Variegated 3 Dudes - Making it Fun - Episode #59

are you ready for a project that is way easier than it looks well i've got the perfect one for you today let's get started [Music] yes that is correct if you've been following my career you do think you recognize this quilt from when i was on man sewing and jenny doan and i did the the project we called the three dudes modified which was originally stolen from my good friend raymond steves and he was part of the three dudes quilt shop in phoenix arizona and is now part of 35th avenue so when vac at phoenix arizona where i did a trunk shot trunk show excuse me before all of this cove thing happened and so anyways it's always fun to re-modify a pattern and there are a couple of few changes but if you do know my three dudes modified pattern well you know this is going to be easy and awesome but it's even easier than the original because there's not as many strips and the thing i'm most excited about today's project is our incredible variegated fabrics from michael miller by the way welcome welcome welcome everybody i am rob appel from michael miller fabrics national sales manager and clown with a couple of video cameras and i have a blast doing these tutorials here at making it fun for all of you try to put out a video once a week usually on wednesdays we'll see what happens next week who knows now the thing i am pumped up about the most we've got eight colors and this is the ombre border part of our quintessentials line uh which is building in our basics products that we do now ombres are variegated or fabrics that change color or have a gradient we'll call it now what i love about ours is check it out that's right you're seeing the huge and it's kind of a mess when i do this but i'm going to do it anyways real quick and i'll show you all the colors but is that incredible so that's the number one best feature is you get all of the color range where a lot of other variegated fabrics actually double back at the fold so you don't get nearly as much color gradient which makes this way way more functional especially in strips like we'll be using today the other thing is look at that bling yes we have a metallic on here and it's just fantastic maybe you can see in the overhead camera a little bit better these are some of the blocks we'll be making very shortly but you can hopefully see the beautiful metallic uh there so let's blow through these colors real quick i'll just kind of do this so you can kind of see the color gradient because we're going to be working in the entire gray family today and so i just want you to see the other seven beautiful colors making the total of eight beautiful colors that are available and i have to say i'm a sucker for this one and the next green that is coming look at that beautiful color range there in this aqua color and i'm sorry i haven't even memorized the names i'm terrible i am terrible i am terrible this one though i do love and i believe this one's called jade and oops i didn't there this is what i'm trying to show you look at that amazing color range i am so so excited about that and these have already shipped out to your local quilt shop so you should be able to find these maybe they have them on their website if you're checking in advance under quintessentials if not it's under ombre border or making it fun michael miller isn't that awesome there and then we have these two really neat earth tones which i love how neat and especially if you're doing different like tones of mountains and different stuff i just love this one here and then i should say last but not least what we'll be working with today is this amazing gray shade so you see the dark there it goes all the way down to this light and we're going to use this almost to look like three different fabrics as we work so let me get you late like let me get you set up for all of that as we get started here now i like to know where i'm going as a maker so we're going to go backwards today here are the individual block units we're going to make the same block but you're going to be thinking in groups of light medium and dark so you have a light grouping a medium grouping and a dark grouping and these squares actually came from starting originally with a strip like this that i then just added in our awesome solid jet black uh or you could use our cotton couture black either one they're both incredible high density deep deep dark dyed blacks i'm excited i can't talk today sorry gang now as a moment ago i was mentioning this is a slight variation from the other variation of the three dudes because the original pattern had three different strips in here in different colors well in this particular project we're using the same two fabrics we're using the variegated gray this ombre border in gray and we're using the solid black that's all we need is just two colors for this project right and that's what's going to make it super easy and um like i said a pretty cool thing i've wanted to try this quilt for a long time with variegateds and i'm pumped up about it drop into the description below follow the link on over i have a beautiful free pattern here with just some quick cutting instructions i should call it more cutting information but in case i'm going a little too fast because i'm always so caffeinated you can print this out keep it next to your sewing machine and your cutting station and you'll know what we're working on here so that being said let me go ahead and keep these organized we're going to need them in a few minutes when we get onto the design wall and i'm going to go ahead and get my strips ready to lay out here and point out what we have going on so for every strip set row and in case you're thinking of different colors i will give you the information for both we need two identical strip set rows and you need three groupings so technically we're going to make six strip set rows where'd that thing thing go here this is a strip set row right the whole thing so you need six of these i'm going to make six identical versions of this but technically you could make it with let's say three colors and in that case you would make two of each because i'm going to need you to match back up the lights to the lights the mediums to the mediums and the darks to the darks so that being said for every one row you need one of these uh wide strips here and this wide strip is five inches cut it's cut raw at five inches five inches on the table right now before we get started all of the black strips or all of our solid strips are always one and a half inches and you need four for every strip set row so i've got a bunch of these pre-made already and then what falls in between those are the two and a half so for every strip set row you will need two and a half of these and as you're dry fitting them just making sure that the orientation is going to be the same uh for all the rows meaning that the darks are on one sides and the lights are on the other now for me the light is where i wanted to start cutting because at the end when it's all said and done we're going to have these remnants of the strip set rows after making the block units and from here we can actually make our borders and i like to have a darker border around the center brighter portion of my quilt because i believe that brings the eye into the center and keeps the audience more entertained with the project itself a little art trick 101 there for you so we're going to work from the light side for making blocks working to save the dark side for making borders down the road that's a little design extra bonus for all of you today so that being said i'm going to sew from the light side and we're going to break grandmother's rule today we're not going to go up one way and down the other and all of this kind of like back and forth stuff we are going to sew all in one direction and one of the things i do and i haven't done it so i'm just going to look over here and do it up beep stop is i'm going to reduce my stitch length i almost had seam allowance like i did in the last video better edit that out stitch length to a 2.0 i want the machine doing the work for me i don't want it pulling extra because i want to make sure that i don't get a bunch of wave or veering in my strips when i'm done so in order to do that i'm actually going to start here with pieces one a black strip and piece two one of the narrow variegated strips with the light color in my fingers i'm just going to lay these together selvage to selvage i've already made sure they're both about the same length i'm going to come on over here to my presser foot and i am sewing with the second strip in my line of sight so i've actually got the bigger one on top of the smaller one right now but for just these two it's not going to matter and then i'm going to keep a nice even little pace letting the sewing machine do all the work up against that quarter inch seam allowance a little quarter inch edge guide and we are literally just going to go so nice and slow through this all the way to the end we do not need to be in a rush just keep a nice even little pace and here we are at the other end nice little matchup nice little lineup now as we come off of the machine i want to have myself nice and organized in my ironing space so i can iron out this whole strip and what i'm going to do now is i'm going to iron also into the new work so if this is piece number two that i'm looking at on the top because piece number one was down below i'm going to press and i'm just going to run my iron along that edge to set the seam and i know that a lot of us really enjoy the seated sewing kind of assembly line mantra and you can even do these kind of as a chain piecing you could do each section at a time like this but what i really want you to hear me say right now is i want you to press after every seam i've done this both ways and if you take the time to press between every seam you'll get a much nicer much more crisp straight seam allowance and you'll keep the veer out of your strip set row we're going to really want these to look awesome when we're done so i'm just going to take the time and i'm literally going to stitch on and press over and now like i said i've done unit or strip one strip two here's strip three so i'm just going to grab this and i'm just going to line it right up and i'm just going to continue on sewing until this entire strip set row is done it's going to take me a few minutes so i'll be right back with that completed and then show you how to make your squares into the next unit blocks so stay tuned i'll be right back didn't take as long as i expected even with the fun little transition in there i now have the other strip set made and what i really want to encourage you to do even though you see me with squares already on the table that's just for the magic of television the best way to handle this project and make sure murphy does not come into your sewing room and hand you your seam ripper is to do all of your strip sets at first before you cut anything because what we're going to do to figure out the size of our squares because believe it or not we all have a different size quarter inch how does that happen anyways so i'm going to stack all of them up make sure that they're all the exact same width this way and then i'm going to take out a ruler and i'm going to measure from the bottom all the way up to the top edge and the ones i've got done as well as these ones right here happen to be 12 and a quarter but don't take my math for that do exactly what i just did measure from the bottom edge up to the top edge nice and straight and whatever is that height we're going to now make squares out of it i also do not want you to cut more than one at a time because i really want you to keep these things straight and we can make some nice slight little adjustments as we go through so this is how i handle it i'm going to first take and just address it nice and i'm going to come over here because i mentioned earlier we want to start from our light sides so as i come through here i'm actually looking at this strip here this strip here this strip here and if i have to do any slight adjustments or tweaks i do that to begin with because i want both edges to really read nice and square i'm going to cut off this edge this way right at the top of the selvages right save that for later because it says michael miller on it awesome okay then i'm going to take the entire strip i'm going to rotate it around and prepare now to make these 12 and one-quarter inch cuts for myself now yours will be pretty dang close to that measure but i can't guarantee they'll be exact so to do that i'm going to come over here to this end here set my 12 and one quarter marker from my square ruler so that first the line runs nice and perpendicular i guess or running right underneath my line marker on the 12 and a quarter now once again i'm checking all of my strips to make sure that nothing's going really cattywampus at this point making sure everything looks really nice and then i'm going to take the time to slowly and accurately cut one square there slide it over and because we are dealing with a gradient i would like you to keep these in order as well lights mediums and darks find your 12 and a quarter or whatever your personal measurement is make sure everything lines up really nicely within make yourself another cut if for some reason this were to get skewed it's wiser and we do have enough to fix it and then come back and make sure that you have nice clean cuts on both sides and the last cut here and as i mentioned earlier we'll set this aside for the borders but i want to show you how to get your really cool block units made so then what i did is i looked at this and you can see there's a density to our awesome metallic triangles in the gradient itself more dense and they get less dense as they head towards the other side or i guess i should say towards the center and then on the other side they're dense again so right now this is the dense or this is the bright side and it's nice and low on my block and i'm going to set all of my blocks up just that way so that i've got the bright side low and then when i grab the matching unit this is the same one right same shades not the medium not the dark i like to go with my light side on the right side because it rhymes and i can remember it in doing this what i want you to really notice is look at my seams right i'm going to run them perpendicular or in the opposite directions of each other i've got these beautiful perfect squares and now i'm going to sew myself into a pickle watch this i'm going to take my quarter inch seam allowance and i'm going to head right back on over to the machine and i'm going to do just that i'm going to start at one edge and this is the toughest edge because i've got the folds from earlier heading in the wrong direction so now i'm just going to use my fingernail to just push those under and then just like you got a base hit on softball night i want you to run or sew right through that corner you can lift your presser foot make your rotation make sure everything's lined up underneath drop the presser foot again and keep on sewing i don't want you to guess the pivot point i want you to sew off the edge we're going to do this all the way around you're probably noticing that i'm putting a little pressure down here and i also like to keep pressure on the opposite corner from where i started that helps keep this little weird pucker that can try to develop on the last run out of the way another base hit rotate and keep on sewing that's why i love a needle down function making sure everything lines up and isn't getting cattywompus in there and we're right back where we started at so i'm just going to use a moment here use the thread cutter on the machine and it doesn't matter which side we use the next step i want you to do is do yourself a favor and just take a moment and safely but quickly dog ear these corners or cut off that space where those threads crossed a moment ago and then while we're doing that i'm not cutting off the actual cross just south of it so i can still see it that gets the bulk out of the way now what i'm going to do is i'm going to put this nice and secure and i'm going to grab not the square ruler we used a minute ago it's not large enough believe it or not we need a real long rectangle because i'm going to lay my rectangular ruler from one corner to the next right where those threads cross and i'm going to go ahead and cut myself a diagonal line here and before i do anything i'm not going to move anything i'm not going to touch the fabric i'm not going to check to make sure i made a good cut i'm just going to lift this up and i'm going to drop it right back down on the opposite two corners because what we have effectively done if you've seen my tricks before we actually just made ginormous awesome striped half square triangles check this out okay so as you start to open up you're going to get the awesome block unit that i was showing you earlier right pretty cool and these ones when they rotate back around they basically duplicate the others so we're going to run over to the iron real quick and i'd like to press these into the solid fabric it just makes life so much easier so i'm just going to hold that in the air i'm going to press it right over onto the solid fabric here like this we're going to do that for all the blocks and then we're going to get them organized and then we're heading to the design wall and i will show all of you how to construct this awesome quilt that hasn't even been made yet because it's still sitting here on the table in blocks so again the magic of television isn't it cool television do any of you kids even know what a television is anymore they're all called monitors because they're connected to computers love it okay so here's the deal i want you to now look very closely because remember we did have a bit of a gradient going on these look just like light blocks so you don't see the gradient in here this is awesome right you only had two fabrics and looks like you've used like three or four different colors if you count the black backing up this has got more density of triangles than this side you're going to get two of each notice that one is a less dense this one is a more dense what i like to do is organize these a more dense a less dense a more dense a less dense because when i'm building them on the wall i'm going to try to kind of get this diagonal opposite effects going now if you're using multiple colors or different kinds of gradients that's going to show up a lot more in the block work when you have this cool opposites effect that was one of the keys i did in the original three dudes modified but for this with everything being the same color it's just going to give us more of a balanced feel and keep that mind's eye from triggering and saying oh is it is it more triangles in one area than the other here as we approach the design side that's right i did i went ahead and finished up all the blocks for us and now you two should also have 12 from each of our color families your light your medium and your dark and as we dive over onto the design wall here i'm going to start right in the middle of the project and i'm going to start with our lightest fabrics and if you look at the the concept behind it the colors themselves and the structure the way i lay them out kind of form a plus sign so we're going to use that as our backup idea for design concept and i am i'm going to come right into the middle and i'm going to start to build that plus sign now the plus sign is going to be on point and so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to kind of try to get this first and of course getting the first block on the wall straight is always what's the most challenging right so i'm going to get that there and then i'm going to start to lay this in here and as i took the blocks off of my stack i had one of the more dense and one of the less dense right next to each other so then as i grabbed the next one if this is a more dense light less dense right here i want the more dense so they're diagonally opposite of each other this way and then i'm going to be able to drop in this less dense here and now let's just take a moment and talk about what we see okay so here you see that plus sign on point we're starting to develop these are the lightest colors and you're going to also see the amazing thing that happens within those black one and a half inch strips it's really really cool so we're going to burn up the rest of our light colored fabrics right now by just we're going to grow this this way and we're going to grow this thing out this way by using the light colors and now the other orientation instead of the plus sign is going to be kind of a square in a square look so as i do that if this is a more dense this is a little less dense so i'm bringing on a more dense piece and as i do that now i'm going to go ahead and just follow around this kind of what will form a square in a square more dense next one on here is going to be less dense you're probably picking up it's forming the next plus sign up there i'm going to do the same to below but i didn't get that right did i as i stepped back i noticed it too you already saw it all isn't this a cool block unit the way it forms up here okay so now we're going to go do this side so nope there it is so there you can see what i really mean by the plus sign that it's forming right and isn't that awesome the way that that secondary element of design comes together super super cool so we're going to move from the light squares we've already used up all 12 of those now we're going to then go into our mediums and we're going to fill in these corners first i'm going to try to do the same exact concept where i'm using a light and a less and a dark density or a more and less excuse me that's better term more and less dense so again here was my less dense so as i take it off of the stack then this would be a less dense just keeping the rotation going that way so that means that i'll do a more dense up here and now you also really see that square and a square element starting to form so once you've filled in the corners now we're going to actually use those mediums on the edges of the light so they're going to fill into these spaces here as we go just watching your densities [Music] again [Music] i want to get out of the way for a second so you can actually see how all of the colors and and the elements of that plus line are coming back together and now we're just left with the corners and the corners are going to be filled with the dark spaces or the dark block units there and so there's going to be three in each one and i don't know that it really matters too much on the densities but i'm just going to keep that same idea alive let's see what happens if i can come over here in this corner and show you as well here so we're going to do one here and then we're just going to carry out that plus sign here and here we'll do the same in all of the corners and just one last one left that i'll stick behind the corner there behind the stack of fabric as i begin to pull these off of the wall so there it is you can see the entire thing especially if i get a little bit more out of the way there and isn't that awesome the way that those ombre border fabrics work to form all of the different colors you needed all in one strip of fabric i think that's pretty dang terrific but what i'm going to need to do now before i can teach you how to do and calculate your borders or maybe i should have said calculate and then stitch on your borders i need to sew all of these together so we can measure it's going to be a square which will make our life super easy but i still need to get them stitched together and measure so we can figure out our borders so if you'll excuse me i'll be back in a flash like i said and it was super simple remember all you have to do is just go in order and take the blocks and stitch them edge to edge and build all of your blocks until you have rows built then take your rows so your rows together matching up where your black solid fabrics come together as your markers each time you don't even need to use pins and then basically just press in the favor of the way that it makes your rows to go together easy and you are set now i have the whole quilt top done and you can hopefully see here that i've put on more of the one and a half inch black solid border i needed five strips excuse me five strips for that it's been a long video uh because the quilt measures about 50 inches and so we needed that little extra and i just kind of pieced on that little piece as i went on to each of the full-size strips so we've got that done and now we're going to do these awesome borders i want to show you and check this out so i'm going to use a three inch strip now of the ombre and the leftovers the darkest portion of the leftovers had already had the pre-built in black strips just for a little bit of extra character so i've got three of those made i wanted you to see me make the last one so i've got a three inch strip like i said here of that wonderful ombre and then the way i did this here is i first lined up over on this darkest edge the edge near the selvage and so then what i'm going to do is i'm just going to take my ruler and i'm actually looking at it on the stripes here making sure it's nice and i'm going to cheat over just a little bit further good now we're going to cut that like that set it aside for later and then i'm going to spin it and i'm going to cut myself a perfect three inch strip this is one of those rulers with a half inch side as well so i always got to be double careful double checking measure twice cut once and here we go three inches like that and then yes you can do something else with that but i just didn't feel like technically figuring out how to piece this in as well so that can truly be set aside for later and now what we're gonna do is we're just gonna take this and the same exact principle right at the selvage i'm going to cut off here and i'm going to sew these two pieces together and i didn't pay much attention because you can see i mean to i didn't care which way the triangles went because they're going to be heading in opposite directions if you were really concerned of course make sure that you do them all the same because we're going to put them on kind of in a windmill fashion here in just a second all right so now we're just going to sew that little seam super easy straight across take a moment boy quilt certainly has grown hasn't it and just press this out and now while this is in my hand what i want to do is i'm just going to start from any one of my corners right sides together i'm just going to lay it out nice like that and then i'm going to take the dark patchwork side and i'm going to set it up in that top corner and i'm just going to sew it in to position and then i'm going to trim off the edge to make it match you notice that that's my form of measuring and it works terrifically as long as you take it nice and slow at the machine and like i usually say let the machine do the work [Music] so really i am i'm just going to set this here and i want everything nice and flat even before i press it and i really believe this is one of the keys here other than having your nice sewing machine working nice and not only am i reading this line but i'm also reading the line on the inside making sure everything lines up nicely there and now i'm just going to trim it off like that leaving that for another quilt another day and then i can press this open okay so to be clear i'm going to sew the opposite border side on making sure that i have the dark on the opposite corner so here's my dark over here so that means i'm going to start up here like i did before with the dark that way the borders and the colors match up on the same sides the same amount of gradient that way oh wait that sure turned out amazing if you ask me and i love the way that variegation worked on the border don't you now after i throw it on the long arm and machine quilt it all the way from the center out i will bind it in black also you can just even tell by my t-shirt that's going to be the perfect accent color to finish this off so again raymond steves thank you so very much for letting me steal this pattern a million years ago and modifying it again today right here i have had a blast teaching all of you especially using the brand new variegated fabric the ombre border from the quintessential wine from michael miller fabrics i have been dying to try this pattern with a variegated fabric that had that edge to edge color change and this worked perfectly i'm so glad you got to see it here folks i will be back very soon with another tutorial until then stay safe happy sewing and we'll see you real soon [Music] what are you actually still here that's fantastic make sure you check out some more of my other fabulous content right here on youtube i think it's terrific please subscribe while you're there and make sure you hit that little notification bell so you don't miss another moment of the fun

Channel: Making It Fun with Rob Appell

Views: 60,929

Rating: 4.9579349 out of 5

Keywords: Michael Miller Fabrics, Rob Appell, 3 dudes quilt, variegated fabric quilt, easy quilt block, strip quilt, Masculine quilt

Id: augyDMg0Ahk

Length: 33min 38sec (2018 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 23 2020