Community Quilt Along – Week 1

I'm glad that you could join me today. I realized that we're all kind of cooped up, and we're all wondering what will come next. But as we join together today and throughout the next few weeks on our Community Quilt-Along, I hope that you can find some comfort and some reassurance that life is going on along just fine. And that we can all pull together, work on a project, share some ideas, be that community for each other. So today's quilt-along, you might wanna later then invite friends to join along. Maybe you've seen what we're doing today and you think, "Oh, I have three or four other quilt friends." Send a message to them, reach out today, and have them view it. And maybe they can go through their scrap in too and create a really fun project. What we're going to do is work on a quilt that can be as scrappy as you want it to. The original quilt was done with charms and you'll find the link on the banner at the bottom so that there are nine patches and nine patches are very traditional. At a time like this when everything else in the world seems just a little off-kilter, what we need to do is find something that we find comfortable. And I thought about doing, and we thought about doing all kinds of different projects, but this isn't the time to go crazy sometimes. And when the things are off-kilter, you need to do something that is relaxing, something that's calming. And a nine patch is just that. There's some really great fabrics that you've collected over the years. You've used them in projects, but you couldn't part with the pieces. And I know because I'm the same way. I was raised to never throw anything away. You never know when you might need it. Well, those fabrics tell a story. So it's time to dig into that stash and start to plan out some ideas for our quilt along. If you have purchased in the past charm squares, which are five inch squares if you are used to that terminology. So five inch squares that are pre-packaged, those will work for this project. If you purchased, of course, those pre-cut two and a half inch rolls and you didn't know what you were gonna do with them, maybe this is the project for that. And we probably have multiple of those put away wondering, "Hmm, is it a rainy day?" Well, it might be raining. So it might be time to dig into those. Those also are the right math for this project. Hopefully, somewhere in your stash, you have some background fabrics. They can be those neutrals that you used in other projects. And you might end up doing a very scrappy version of this. You may have used white on white or cream on cream or different grades, or if you're more of that modern twist you may have some of those fabrics that have looked like newsprint or a map in the background. And you can put those together as a scrappy kind of background for this quilt. If you don't have a stash of those, I bet you have enough of the rest of your stash. You can do the entire project scrappy. So let's create your story. This is our history. We're living it now. Let's create our story that we can then use later to tell people about the time the world kind of stopped just a little. Okay, so what we're gonna be working on is figuring out some fabrics to use for our project. Now I am not really quarantined, but I'm off work now. So I'm stuck at home or at least in a townhouse. And I don't have all of my stash here. I do have another home, which I am not living at, my daughter's living at. And I don't wanna criss-cross contamination maybe possibly with her 'cause she's still working too. So I had to dig into the stash that I had here. So that limited a little bit what I can do, but here are some of the ideas I came across. Now, this is a legitimate set of fabrics that I had left over from a project. They looked like they all go together because they do. They were from my project, so that I don't get in trouble. I didn't go out and buy fabrics, and I didn't order fabrics. This quilt that I made called Scoop a few years back had all these leftovers. And of course, I couldn't part with them 'cause I loved them, so now they come in handy. As I look through, these are small prints. They're fun, they all go together, and they're cheerful. We need something that brings us joy. And I don't know when and where exactly. I think it might've been in the Winterset quilt shop in Iowa, I purchased a piece of grunge. It happens to be just enough for the white in this project. And because I started doing some modern projects, I had a chunk of gray around that I could get ahold of. So those go together really great as my possibility. And those are probably the ones I'm going to use for this project. But you know, you have as much fabric as I do. There's always another stash of fabric somewhere. I had this set and I'm not really an orange person. So how do you end up with a bunch of orange fabrics? You make sheets for a day care at some point, and they wanted color-coding for each of the classrooms. One classroom was yellow. One classroom was going to be orange, and one was going to be blue. Well, I happened to have grabbed these. I have no idea why I brought them back up here, but they're all triangles off of cutting the corners for sheets that fit over a stackable nap cots for kids. And you know, you can't throw fabrics away. They're all good. They're all coordinated. They're very modernly looking prints. So I may have to make a second one of these as we go along. So I've got turquoise and orange. And of course, when you fall in love with a white on white you buy a chunk of it, right? So a white on white that has circles or dots. So it looks very modern. I'd also bought auditioning for a t-shirt quilt and it didn't end up in it. A piece of white width, a double gray, little tiny dots in it. I dunno you can make that out there. And I think also that got kicked up from that t-shirt quilt, a really dark gray grunge, but it has that light patch in it, and it almost has a blue cast to it. So maybe it was meant to happen as another quilt. You know, cutting off of all these triangles is gonna create a tour of cutting because all this has been washed. It was used for, like I said, cots for kids. So it'll have to be washed to pre-shrink to make sure the cot covers all fit. So I have to go back and press all this. So pressing and cutting. Remember, pressing and cutting, it's not a sprint that or at this point it's more like a marathon, but training for a marathon a little at a time. So if I dig into this one, it's gonna be a lot of standing at the ironing board, a lot of cutting, but dig in, figure out what you wanna do. Now I'd cut a few pieces, and I hope you all brought your coffee or your tea because we're gonna need a little bit for this one. When I look at the pattern, I thought to myself, it's a nine patch and the fabrics are laid out in a design. So that now two and a half inch squares, those can be cut from five inch charms because a five inch split both directions like a window pane creates four two-and-a-half-inch squares. Now, before you cut into them double-check them. From company to company, charm squares can vary a little bit. Sometimes they're measuring from peak to peak on the zigzag cut that they put on them. Sometimes they're measuring from the valley, from the deepest part of that zig zag. So double check to make sure where that five-inch square actually falls so that you exact cut it in half, both directions. Now, and when I was thinking about trying to show you ideas yesterday, I thought to myself, you know, Nancy Zieman was a really smart woman. And if you don't know who she is or was, Google her. She was a woman who taught people to sew for years and years on public television. So in honor of her, I created myself a little design board so that it would prop so you can see it. And she used to use one just like this, so that her audience could see what she was working on. Because if I were to pick those up on a cutting mat, they would just all slide off. So, you know, that felt board you had in kindergarten? It comes in handy now as an adult. In our pattern originally it's laid out so that the color falls in a plus mark, which today but make you think maybe the Red Cross, which, you know, it kinda fits with the theme of what's going on in the world right now. 'Cause we all need that comfort brought to us by doctors and nurses. And then the neutral color is put in this position. Now that's one way to lay out a nine patch, but it doesn't mean you're locked into that design. Patterns, in the quilt shop, we usually call them strong suggestions. But if you're adventurous, and you want to do something different, you can play with this. You could have all four pieces match. You could come in and do another fabric in the center, change the look of it. You could go in and play even more, and instead of having the 4th of the colors, you could use five. Whoops, let me get them in here, do it this way, so that you have more color and then put your neutrals here. So it really depends on how much fabric you have. Now, I'm not saying that you have to use two colors. I'm not saying you have to use three. I'm saying you can use as many pieces as you want. Now, if you have one of those scanning cuts or one of those cutting devices that cuts two-and-a-half inch squares, you're in luck. You could probably cut nine different fabrics for nine different squares and have each of your nine patches be varied. So have a little fun, dig into those pieces though. It can be scrappy. If you are a lover of Civil war and you have reproductions, you're probably gonna create a civil work reproduction because you probably can come up with enough two and a half inch squares of those. If you're a lover of Modern or say, Kaffe, or a Tula Pink or any of the other wonderful designers who have created fabrics for us to just delight in, cut up those pieces. It only takes a few, four two-and-a-half inch squares isn't very many or even five, isn't gonna really use up everything you have probably. In fact, most of us find that when we start cutting into our stash, it seems like it's grown because we fluff up the fabrics and that nice organized little piece will become this massive kind of like a souffle of fabrics. And then we get inspired even more. Once we start pulling out ideas and putting things together, let that inspiration run. It's our escape right now. We need the color and the beauty to remind us that life goes on and we're gonna make it through this together. So start that cutting. Maybe you're gonna have to even start at the ironing board and press those fabrics because if they've been stored away someplace, unless you're very, very astute at folding all of your fabrics perfectly, you're probably gonna have to hit the iron. So my suggestion, if ironing is boring to you and you hate pressing fabrics, move closer to the TV. Find your favorite movie. It will make the time go fast and all your fabrics will be pressed in no time. So here's what we can do. This nine patch. What I think I might do, and I haven't for sure decided exactly my placement yet, but I think I'm going to do colors like this so that it makes kind of an X. And then if you get the pattern and look at it, I think I'm also gonna even take that out into my sashing or my in my cornerstones, but we'll see where it goes. The fun part is that everything that we do is our own. There's no right or wrong on color. You are uniquely and originally made. So your quilt will be the exact same thing. Okay, now if it comes to sewing and got the pressing done, you've got it figured out. The other thing is before you get to even sewing, I guess, is you need to take out that pattern and do a little bit of math. The pattern will tell you and the trusty calculator comes out or your phone. You need to find out or know how many blocks you're actually going to be making. And this pattern you're going to make, let's see, you're going to have a total of, oh, I can't see my number off hand. There are 42. Yes, 42, nine patches. So you have to kinda think about, decide, okay. If I'm putting bright color in the spot where it's just gonna be four of those brights or it's gonna be five, you'd have to figure out a little bit of math about how many pieces you need or here's a tip. As you're cutting, and you've got for that match, you decide that you wanna do it in top and bottom on North, South, East, West. Those pieces are gonna go together in a block. If you have Wonder clips, pull them out. Wonder Clip them together, that's a packet. That's a block, set it aside, do the same with the next color. If you want them to all match, put them, Wonder Clip them together, set them aside. If you don't have Wonder Clips, the good old pins that you use, the same thing, you can pin through four layers easily. Keep them together like a packet, so that you can then see, okay, I've made progress. I took three little packets and I made a couple of blocks. And now it's time for lunch. Give yourself that time to enjoy the process. Work at it at a small pace. Don't like I said, it's not a sprint to the end. We wanna enjoy this process. So then if you're cutting background, and it's gonna be scrappy, you can just stack up those fabrics, those two-and-a-half inch pieces right beside you. I know, I have a hard time doing scrappy. I remember my daughter even coming into the quilt room at one point going, "Mom, you just gotta let it happen." And I'm like, "I can't, "I always wanna match stuff too much." And she just started handing me pieces. And I'm like, "Really?" And she's like, "Yes." So just let it happen. Don't get overly worked 'cause getting fabric right now is really gonna be hard. Even trying to get things through the mail. They're talking about it getting a little slowed down and maybe we do need to leave the mail service. And even Amazon for the people who are drastically trying to get a hold of medications or things that they need. So if you have that stash, I'm saying dig in. Enjoy those fabrics, you bought them for a reason. Okay, we've got those pieces ready to sew. Best practices. Before we actually get to sewing at the machine, we're gonna do kind of a step back because a lot of us, and I'm as guilty as anyone. When I first started piecing, I was a seamstress. I knew what seam allowances look like. But yeah, I knew what a five 8ths inch seam allowance was. Wasn't so good at a quarter inch seam allowance. And once I actually double checked it, I wasn't very accurate. So my tip that I use when I'm working with new quilters to make sure your quarter-inch seam is accurate, is to take a recipe card. Most of us still have recipe cards somewhere in our homes, hopefully. Put that underneath your sewing machine, turn the hand wheel, which is the piece on the end of the machine that moves the needle. Drop that needle right into one of the lines on the machine, then lower your presser foot and look where that line to the right of the needle falls. That's an accurate quarter inch seam. So if your machine is allowing you to get a little bit on the excessive side when you're doing your quarter inch seam, or if you're making it maybe too small, this is the time to double-check. Even us seasoned quilters need to step back sometimes, make sure that we're staying accurate. I did have a question last time. Someone asked if my quarter-inch seam is accurate or consistent, consistent was the word they used. If my quarter of seam is consistent throughout a project, is that okay? Well, it is to an extent. If you are making a quilt that has all of the same size and design blocks and you have no sashing and no cornerstones, if you're putting block to block and your seams are consistent, yes, they will fit together. But if those blocks, the one block you make, for example, is a nine patch. And the next block you make is something very complex. And it has many, many seams in it compared to the nine patch, you're gonna have an issue. And that has to do with math. Now, bear with me for just a second. In a nine patch, there are two seams going each direction. So if you're consistently excess, and various seamless allowances, just this a little bit, maybe a 16th, that's two 16ths, which is one 8th. So we have one 8th inch over here that it's of a little, but it's close. But over here we have six seams and they're all off by a 16th or even eight seams. Think about eight 16ths. Remember math in 4th grade. Now we're a half an inch different here and an 8th of an inch here, and we're trying to marry those together. You're gonna have a problem. So that's why the little tests of the quarter-inch seam becomes kind of best practices. Let's put it that way because if we can stay accurate then no matter what project we tackle, no matter how various our quilt project becomes, maybe I'm gonna do a sampler, and I'm gonna do some basic blocks and some really complex blocks and maybe ones that are applicate and it's just one big piece of background. And there aren't gonna be any seams there. When I go to join those and marry those all together, everything will fit nicely, and I won't get frustrated because frustration is the last thing we need. When we get into a pattern or a project, and something just doesn't go well, we tend to wanna just put it away, out of sight, out of mind and don't wanna work on it. That's not what we want. We would love to see you complete your project because at the end of these four weeks or five weeks or six weeks or at some point in the future I would love to see your completed quilts. Maybe we can have a virtual quilt show and show what we produced out of our Community Quilt-Along over the time when we were a bit confined to our sewing rooms. So consistent seams, best practices. Okay. We have a question. The question is, oh, the question or the reminder is to check in with your quilt friends. I have been doing this. I thought of this earlier in the week. And some of my friends I haven't seen in awhile and I don't talk to you very often because I work in a quilt shop. I usually see them sometime during the week or even through the weeks. And I realized yesterday and the day before that I hadn't really talked to anybody. So I reached out and I decided every day I'm gonna reach out and talk to two quilters. So I texted one who I've known for years through another quilt shop that I worked at. And she texted back that she was fine. Everything was good. She talked to her kids, she wasn't in need of groceries. And it was just a nice way to reach out. The other one I talked to last night happened to be a coworker, also a quilter, but we chatted last night. She said that if she had to listen to the television for any more minutes out of a day her ears were gonna bleed. So turn off the TV, actually, you know, when you pick up this thing called the telephone, you can talk on it. You don't have to just text, actually talk to someone, another human being so that you can reach out and make sure that we're all not getting depressed. 'Cause this is a time when it's really easy to get frustrated and think everything is bad, and it's not, it's just in slow motion right now is all. But with our sewing machine at hand, our fabric stash, some two-and-a-half inch squares, we can put together our story for a later date. One other thing, I had somebody say mentioned the other day or talk about that they ran out of thread. You really ran out of thread or you ran out of cream and gray? You know, you probably have other thread in your stash, so you can pick up and use any color thread. In fact, I've done a lot of sewing over the years and it was for testing and for video. And so I actually have red thread in my sewing machine in order to be able to show people what I've stitched. So at some point, when somebody goes to repair one of my quilts, 15, 20 years from now, they're gonna go, "Hmm, wonder why she sewed with red thread?" Put some purple and some lime green in there and enjoy it. It's inside the quilt, but it won't be the end of the world. Let's see, we have any other questions that we can do. Last time, I had a couple people I didn't get to on their questions. So one was about pressing seams open or to the side. Now, a lotta times in patterns we are told, basically, suggest that to press seams to one side or another in some patterns. And other times you press seems open. The majority of the time, I'm pressing to one side, and a quilt friend once told me and it'd be great if this actually happened. If my quilt were so used, so loved, and so worn that the seam popped, and it came unstitched, when seams are pressed to one side, if it pops, there's still fabric underneath of it. So it wouldn't show the batting and there'd be something to stitch into in order to repair it. If the seams are butted up against and pressed away like this, and you get a seam that pops, open, you're gonna see batting and it's gonna be harder to repair. So I guess it's a long-term thought. Sometimes we're trying to reduce bulk. And that is the reason for pressing seams open. It's kind of a personal choice. In the quilt world, there's a lot of gray where there aren't any hard and fast rules on things. There's no quilt police. No one's going to jump down your throat. If they do, that's not the person you wanna talk to. They have other issues going on. Another one was a question about the ironing board that it had behind me. And it's called a Big Board. I did not build it. It is actually mass produced and available for sale through the internet. It happens to be one that was in the workroom where I used to work. And when we closed our offices, that was an item that got to come and live with me. So a Big Board is a nice surface to have. I lay mine across two carts because that way it's very stable. There's no tipping and I have grandkids. And so an ironing board with grandkids I'm always worried about that. You know, the criss-cross of the legs on an ironing board aren't real stable. So if they were to be in here and push on something and have something tip over, which is not a pretty sight to have happen. If you're gonna use that Big Board, make sure you put it in a place very stable where no one can be injured. The other thing that we were talking about last time, and I did get some name ideas for the apple core quilt over my shoulder. I've gotten in six possible names for my quilt because the Virus Quilt just is not catchy. So we need to come up with something better, and I've gotten some really good possibilities. It's really gonna be hard to pick. So I'm gonna give ya a one more week. If you can think of something to name my apple core quilt over here I will put it in the mix. You got one more week. So text it into the comments here or you can go to my Facebook page at Colleen Tauke or you can visit me in a text there. So let me know if you have a really catchy name for my apple core quilt. I have made progress, so that, I told you this is not a sprint, it's kind of like a marathon and I'm training. I enjoy doing curves, but they are tedious but I love the end result. So one seam at a time. I have, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six rows joined in long succession almost from the ceiling to the floor in here. I'm trying to make it big enough for a queen size bed. And I have four rows joined two in pairs. So some of them are already joined, and then the rest is still in the plotting and progress portion. I have a stack of apple cores that I have to make four more rows yet. So yeah, a little bit of time. I once heard a quilter and I'll give her a shout out, Angela Hoffman, who is a long armer. And she used to say, "How do you eat an elephant? "One bite at a time." So one bite at a time, take your time, enjoy the process. Join us next week, and get your fabrics out. Have some of those nine patches up and going. Start building some of those. I will go into some pressing techniques. I even have a suggestion on how to use a seam ripper better. I've had, you know, various seamer ripper over the years, but a little teaser is what does that red dot on the edge of your seam ripper really for? So any other questions, let's see. After cutting and piecing and pressing my seam, my blocks shrank. Hmm, how do you prevent that? Sometimes in our pressing, if we're using steam, your fabrics can react to that steam and shrink a bit. So maybe lay off the steam just a little bit. Do that steaming and pressing before you cut. So if you've already cut a lot of your blocks you're maybe just wanna use a dry iron the rest of the way through this project, but next time, and I never thought about it either. My fabric comes from the shop and I bring it into the sewing room and I start cutting. But one of the things you might wanna do is if you want to do any starching, if you're gonna use the best press or some kind of a stiffening product on it, do that before you cut because that way your shrink will already be kind of out of the fabric. And you won't get that little snap that makes your blocks just a little bit too small. So any other, see if I've got any other questions. I don't have any else in the block. Let's see. There's one more. Let's see if I can get. Nope, I don't see any. Oh, let's see. I need to scroll through that, okay. Let's see, I can't see. It doesn't wanna scroll up for questions. No, I'm really not a tech-savvy person. This is my son's thing. When you need a tech available, I can't see any of the questions. Oh, wait, here's one. Any motivational tips to help get organized and finished quilting projects? If you can see inside the closet, I might be guilty on this one. The biggest thing that I do and I think it sometimes helps a lot of us is to make a list. Now I'm not saying you need to make a list as long as your arm, just make a list of a few things that you would really like to check off that list. Maybe it's a couple of things that have just a few steps left on them, maybe a binding or I need to cut the last couple pieces for something. Make that little list, but make it little. Don't make it overwhelming because we all love to check things off the list. I've even been doing that with my ideas for supper because I have nothing else to do. My husband's at work and my kids are all grown. So coming up with ideas for even for supper when I get to check one off like, "Oh, we did that," that feels good. It gives you a sense of accomplishment. So make that little list. And if it's organizing your sewing room, oh, I don't know if I could even post the picture I took the other day. I did send it to a quilt friend, So she knows this is legit. And Laura, I know you're listening from California. My sewing room kind of had an explosion problem. I dug in, knowing that I was gonna probably be stuck here for at least, I dunno, two to three weeks longer. I knew that I had stuff everywhere. And if you're like me, you finish a project and you bundle up those fabrics and you stick them on a shelf and you think, "Oh, I'll get back to 'em later." Or you tuck the tool in with it and you put it on the shelf, and you're thinking, I'll find it later when I work on the project. And after a while you have puddles of things everywhere in your sewing room. It's time to dig in. And yes, it's gonna look like a mess and yes, your husband's going to come home at lunchtime. And he's going to see the mess, 'cause mine did, and he kinda stood in the doorway and just shook his head. I'm like, "It's gonna be better, I promise. "I'll get it cleaned up." So even if it's just one closet or one drawer, put that on your list too, to go through that drawer and sort what are tools? Tools go back on the organizer for tools. These are marking things. They should be here. The scissors go here. Go back and sort those things out. Get organized because you know what? Once it's clean, it's so much fun. We're no different than that four year old that we told clean your room, clean your room, because then they go in there and they wanna play because everything's clean and there's all this room to work. So if it's your cutting table today, just get through the cutting table and clean it off, organize those things. When you find the stuff that you thought you lost, you're going to be so thrilled that you're gonna wanna work on something. And I know because I'm a quilter too. So let's see if we have anything else. Oh, I got a couple other names for my quilt. I'm not gonna reveal those yet, 'cause I'm going to put those on the list. Those are secret. Those I'm gonna keep for myself and then we'll go through it, and I'll tell you all about the different names I get in, but I'd like to reveal those at the end. So I don't see anything else on the questions. So the Community Quilt-Along, nine patches. If you have those pre-cut five inch squares, if you have a roll of two and a half inch strips that you just didn't know what you were gonna use them for or if you want to just dig into those scraps, make yourself a history with a story quilt, cut up a bunch of two and a half inch squares. Maybe find a background fabric if you have it. If you don't keep going, just make the scraps. And you know, at this point, if we could just work on the nine patches, we'll figure out the setting later because I have a few fun ideas and we might learn a little bit along the way about setting and possibilities of lights and darks. So just work on those center. Find maybe that theme you wanna work on. Find that stash of fabric you put away for scraps 'cause you just couldn't part with them. So then you can join me next week here on Community Quilt-Along with National Quilt Circle, have a little fun, have some peace in your day. reach out to two quilters you know this week, and have a conversation. It's all about our story. Thanks for joining me.