Your First Quilt - Beginner Tutorial, Part 1

hey everyone its Melanie welcome back to my channel today's video we are gonna make your first quilts super excited about this little series where I think we're gonna do four videos but we'll see this will be video number one and we are gonna make your first quilt together alright so this is kind of what it looks like patchwork made with a charm pack okay so we're gonna take one of those daunting steps right out of your first quilt and use a pre-cut that will allow us to just get right to sewing so that's what we're gonna do for this first video we're gonna get this top sewn together your first quilt it's gonna be super fun and then I'm gonna show you how to baste it and quilt it and bind it and all that good stuff but I'm gonna walk you through really slow so this is gonna be a series meant for those of you that have always wanted to learn how to make a quilt and so this is gonna be like absolute beginner I'm gonna go super super slow I also wanted to tell you guys about my five days to better quilting free mini class so this is a little mini class I've offered for a long time but in case you haven't seen it it's called five days to better quilting so that's the number five days quilting calm and I've had this available for awhile I just went back in and made sure that all the videos are working and all the emails that look good it has so much information and I still regularly get emails from people letting me know how much they enjoyed the little class and and how much they learned from it so if you're a beginner quilter that is also a great resource for you guys I have lots of like the list of good fabric manufacturers and tools that you might want to invest in and all kinds of things so definitely check that out again five the number five days quilting calm but let's jump right in I've got a nice beginner tutorial for you let's make your first quilt hey everyone so today's video is going to be how to make your very first quilts so I'm gonna walk you through all the steps and my biggest recommendation when you're making your very first quilt is to start with the charm pack so we are going to be making a basic patchwork small quilts nothing too unmanageable so I want you to find a charm pack and charm packs our five inch squares and they're already pre-cut for you in the entire line of fabric so there's lots of them to choose from I'm gonna actually be using this one from the fabric line Caturday that's what it's gonna look like but any other charm pack that you would like to use pick one out they should have about 42 pieces in there they're all about the same size so find one of these and then we will head over to the sewing machine so actually before we head to the sewing machine we want to do our layout so we want to take this apart and find a dining table a floor a clean surface of some of some kind to lay out your fabric so play around with your layout and as long as you have 42 squares in your charm pack I want you to arrange it so that you have six squares across and seven squares going down so go ahead and get your layout figured out and then we're gonna organize everything and head over to the sewing machine the great thing about the charm packs is that they're pre-cut for you so that takes a whole step out so when you're very first getting into quilting it's a great start okay so here is my layout I just did this on the floor of my sewing room so you don't need anything super fancy now I'm gonna show you how to organize your stacks of fabric that way you can take everything over to the sewing machine and you won't have to keep getting up and down the first thing that you want to do though is take a picture because inevitably my cat comes along and knocks over a stack or something happens and this way you'll just have a back-up plan so that you can refer to it in case you need to this also helps you sort of determine if you want to change anything in your placement for example you know I'm okay with this but this is a little bit of a solid block down here I maybe would want them to move some things around so you can kind of check it out that way all right so this is how I like to organize my stacks and if you find a different way of doing it that works better for you feel free to do that instead so what I like to do is take two columns at a time so I place right sides together so right side on top of the right side and then I stack from the top going down so then I will know that I need to sew along this right edge and that this is the top fabric of columns 1 & 2 so then what I'll do is I'll go and do the same thing on the other 4 columns and I'll stack them and label them that way we can head to the sewing machine and not have to worry about getting things misplace we don't have to get up and down everything is there we could just zoom through and get everything sewn alright now here we go we've got our three stocks I labeled them call them 1 & 2 3 & 4 5 & 6 so we're gonna put 3 4 5 & 6 aside for now and here's column 1 & 2 now I'm going to teach you a technique called chain piecing and this is a lifesaver when it comes to quilting and it makes it go really fast very efficient you don't use up too much thread so it's great you can use a thread that is whatever you like I use Artefill and I like a kind of soft dove gray like this especially when I'm using lots of different colors from my fabric line so if you're using all very light colors you can use white or all very dark colors just something that coordinates with everything so the way chain piecing works is you're gonna grab your first two pieces of fabric remember everything is should be the right direction we know we need to sew down the right side we are gonna line up our edges and we're gonna measure our quarter inch seam so everything with quilting is quarter-inch seam allowance and we're gonna measure that from the edge of our fabric so if you have a pink edge this little zigzag edge is called a pink edge and if you have that we're gonna measure that quarter inch from the outside of that not from the inside of that zigzag so I'm gonna place this underneath my presser foot don't worry I will get a close up and I'm going to use a piecing foot but many of you as a beginner quilter may not have a piecing foot for your sewing machine and a piecing foot just means it's already a perfect quarter-inch so I'm going to show you how to use your plate that comes on your sewing machine so right down here on this plate that says one - fourths right there you'll see it on your machine and I'm going to line up my edges with that line so there's no need to backstitch with piecing quilting and then we will sew that through now don't cut your threads we're just gonna press on that presser foot and get a few extra stitches and then we're gonna grab the next two fabrics from our pile line up those edges lift up that presser foot and then we are gonna continue sewing now occasionally pre cuts are not cut perfectly and so that's okay we are going to kind of watch out for that in our next step but if you see some edges that aren't quite lining up don't stress out and you're gonna just keep doing this chain piecing with all of your fabrics until you get to the end of your two columns and I'll meet you there all right I've just finished my last one now we can lift up our presser foot take it off the machine and use your thread cutter or whatever you have to cut that thread so now I have one of these little guys that helps me cut everything but just regular old scissors will work just fine so I'm gonna go through and just remember that you need to keep the last one you did is one that goes on the bottom because the top the first fabric you've fed through the machine was from the top of the quilts so as we go down that way we can stay nice and organized and you always know that the seam is on the right hand side in case you got confused so here is my stock and I'm gonna put my label back on there just in case and you know sometimes I even like to pin it cuz my little cat Jack he's a little feisty one sometimes so I'm gonna put this aside and now I'm gonna follow that exact same method for the remaining stacks of fabric that I have and of course if you wanted to use to charm packs or three charm packs and make a nice big quilt totally fine I'm just encouraging you to keep it small for your beginning of quilting dirty so go ahead and finish the row three and four or column three and four excuse me and column five and six and then we will get to our rows all right so now we have all three piles done and ready to go and now we can start putting our rows together and the cool thing about this method is that you don't even need to get up from your sewing machine we can just stay put right here or if you hear that piano in the background my son is practicing so we have the top stack okay so here's our top stack we're gonna move that over here and we have our next one and then we have our third okay so while we're sitting here just go ahead and create these rows so I'm gonna leave the third one here I'm gonna place my right sides together from the first set and the second set and then we will send this through the machine and I'm going to go ahead and cut that one I'm gonna open it back up and then I'm going to add the set from the third stack to the end right sides together line up those edges and send that through the machine so now we've got call row one not column one what row one complete so what I do is I just set this aside I my work table is right behind me so I put this on my work table and that is the top one from the quilt right so then and we're gonna work our way down so then the top of that stack that I'm making of all the rows will be from the bottom of the quilt so all that to say just keep track of which is the top one which is the bottom one and if you need to refer to your photo totally fine so now I'll take the next one's so now so all of these together and keep doing that until you have all seven of your rows complete alright so here we have all of our rows now are complete with our bottom row here on the top so just keep track of that so what we need to do now is we're gonna put our rows together so we're gonna have the bottom row here and then we needed the next row and then I'm just gonna stack the rest of these up and out of the way okay so we want all of the seams from the bottom row going in one direction budget whether that's the left or the right doesn't matter you can do this at the ironing board if that helps you but I want to show you how you know I feel like as a beginner there's so many steps to quilting so I'm trying to minimize the steps and and have you feel confident about what you're doing so all of the seams need to be facing let's say to the left okay so that means this seam underneath where our connections are they need to be to the left and so you can just do a little finger press just kind of gently run your fingers along those seams and I want to just kind of teach you this concept this is called nesting your seams and then what happens is the next row up here all of these are going to be facing to the right okay so I'm going to finger press these as well to the right and what that does when the bottom is to the left and the top of to the right you have the seams lock into place when you sew them together and that makes it so that you get those nice perfect corners those perfect little patchwork corners okay so we did a little finger press you can do this with the ironing board if you want but I don't I just sit at my machine and do it our seams going opposite directions and that's good we like that because that seam will lock that seam will lock into place and you'll get that nice perfect corner so what I recommend for beginners is pin all of these intersections until you get the hang of it so I've got those seams nice and locked together so I'm gonna add a pin then I'm gonna go down and same thing I'm gonna kind of wiggle you can kind of wiggle it in your fingers and feel that seemed like there but right up next to each other will slide a little pin in there and then go to the next one so now that that's done we can send this through the sewing machine [Music] when you get close to the seam going through the needle take your PIN out and hold your fingers right where it was and slowly send it through don't run over those pins with your sewing machine don't want anybody sending a broken needle into their eyeball sometimes as you run it through the underneath seam kind of flips back toward yourself so just make sure everything's laying flat all right let's see how we did so that's how you want your points to look that is what nesting the seam does helps you get those nice corners and if you did not get that nice corner that is okay please do not rip it out as long as your stitch is good and your fabric is connecting keep going because there's nothing more so to begin are gonna have feeling discouraged and having to rip all your stuff out no one will notice in the end I promise so now what you'll do is same idea so if all of these from the top row the seams are facing to the right so that means our next row the seams are gonna feed the opposite direction so we can lock in those seams together and nest them so make sure we get those nice points and that's all there is to it to continue putting your entire quilt top together so once your quilt top is sewn all completely sewn I'll meet you at the ironing board and that is when we're gonna give this a nice good press alright so here's our little cool top ready to be pressed I've got my iron on now what we're gonna do we're gonna flip it over to the back and we're gonna give it a nice good press the two things there's two ways of doing this you can iron your seam open which basically would mean to split this open like so and you would iron along there I don't think it's necessary when we just have these standard seams when you get some more complicated things like stars where you have a lot of fabric kind of bulking up these seams then I think that's a great way of doing it but I'm gonna do it to one side it's also a little faster than ironing it open but there is two ways of doing it so I do want you to be aware of that so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take my iron and I'm gonna press it down and I'm gonna press down all of these themes as well and when you press and quilting you want to press and lift press and lift we don't want to run the iron along the fabric and distort anything and we also don't want to use steam so a dry iron is usually better a little steam is okay if you need it if it's super wrinkled so I'm going to press the seam down and I'm gonna do that for all those row seams and as I'm moving it along I'm lifting it slightly hold it in place lift slightly I'm lifting it up and then I'm pressing it back down that way we'll have nice pressed seams and we can go to our next step but once you do that you'll have this adorable little quilt top that we literally made so fast I mean look how easy that was right I hope you felt like it was easy alright what do you think let me know in the comment section down below what you think this video I'm so excited for you guys let me know how it's going if you're a beginner quilter let me know if you have any questions did I leave something out are you unsure about something I would love to know and love to be able to help you out so leave comments down below all of the fabric that I use different resources great blog post that might be helpful all that can be found in the description box below the video so this is gonna be video number one I will also once those videos come out I will have down below linked videos two three and four for your basting quilting and binding so all of that will be available for you guys as well so stay tuned for video number two and let me know how your first quilt goes tag me on social media send me photos I love to see what you all are working on and I love to see how you take my projects and make them your own like I want to see what charm pack did you pick out what was speaking to you at the fabric store or on those photos as you were looking at them online thanks so much for watching I'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Melanie Ham

Views: 1,741,544

Keywords: how to, diy, sew, sewing, quilt, quilting, how to sew, how to quilt, first quilt, beginner, your first quilt, how to make a quilt, melanie ham, beginner sewing, patchwork, charm pack, easy, absolute beginner, chain piecing, layout, baby quilt, baby quilt patterns, free quilt patterns, quilt patterns for beginners, quilting for beginners

Id: -TyihOEvJ8E

Length: 19min 1sec (1141 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2018