you have some type of scissors that are really sharp at the tip sometimes little embroidery scissors work really well for this and what we're going to do wherever we see our intersection where we're going to fold it in the other directions our dotted line we're going to snip right on that line in between the two squares now we're not going to snip through our sewing line i watched one video where it said it was okay to snip through it but i don't agree so i would just go ahead and snip it just right up to the line so then here's my line there's my two blocks and i'm just going to snip it being careful that i stay away from the stitches i won't i'll just go right up to them and snip it and see how that allows us to bend this in either direction and you're going to want to do that through each of the section now this does take a little bit of time especially if you're doing an entire quilt just make sure nothing else is in the way when you're snipping it but it's one of those things that it just makes it lay nicer lay flatter it gives it a better look to the block and if our blocks are going to turn out perfect then i don't mind taking that little bit of time to snip on through here it's not as bad as if we were making a rag quilt so i think this is okay now if you want you could press these before you snip them doesn't really matter too much see and i always find i have this is where i have a hard time because the iron doesn't glide easily on the interfacing but i'm going to go ahead and press it this way and i'm going to double check from the front just to make sure i don't get any tucks and i'm going to give it a nice press from here because this side is a lot easier to press from we have that interfacing back there so it's going to hold things and stabilize any type of bias that we may have so this time i don't mind ironing it versus pressing it because everything is nice and secure we have to alternate which way our seams go you can go and do one row at a time individually or what i like what i've been doing is i've been pressing the entire thing so that this row is going to go down so i want this row to go up so i fold this one down and underneath and out of the way then i can press this one up [Music] then i'll take it at this spot and i'll fold it so that's only one layer underneath so i have these two there so this one's down this one's up so this one's down we've already done that we can skip that this one needs to go up so i will fold that underneath this also gives me that nice little crease on the edge and my last one's done so now we have them so that they're alternating maybe using the little palm iron might be a little bit easier for this so we'll take it back to the sewing machine and when we put it through what we want to do is we want to make sure as we're putting it through that we have one seam going one way and one going the other you can do it right at the machine and fold them or you can just make sure they're done ahead of time and put some clips on it you can put pins if you prefer pins this is going to hold it down and it's it's going to take a little bit right took you a few seconds to do this but when you're at the machine every time you get to the intersection you've got to stop and make sure it's flipped stop and make sure it's flipped so no matter how you do it if you put it this way your bottom is facing up if we flip it this way then we have the bottom facing up so i find it easier just to go ahead and put the clips on and i can remove these and as i'm sewing i'll go ahead and flip the next one put the clips back on otherwise i have to stop at each square personal preference whatever one you prefer i'm still sticking with the same quarter inch that i've been doing get started and then when i get close because it seems right through here a lot of times on the machines it gets hooked up on this when you have the whether it's your full plate or for my bobbin it just seems to get hooked up and it flips all the seams see i didn't have to nest the seams i know they're all going to be perfect right through there you can feel them sometimes this part of it will flip underneath but as long as this part here is down you're okay so there's the first one and you can already see how everything is lining up so beautifully through there now just take this next one and i will fold it down make sure i'm going to follow my seam here this one these all go up and these all go down make sure nobody gets twisted and then i will sew the seam again you can make sure everything's lined up along the top if you're going like this and you know you're not getting the seam right so you make sure everything's lined up at the top and you'll have that nice fold there to go against so i'm just going to keep sewing these all the way through and i'll show you what they look like let me just show you what it looks like when i have to flip it so here i am i'm coming up to it i have this down i have to make sure that's flipped up underneath so when i come to this one i gotta leave enough room for my fingers this is down i gotta flip that one you can use a stiletto [Music] your seam ripper a double pointed needle but i have to stop each time because that seam flipped every time see now my little fabric is just sitting there for my next time when i'm ready to start sewing now this one you can go ahead and just take it and you could press it this way press it the other way if you want to press these open because you have maybe if you want it a lot flatter and it seems a little bit more bulky in areas there's a couple ways you can do it you could take a seam ripper you want to really have a nice new sharp one you just want to be careful you don't go into your seam and i've tried it where you put the ball in there and maybe mine's not sharp enough so i have to go and i put my point in between my two pieces of fabric and we're just going to slowly go now the ball makes it easier so you're not poking out through that way oh there goes mine so if you if you can do the ball put that ball end in first so that way because this part keeps wanting to poke out and it just opens up your seam for you so that you can press it open i did find it a little bit tough at the intersections and to hold this so if you don't want to do that you just take a pair of scissors you want to trim just at the very edge off so you're going to get up you can easy one this one here so you want to just trim a very very scant scan a little bit so you're just trimming the tip of it off that little edge you can put your rotary ruler down and try that but it gets a little bit off kilter right here so when you're putting it down with all the seam allowances and that will also see how we took off just a very very little sliver and again that allows us to press open our seams if we need to i didn't worry about it too much just give it a nice press you can also go from this side because it's easier for me i find to press along the fabric and i can also see to make sure i'm not getting any tucks you get it all pressed give it some nice steam if you prefer spritz it with water and use a dry iron the steam really takes that interfacing and it relaxes it and makes it lay down take a look at it and all of our little points they're also nice and perfect everything is lined up so nice and neat when we take our next block and we sew it together so we can put them like this and you do the same thing if you wanted to sew these blocks together you would just put these side by side just like if you were quilting and if you can a lot of times you have your seams nested in the wrong direction if you don't have a right side and wrong side and you can move it around you can always flip these around so that your seams nest and by nesting it just means that one seam allowance is going up the other is going down and when you put it together this is one of those things where it's hard to explain and a little hard sometimes to understand but when you do it you get it so when we line it up and our seam allowances are going in the wrong direction it just kind of locks in place because this seam allowance is pushing up against that because you have that extra folded piece of fabric so this part this block right here is a little higher than this one because we have that extra seam allowance technically they're not but when you're doing it this way it kind of feels that way so you can just nest those all together all the way down line them up take them to the sewing machine do your quarter inch and when you bring it open you will again have that perfect spot right there so keep making all your blocks and pile them all up turn them into now you can take this and turn this into a nine patch so if you had more of these if you have eight more to go all the way around especially if you're doing the color coordinated if you have your a trip around the world so there's like the way it crosses and it has like a triangle in the center google trip around the world and you'll see how it has all these different pathways so you'll make one block and then you can put the next one together and you'll be able to see on how they all go together so if you have a certain design to go or if you just want to use your scraps you can just take some time and press these all in like it's a rainy day like i know down here in florida when we have a lot of lightning the majority of us don't use our sewing machines or other electronic equipment like that so you could spend a rainy afternoon getting these all pressed get yours if you have your squares already cut into two inch strips or two inch squares you can just have fun laying them down make a certain block if you want to make them 12 and a half inches you want to make them 15 and a half inches whatever works for you you can just keep making them so i guess it really wouldn't be 15. you gotta because you're using two inch squares you're going to go by twos so what 16 and a half inch square and just keep making them and when you're all done you can turn them into a project this is the very first time you're going to make these and you just want to see how it feels and how it works before you get really into the project go ahead and just cut out enough for a little nine patch and that's going to give you enough just to go across a couple of seams both ways just to feel how it feels and see how it works and see how it comes out when it's done and how you don't need to trim it and then after you get an idea of how it is you can turn that into a little coaster a little mug rug and then work on your project so thank you for hanging out with me while i played with this gridded interfacing i have several yards of it so i'm sure you were going to be working on this in future projects so if you'd like to play along now or you want to make something of your own or just have some on hand for the next project maybe order some online or pick some up at your local quilting store just to have on hand for our next project so if you have any questions please leave them down below in the comments and i'll do the best i can to answer them your code word for this week will be square so we have a whole bunch of squares turning them into a square and eventually they will turn into a quilt or some other project so thanks for hanging out with me and i'll see you guys in the next video bye

Channel: RsIslandCrafts - Robin

Views: 6,160

Rating: 4.9408283 out of 5

Keywords: quilt fuse, quilt fuse grid interfacing, pellon gridded, pellon gridded interfacing, perfect patchwork quilt block, quilt tutorial, easy patchwork quilt for beginners, easy patchwork tote bag, easy patchwork quilt, easy patchwork baby quilt, easy patchwork cushion cover

Id: hQLkUfkVuv8

Length: 29min 40sec (1780 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021