Pattern Writing, Vocabulary Terms, Diagrams & Pictures

I wanted to start this post off with asking a question. What is your favorite method of pattern writing?

I am old school. Graph paper and coloured pencils for me. I have used Quilt Wizard, EQ5, EQ6 and Quilter in the Bernina Embroidery Software. Each electronic quilt program I have used was interesting to use. The block libraries had blocks I would never have considered using before so they were neat. The one draw back I find from them is that all the quilts had to be placed in rows, sashed, on point, squares of equal size.  I don't like being limited to that. 

I recently completed my first BOM pattern. I used my graph paper and coloured pencils. I then reverse engineered the fabric requirements and the methods of construction. 

This is the first block for the Quilt. When I designed it I wanted to show how colour placement was just as important as colour selection. Each month you make two of the same block but the colours are in different positions in the block.  

This is the second block for Month 1. The same fabrics are used but when placed in a different position can really change the way a block looks.

My goal as a pattern writer is to make anyone able to make my project. My friend Jean says I used 10 words when 2 will do but I want to make sure I am clear. I like to have all the information and little tips and tricks included in a pattern. I remember from one of my high school math classes my teacher saying take it down to its smallest part and build from there. That's how I have been trying to write this pattern.

Each month we offer a tutorial and sewing day for the people taking the block of the month. I find the most frustrating part of doing another persons pattern is figuring out what they are trying to get you to do. Diagrams and pictures help but having a person who knows what to do in the same room with you makes it so much easier. I say we all speak fruit but I may be speaking apples while you speak orange or grape. The words are the same but to me the mean something entirely different.

I will share any insights I learn along the way running this BOM.

Post again Soon!
Adrian

Cut Loose Press Marvelous Midi Messenger Bag

So I haven't posted in over a month! Where has my time gone. It has been a very busy few months personally speaking. My Lovely Husband had surgery to fix his deviated septum and nasal polyps, our dog Shaggy (we inherited him from my husband's grandmother who passed away 6 years ago) was ill and we lost him, and my son started Senior Kindergarten after having a very rough year of Junior Kindergarten.  Needless to say we have had a rough go this past month or so.

I am finally getting back to posting here and I hope to have a few posts ready to go over the next few weeks. I am Starting my new posting with a project from CUT LOOSE PRESS. This is a great little project, the Marvelous Midi Messenger Bag.

This bag went together easily. Supplies needed to make this bag, Main, lining, and pocket fabric, fusible fleece and decor bond. The Creative Grids Non Slip Curved Corner Cutter Ruler is a nice ruler if you do curved corners on bags, home decor projects and quilts.

Here are my fabric parts all cut up. This bag features two inside pockets, instead of centering a sew line and dividing them evenly I made one side a bit small and one bigger. I like to keep a book in my bag for those times when you have to wait so the bigger part was made to fit a standard paperback romance novel. Also included in this pattern, a cell phone pocket. I made two just because. I like extra pockets. You cut a long skinny rectangle and fold it in half. You place the fusible batting on one side of the back of the fabric and fuse to the fabric. You  then sew with fabric right sides together and leave about 2 inches open to turn and flip fabric right sides out. Clip Corners before turning it will make your points sharper. I then topped stitches along what will be the top of the pocket and the placed the pocket on the body piece and sewed them into position, make sure to catch the opening we used to turn the pocket right side out. I repeated this process for all the pockets in the bag.

For a messenger bag I usually like carry it diagonally across my body but this pattern's bag strap isn't long enough. Next time I make this bag I will make it longer. The strap itself has fusible fleece inside to give it some body. I sewed long lines along the length of the strap to reinforce the strap.

Next I sewed the body of the bag right sides together along the sides and bottom. I repeated this with the lining leaving 6 inches open along the bottom for turning later on during the final assembly. You will now have two rectangles.  Box the corners of the lining and bag body measuring 2 inches from the corner point.

 Finally I took the two flap pieces and the fusible batting for the flap. I layered them fabrics right sides together and the fleece on the outside of the pile. I took my Creative Grids ruler and using the 3 inch radius corner marked  an line on  the flap corners. I sewed the flap together on three sides (2 short and the one with the curved corners) following the draw line. I then trimmed the corners to 1/8 inch. Turn right side out and top stitch 1/8 inch around the sides.

Now all our parts are assembled. Turn your bag body right side out press out the corners so they are nice and sharp. On the back side of the bag baste stitch the flap into place. On the sides baste the bag handle make sure to keeps the bag strap straight. Insert the bag body part into the lining, matching the top edges. Pin at the side seams and centers of the body and lining, this will help keep your bag from shifting during the sewing. Start sewing on the back portion near the strap. I triple stitched over the bag handles to reinforce them. Sew all the way around the top edge. Using the whole we left in the bottom of the lining flip your bag right side out. Slip stitch the opening closed. Top stitch around the bag opening. Start on the back near the strap as we did in the previous step and triple stitch over the straps again. Your bag is now complete.

I made this bag in about 6 hours. I had a lot of fun making this and I will be teaching it at my Mom's shop JoyQuilts.

Foundation Paper Piecing!

I am going to give a few quick tips for Foundation Paper Piecing. I love, love, love paper piecing. When I first started quilting and my 1/4 inch seam wasn't the stunning perfection it is today, Paper Piecing made it look perfect. You can use this technique for traditional pieced blocks too! A quick disclaimer though... If you are fabric stingy and hate waste you will need to get over that to do my way of Foundation Paper Piecing.

My colour palette inspiration!

Foundation Paper Piecing is a great way to use pieces that would otherwise be too small on quilting projects. But if you like a little more order and continuity to your quilts like I do you can find out what size pieces you need by measuring from the sewing line to the opposite side. You need to make sure you leave enough extra to account for human error and I like to leave 1/2 inch extra on all sides.

Some tools I find really useful for paper piecing at the add a 1/4 ruler, a fabric folding pen, sharp pointed tweezers, scotch tape and a small cutting mat! Plus all the other regular sewing tools.

I do a rough pre-cut of my fabric, some people make templates to make sure the size is right. I cut up one of the blocks for a template but I don't actually cut the fabric to the template size I just make sure the template fits on the fabric I have. To make sure that my rough cut will fit the size of the pieces I measure from the first line of sewing. When sewing piece 1 and 2 for example I measure from the line between section 1 and section 2 for both pieces. For piece 3 I measure from the sewing line between section 2 and 3.  I leave my pieces in rectangle form because well I just don't like to wast time cutting little pieces. (I save all my little cut off ends in scrap bags and we sell them in the store or if they are too small for most people to use some of our customers have started to save them to use in dog beds for the animal shelters! What a great way to use those little tiny bits.)

The important thing to remember with Foundation Paper Piecing is that you will be sewing from the wrong side. Your fabric will be on the bottom and the paper on the top.  To start sewing take piece 1 place it right side away from the paper making sure it covers the whole space and over laps into section 2 by at least a 1/4 inch. Use your scotch tape, I make sure to make it a little less sticky by putting in on and off the table a few times or off the back of my hand, tape the fabric to the paper. Don't put the tape in any of the  areas where you will be sewing or you will sew right through it. (Picking bits of tape off is not fun trust me!) Next take piece 2. Line it up along the edge of piece on with right sides together, I like to do a quick check to make sure when I sew it together it will in fact cover my next section. Slide the fabric along the edge of piece 1 until you are sure it will in fact cover the next section completely after sewing and tape to the paper.

Flip the paper and fabric over so you can see the printed pattern. Shorten your stitch length to 2. The smaller you stitch length the easier it will be to remove the paper later. Sew two or three stitches before the line and back stitch this will anchor your stitching, don't stitch more than that or you will cross into the next areas sewing space and it will cause issues, try to stay with in the coming seam allowance.

After you have sewn piece 1 and 2 along the line leave the fabric right sides together, you will now need to go to your cutting board. Fold the paper along the line between 1 and 2. Take your Add a 1/4 ruler and trim the fabric to 1/4 inch. This is your seam allowance, you should only need to do this step for piece 1 and 2.  Next fold the paper back flat, take your fabric folding pen and apply it to the sewn line and fold piece 2 over so right sides are out. Let this dry.

Next fold the paper along the line between section 2 and 3. Take your add a 1/4 ruler, butt it against the fold and trim the excess fabric. Once you have trimmed this you will then have an accurate edge to place piece 3. Fold the paper back to flat. Line piece 3 along the cut line, make sure it will cover the next area and tape to the paper. Sew along the line anchoring the stitches at the start and end. Repeat until all the pieces are add.

Trimming down along the line between 2 and 3!

Adding piece 3!

Once all the pieces are added to the paper. Take it to your ironing board and give it a final heated press. After everything is laying flat, sew 1/2 away from the outer edge of the design with a basting stitch. This will keep everything tidy while you sew the rest of the parts together. Trim off any further excessive fabric or paper.

Sew the pieces together in numerical and alphabetical order. You will now need to remove the paper, the larger pieces should come off fairly easy. The seam allowance papers will be tougher tweezers will help get the paper out.

Come back and check out the final finish soon!

Seminole Table Runner Finish

So I have finally finished quilting the Seminole Table Runner I showed in my last post. I am a little later posting than planned. Its been a rough couple weeks schedule wise around here but it is finally finished.

I really love quilting and trying new techniques together with tried and true methods. For me the tried and true method is FMQ with my BSR. New to me is walking foot quilting. I have used my walking foot in the past but I never quite got the results.

First things first I pin basted my layers together.

 To finish off this runner I used 100% cotton batting and a thermal fabric backing that way it can stay on the table during dinner and will take the place of trivets and pot holders. I grew up in a large family but we only have one stove top and sometimes a dual oven but to get the meal on the table and keep it hot we were rotating things in and out of the oven and always looking for pot holders to protect the table cloth and table. I used my dual feed foot (built in walking foot) to stitch in the ditch around the center patchwork. When doing stitch in the ditch I usually use my BSR, that way if my seams aren't quite straight or laying flat I can make the stitching fit at the ditch.

When I do use my walking/dual feed foot I do a finessing to make sure my stitch ends at the points. By using the hand wheel on my machine I can make the stitch a little longer or shorter to make it end where I need it.

Next I used my BSR to add detail quilting in the centre four patches. In the black square I added a triple petals and in the gray I did a side to side wave.  I moved across the centre of the quilt from end to end for the swirl and then added the triple petals after.

After the center four patch was done I put my 1/4 inch dual feed foot back on and stitched point to point  in the background fabric. I then also stitched a 1/4 inch on either side of the first stitch line.

When I got to the outside on the centre patch work I used my Hera Marker from Clover to mark the straight lines. I no longer had a point to shoot for with the stitching and adding the crease line from the Hera Marker made it easier to stay on the straight in relation to the rest of the lines.

Instead of cutting my thread when I reached and end point I back stitched/stitched in place to knot my thread and did a jump stitch. I usually do this when a jump stitch will waste less thread than cutting the thread and starting it again. If you use this method make sure you get a good knot in your thread otherwise you will lose your stitching and have to do it all over again. After I was done stitching I went back and clipped all the jump stitches.

After the middle of the runner was complete I used the dual feed foot and stitched in the ditch around the borders. Finally the runner was done, except for the binding, aka my least favorite part.

Thanks for stopping by!

Adrian

Brother Scan N Cut and Why I love it!

If you have never heard of the Brother Scan N Cut you will now! I love this thing! It is a multi-medium stand alone cutting system. One thing about me is that I hate hand sewing, well that's not really true Hand Sewing Hates Me! Applique, Embroidery, English Paper Piecing, and Binding are techniques I wish I could explore fully and increase my skills but Carpal Tunnel and my general klutziness has made holding small needles painful at times! When we started being a Brother Sewing Machine Dealer at my mom's quilt shop, JoyQuilts Website,  it was just as they were introducing the Brother Scan N Cut. I fell in love with this machine. Years before I wanted to be a scrapbooker, but never made it past getting supplies. I looked at other cutting machines over that time couldn't justify the price of the machine and the shapes for cutting. With this awesome thing it has a built in scanner and can cut whatever size, shape, or pattern I can scan!

We started a Scan N Cut Club at the store about 6 months ago to get the ladies who purchased them using it! Most still had them in the box and what little cutting they had done with it was problematic. They didn't know what settings to use or anything. There are so many great blogs or youtube channels for tutorials on the amazing things this machine can do!

We have cut several different mediums and made several projects with our Scan N Cut but my favorite so far has been our block of the month. The machine has 114 pieced blocks and 60 applique blocks. One of the things I also love about this is that it will draw on your 1/4 seam allowance, keeps me accurate. To make our block of the month with our Scan N Cut I chose 4 blocks that were in the machine. I changed the size of the blocks off set them and used lots of negative space and intense quilting.

This is a mini quilt. It finished at 24 inches on all sides. I used the solids from Kona. They were from the QuiltCon 2015 Charity Quilt Challenge Fabrics. 

This was the first block we made for this Quilt and the inspiration for the quilts name! We made four of these blocks and they were placed in the corners.

 Block 2 was a little more complicated because I changed a few of the colour choices from the what the Scan N Cut suggested.

We are cutting this block out this month on our Friday Club Night. The tiny pieces have some of the ladies so NO NO NO. But I reminded them that the seams are drawn on and the machine is cutting them not us!

Our Fourth block will be cut in July and we will also be cutting the extra white to off set the blocks in the right order. I really love how the sharp contrast of the background white shows the piecing.

I darkened this photo using Pic Monkey to highlight the quilting. I haven't really used photo editing software before this week. I wanted this photo to show the intense quilting I used on this Mini Quilt. I pieced this project with aurifil 50wt white thread, Kona Cotton Fabric, Hobbs 80/20 batting, and quilted with Mettler Polysheen colour 15, my Bernina 770 with the BSR!

So if you haven't tried the Brother Scan N Cut try it out! Post again soon!

T-Shirt Quilts with out stabilizer!

I have previously stated, a little over a month ago in fact, that I hate doing T-shirt Quilts. I never make them for myself always for customers of my mom's quilt store. Most of the time people are never happy with the final result, even though I explain the process, what the final product will be and how much the final thing will cost. On our quilt store website we have price break down on our services and in the end it seems to come as a total surprise to people how much the quilt costs.  I do take care when creating these special memory filled quilts making sure to preserve the most of each article and using as much of the clothing and printed designs as possible. With all that in mind and my general frustration at creating these one of a kind memento quilts when push came to shove I was pushed. A mother brought in her son's soccer jerseys and said it was for his grade 8 graduation, I crumbled. I told her yes I would do it, I am so weak! I explained people are never happy with the product or the price. (I have had one exception to this in my years of quilting!) I then proceded to show the mother what I would do and marked out exactly what of each shirt I would be using in the quilt. I wanted to make sure there would be no surprises in this one!

So here is a break down of my process of making quilts from clothes.

Tools I use are as follows:

-Rulers and/or templates for the exact size piece of the clothing I will be using.
-Marking pencil, I like the Fons and Porter Mechanical Fabric Pencil or a chalk marker if I don't need to be exact.
-Straight Pins
-My Sewing Machine and 1/4 inch foot
-Cotton Piecing Thread, I like aurifil 50wt.
-Scissors
-Rotary Cutter and Mat

So here goes my process:

1. Step one evaluate what parts of the clothing will be used and what will be the exact design of the quilt. For this quilt I am using a blue fabric as sashing between 12 Shirt squares and a 6 inch border. The finished quilt will be 3 x 4 t-shirt blocks sashed with blue.  I have marked the parts of the shirts using my 12 1/2 inch square ruler and a chalk marker. The importance of this step is that you will have a visual of what you will be actually using. This will show you any surprises like seam, collar, or shirt logo bulk! In my experience most shirts by the time you want to make a quilt from them have stretched and faded. Shirt logos and such will be a little off center if they were ever center.

2. The next part is actually cutting these one of a kind fabrics into usable quilt shapes. Take your fabric scissors and cut up along the side seams and through the under part of the sleeves on each side of the shirts. After making the shirts a single layer, place the ruler on the spot of the t-shirt you will be using. Make sure the shirt is laying stress free and flat, when you are happy with the shirt and ruler placement you can begin to cut. It is important to be able to cut all four sides without moving the shirt. Use the corner of your cutting mat in the corner of the table where you can reach two sides of the table or a swivel cutting mat.

3. After cutting all the shirts needed, cut the vertical sashing. This needs to be 2 1/2 inches wide by 12 1/2 inches long. You will need 8 pieces. An important part of this process is to have an accurate 1/4 inch seam and know how to do quilter math! Pin the sashing at the minimum places both ends and in the middle. If you have a particularly stretchy shirt pin more. Press towards the sashing, make sure you lower the temperature on you iron, use a pressing cloth, and don't stretch as you press.

4. Pin the rows together with the sashing. PINNING IS IMPORTANT!!!!

5. The next step is to cut the horizontal sashing. Here we will need our quilters math. The two outside t-shirts measure 12 1/4 inches, two 2 inch sashing and the middle t-shirt is 12 inches. All measurements totaled together equals 40 1/2 inches. This is the measurement we will use to cut our sashing. I have then marked the wrong side of the sashing with the above measurements. We will be pinning the sashing at the measurements, if you need more pins use them! With this method you will need to force the t-shirts to fit because otherwise things will get stretched out of proportions.

6. Join your rows together at the sashing using the measurements marked on the wrong side, following the desired layout. In order to keep the feel of the t-shirts and the bulk of the quilt make sure to pin and keep an accurate 1/4 inch. When starting and ending you may tend to make a narrower seam, check this using your ruler.

7.Once the rows are pieced together with their sashing you will need to cut the borders. For this t-shirt quilt we decided on a 6 inch finished border. Now for some quilter math again. To cut the two side borders we will need to add two 12 1/4 inches, two 12 inches and three 2 inches, for a total of 54 1/2 inches long by 6 1/2 inches wide, Cut two. Mark the wrong sides of the border pieces with the measurements listed above. Pin the border at the seam lines and the markings.

8. Now for the top borders. We will be doing the same marking and pinning as we have done all along. The quilting math is as follows, two 6 1/4 inches, three 12 inches and two 2 inches, for a total of  52 1/2 inches. Again mark the wrong side of the border and match them to the seams. PIN!

9. Now that your top is together. Give it a final press. Layer with your favorite batting and backing. When pinning or basting your top together don't be fooled by the stretchy t-shirts make sure you use the borders and sashing to make sure it lays flat. If your shirts are a bit trouble some place extra pins and make sure they aren't stretched in a weird way.  Free motion quilt to your liking!


This has been my process for making a t-shirt quilt top. Tips for quilting these types are loose all over patterns that are rounded, sharp pointed designs can create a strange pull on the shirts. When Stitching through logos your machine may skip stitches. I have been known to go stitch by stitch with my needle up down button to make sure the paint doesn't prevent my quilting. If the shirts have embroidered patches do all you can to avoid them. They are usually too think for regular needles to penetrate and can cause your machine to break needles.

Hope this has given you some confidence to create your own t-shirt quilt. Post again soon!