Work Smarter Not Harder - Tips & Tricks from the Tucker Team

hi everyone welcome to another thursday tips and tricks um you know if we don't get specific questions that uh people would like to have a tip or trick about um i get to choose and you know one of the things that i found when i was carrying through with our last tip and tricks um was something that is really important to me and should be to you and something that if you can learn to do well will really improve your efficiency so let's go back and recap a couple weeks ago when we did our tips and tricks we were doing the blockbuster pro uh pattern called spring blossoms and what we were talking about was how to make those mirror images and i also had drawn up a couple of different options for an actual project using the blocks when i discovered that the eight and a half inch version and the 12 inch version played well together that eight and a half inch version is going to fit right in there and um but the version that won the election was actually version a which meant that those eight and a half inch blocks are going to be exactly the same color as the 12-inch blocks and you know when something like that happens in a pro in a project or even if it's not exactly the same color keeping pieces organized for two different size projects or two different size blocks um is really critical to staying on track so whether you tried this before or not i'm a really big fan of paper plate organization what do i mean by that when i cut the strips that i needed to produce the four additional 12 inch blocks that i had to build for this and the four additional eight and a half inch blocks when i cut those lemoine star strips the eight and a half one on one paper plate and the twelve one on another when i produced the flying e sections the flanges that i needed for the eight and a half inch blocks one on a separate plate and same with the 12 inch so that when i was picking things up i was staying organized i wasn't looking at them trying to figure out what was going on which one went to which size especially when it came to these squares that are close in size but not exactly the same even in the block so keeping your block keeping your pieces on plates is really helpful one of the things that i will frequently do is i'll make notes on a plate too so that i can if i get interrupted when i come back i can just pick right up with where i'm where i'm working now that's one thing that i do also when i'm producing multiple blocks all the same is i try to work in an assembly line this is what the layout of the block looks like and i could indeed build one block and then build the next block but what i decided and cut and produced all the shapes that i need i realized i need to create 16 of these blossom sections to produce these last four eight and a half inch blocks and rather than creating a block at a time what i do is i take all 16 and put them in a stack at my sewing machine so that as i go to produce the blossoms the 16 that i need i will team these two pieces up and sew 16 of them together and do it with chain piecing i will stitch these two pieces together and keep them together do my chain piecing and i don't know if you've done this or not before but along with chain piecing i also do chain pressing when i've got that flying goose and square section to put together i know i'm going to press toward the square because i've made my pressing plan put the square on top set the seams and then one right after the next press those seams the way you want them to go and i do that with all my pieces i do the same thing when i'm working with the flying goose and the lemoine section i know that i'm pressing toward the lemoine take the whole strip all at once put my lemoine quadrants on top set my seams and that way i'm not picking up two pieces off of here and saying oh which way do i have to press when i do it as a chain if i get the first one right then all of them are going to be right now remember if you get the first one wrong then they're all going to be wrong you'll have to go back and fix them all but you know working assembly line with chain piecing and chain pressing are really great ways to maximize your efficiency and um you know i i talked a little bit about the paper plates they can be you know really nice paper plates they can be very inexpensive paper plates but one of the things that i do also is if a quilt gets interrupted i will take and i will take the shapes that are the pieces that i've got in process and store them in a bag on my paper plate this is the scrap project that i've been working on doesn't have a deadline so it's just kind of in process all the time but my first place my first plate has the squares and triangles that i need to produce they're just cut the second plate has one part done and then more triangles that are going to be needed to be added to that the third plate has what is actually the next step in the process some piecing done strips for the next section and then the last plate actually has blocks that i've done to that and this is as far as they're going to go and i've got a stack of those and they're ready to go because i don't tend to like to cut everything all at once and then then do all step one i like to be able to see what things are going to start to look like when they're all done and another thing that i do is if i'm working with a scrap quilt and i can add more fabrics to this but i wanted a common background fabric so when i put this into my bag for future work i put that same background fabric in there and that way i'm not searching through my stash trying to figure out which white background fabric did i use to be able to keep this all the same so hopefully these couple of little hints and tips chain piecing chain pressing you know stacking and assembly line construction are going to help you going forward with your time efficiency with your productivity with your organization and get those quilts finished that much faster so i've got my work cut out for me i've got to put all of these eight and a half inch blocks together this is what the project's going to look like when i get those blocks uh put in there in a couple weeks i should have it done and i'll give you a quick show and tell but hopefully hope that you enjoy the trips and the tips of today's lesson and enjoy the sunshine if you have sunshine in your area it's been really nice uh we're feeling well a little bit springy here right now so take care everybody and i'll see you in a couple weeks

Channel: Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design

Views: 5,114

Rating: 4.9737706 out of 5

Keywords: Studio 180 Design, Deb Tucker

Id: vMcqVhYZy4U

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021