3D Quilting Session 1: Class Overview and Supplies Needed

In this class we are gonna learn a variety of different ways to create three-dimensional quilts. Now we have our flat optical illusion looking 3D quilt here. This is called a tumbling blocks, a quilt pattern and you can see it's just made up of lots of little blocks that look like they're stacked on top of each other and we have our other three-dimensional looking optical illusion quilt here. We have our squares where one looks like it's sticking off the surface more than the other one. We're also going to create actual 3D blocks that we are going to incorporate into our quilt tops and those are pinwheels and flowers. So to do all of these different obstacle illusion and actual 3D quilt blocks you really don't need anything more than your standard quilting supplies, but there are a couple of things that will make piecing some of these a little bit easier as well as quilting some of this a little bit easier. So we'll go over that real quick. So of course we have our machine that we are going to use. and when you are cool thing a lot of times people are using their most times people are using their quarter inch foot as that makes piecing easy. Cause we're doing our quarter inch seam allowance on everything. So we will use our quarter inch foot when it comes to piecing and putting our blocks together. But on some of these, when we get into talking about how we are going to do the quilting especially the obstacle illusion 3D quilt tops. We wanna do the quilting in a way that it doesn't ruin our 3D look. So I'm going to do a very subtle quilting and a lot of times that's going to be stitching the ditch quilting or just some sort of basic quilting to hold everything together, and for that I actually like to use my regular presser foot which is this one here or some sort of open toe or larger presser foot like this one here where I can easily see where it is I'm going. I like to use these as opposed to a free motion foot or a darning foot because I want to have the edges of my presser foot so I can align things up when I'm quilting and if you have a darning foot, you don't have that. So this is my preference and what I'm going to be using in this class today. If you have other feet that you like to use or something like a open toe or or free motion foot that you'd rather use for quilting you can go ahead and do that but this is what I'm going to be using for today. Now, again, speaking about quilting. we are going to talk a little bit about hand quilting as well, especially when we get to our folded three-dimensional quilts. So for that room to talk a little bit about hand quilting needles, so you will need whatever hand quilting needle you like whether it's the longer style or the shorter style whichever one you're more comfortable using. We are also going to talk a little bit about hoops. This is our hand quilting hoop. Again, it looks a lot like an embroidery hoops. So if you have one of those, you might be able to use that for this instead also, but you'll want some sort of hoop for doing your hand quilting. Then most people quilt using thimbles. I have a variety of thimbles here that you can use whatever thimble you have that you use for quilting. Now there's a little bit of a difference between quilting of thimbles and sewing thimbles. So you just want to make sure that your thimble has a flat top on it like this or has some sort of raised edge around. We don't want one that has a rounded edge. These are sometimes called slip stop thimbles and it makes it so your needle can not accidentally slide off the tip of your thimble. Cause they're going to be using this for pressing our co quilting needle down into our fabric. So we need it to not be able to slide off of the top floor thimble. Now, if you're like me and you usually have some longer fingernails you can get a thimble that doesn't have an actual top on it like this one. So it does easily fit. Even if you have long nails and again, it still has this little bit of a lip here that will work. So you don't have to worry about your your needle slipping at all. So you're gonna need some sort of thimble, speaking about that quilting. We are going to need some sort of hand quilting thread. You want to make sure you are using a hand quilting thread not just a regular all purpose thread for piecing. So you'll want to have some of that. Then you'll want, obviously your basic notions. We have our scissors here for cutting our fabric, our snips. We also have our rotary cutter. You want your cutting mat, your ruler, things like that. Then for one of the first blocks we are gonna get into today is a tumbling blocks. That was the one that looks like a bunch of blocks stack on top of each other and for that, it has a template. Now there will be a downloadable available with this class that is this size template that you can just print out and cut off cutouts. You could trace that onto either template plastic or maybe a card stock or something to make it stiffer that you can then trace around but you can also find a template like this. Now I prefer to find a template that has these marks in them, and you will see what we use them for when we get into actually assembling that quilt top. But this is for marking where our stitch line is as we are going around. But if you, your template does not have that. You can get these handy little rulers. They come in a couple of different sizes. They're called add a quarter. You can find a smaller one that's add an eight, and this allows you to easily mark your quarter inch seam allowance which we'll need to mark when we assemble this block. So you'll need either a template that has these notches in them, a ruler like this that you can easily mark your quarter and seam allowance Or if you have just your standard quilting ruler it's a little bit bigger and maybe a little more cumbersome to work with but you can still obviously use that to mark as well. So some sort of ruler for that you also need your marking pencils or pens or whatever you choose to use and then of course, some fabric. Other than that, we are ready to get going and actually start learning how to assemble these blocks. So we are gonna start with one of our optical illusion quilt blocks and you're going to learn how to make that next.