Community Quilt Along – Week 3

Good morning quilt circle friends. National Quilt Circle is bringing you this community quilt along and we're in week three. So if you're new to this video, welcome. If you're joining us again, thanks for coming back. We are all kind of home-bound and a little bit isolated right now.

And in order to grow our community and feel like we're not left alone, National Quilt Circle is bringing you this quilt along so that we can join forces, enjoy each other's company. So in the chat box, put in maybe where you're from, where you're joining us from. It'd be great I went back over the last couple of weeks and I've written down all the places you're joining me from and it's an amazing how medium, how we can be so far apart, but yet so close together and enjoy this art. So as we bring our quilt friends together, so text, bring your best friend in, send a share on the link. If you are new to this, we do have the other two available on YouTube, our website, through Facebook so you can go back and see what we've covered so far.

If you thought maybe you've missed something and would like to catch up so we're working on a quilt that is very comforting instead of trying to learn some brand new skill we're dropping back to that very comfortable design of a nine patch. Probably where most of us started. Nine patch is a very simple block, its very comforting to work on, because of the rhythm to it. That just calms us. I heard a quote earlier this week and I actually wrote it down in the middle of my pattern.

And because I didn't wanna forget about it and I wanted to share it with you. So our pattern is terming strips and the link can be found at our website and you can download the pattern for free. The quote though, that I heard from our very learned person was, "That fear should not rob us of our joy." Fear is almost right now, kind of like a person, because we don't know what is gonna happen next. So don't let that fear rob us of the joy of quilting. We love color, we love texture, we love the fun of just going in and playing with the colors.

So don't let it rob you of your joy get into the quilt room, dig into those fabrics, cut up some things and make something beautiful. We're working on those nine patches and you can see over my shoulder, I was busy again this week, putting together pieces. This is the one that was up last week. So I will be adding these to the gallery. So you'll be able to see up close a little bit more about these quilts and I will talk about color placement here in a minute.

But last week I missed a couple of questions. So, Carol had asked about using thread that was polyester instead of all cotton and whether or not that was okay to use because she couldn't get to her quilt shop or any other supply thread at this point. And yes, polyester is fine to use, a lot of long-armers also use polyester thread in their quilting. Now there are purists out there and I totally understand that some people want to use a hundred percent cotton fabric, a hundred percent cotton thread a hundred percent cotton batting, but polyester is acceptable to use. The theory behind polyester thread and the thought was that polyester is very strong, and then it will last longer possibly than the cotton fabric that you use.

And that it might cut through the fibers at some point, but most of us are making quilts to be used not heirloom quilts at this point. So if you're making utility quilts and you want to make many and all you have left is polyester thread. You have permission to go in dig into those threads and use them don't worry about them. Remember it's the beauty of the quilt and the person who is enjoying it now, if it lasts 50 or 60 years, great if it doesn't someone else will enjoy it the beauty of making a quilt. So they'll be inspired from what you passed along.

And that whole process of the next generation of quilters will come along. The next question was from Cheyenne and this is someone that I go to church with she texted me about a four patch construction. So I thought we'd just step back real quick. Now we're creating nine patches in this project and I'm just gonna lay one out now in a variation of colors here a little different than I actually used in my own quilt but nine pouches kind of remind me of the point at which we learned multiplication in third, fourth grade maybe because we used to lay things out and think about three columns, three rows. And that's how we learn.

Three times three is nine. So a nine patch is made up of three rows and three columns put together to make a block. Now we talked about the construction of that block and we talked about putting right sides together. Everybody has a little bit different approach, some people like to work vertical some like to work horizontal It's the same process It's okay but we put right sides together, when we're making blocks and stitch a quarter inch seam down through. And we usually well create rows so eventually you're gonna add that third per piece on and create rows that look like this, and then join those rows together to make a nine patch block.

So Cheyenne's question was how do I construct a basic four patch? Well, a four patch is kind of the cousin to the nine patch. Do a little bit of rearranging here take a few blocks pieces out. A four patch is two by two. So the construction is the same kind of theory you put right size together in one row right sides together in the next row then without moving them, transport them to the sewing machine and stitch your quarter-inch seam here and here, make sure that you take the time to press.

A lot of us want to just jump onto the next seam but pressing does keep your stitching and your patchwork neat and tight. So once you've created two rows like this then you joined the rows together like this. And that becomes the four patch. Very easy to do. Four patch can be constructed a four different fabrics or two contrasting fabrics so the process is the same as the idea of joining and making a row, and then joining those rows together with of course what we talked about before most accurate quarter-inch seam we can possibly do.

Okay. So those are some of the questions. If we have any other questions, please put those into the box at the bottom or to the side, and we can answer any of your questions that you might have in this project or any other project. I've done a really wide variety of quilts from applique to curved piecing, to templates and a lot of teachings. So if you have one of those burning questions you've never gotten answered, shoot the question in and then they'll feed it to me and we'll see what we can do.

Okay. So the first version of the quilt that I made last week or worked on was a light background. Now, the pattern that you pull out or you download has a very low contrast it has kind of a tan background with white bars. So there's where you see the nine patches mostly in the rest of it all just kind of melts to the background. And I decided to change that up on my first version of this and use a dark fabric in the place of what was white in the original pattern.

My nine patches are very similar to the ones Ashley created in the very first pattern, that was easiest for me to create that symmetry to one, two and one. And then I used a gray and white background here so that there was a high contrast in the stashing pieces. And it creates kind of a fence because I'm naming this one calling this one us fenced in cause we were all feeling just a little fenced in, right now So the fences that kind of surround my nine patches are very dark and so you get a very stark contrast between those two. Now another version that I had scraps of fabric remember I talked about a quilt that I had made in the past, and I really enjoyed those fabrics. They're very small prints.

Some are real dense in color some are more muted in color. And I thought, well, I like gray and white with it so let's see what I can do. So this is just one row. The rest of it is on the wall over my shoulder. And what I did there was I went with the white like the original pattern called four.

And then I changed that tan to a medium to dark gray so that I get a completely different look here. It's a little more bold It matches just like in the original pattern. It matches those, what she went to Hers looked a little bit lighter mine look darker here so that everything floats in a darker kind of background. Now, the one thing that I was trying to decide last week and so you can now see I've unveiled what I decided to put in this session here was whether or not to go in and put scrappy sashing in and this one would probably match too much. See, this is where I got into the weeds cause I have a hard time trying to put fabrics that are same print next to each other and so I would have to be able to make it as scrappy as possible, moving around those sashing parts here.

But once I did that it seemed like everything started to melt together too much and I didn't get enough definition. So if I'm gonna do all that patchwork and all that piecing I really wanted my pattern to show off sometimes we do want that soft contrast other times we don't. So after I stuck a bunch of pieces to the wall I decided IF I really wanna do a scrappy one maybe I'll do another version later, but for this one I kind of liked the gray. So I stuck with the gray putting that in there in that position. Okay.

We have a question. Could I tell the audience the correct check box is Oh, it's orange and green box will be, they will be talking to customer service so they won't see that so orange box for chat. Kelly does ask," when should seams to be pressed open to the dark side." Pressing is always a good question. Let's take a peek at the backside Its a little messy, not too bad some fabrics are a little more crumbly than others. In this quilt I pressed all of my seams toward the darker fabric the gray, except when I was working on the white bars here.

So you can see that in my nine patches here these seams are all going towards this darker fabric. But when I got over into the sashing bars, I had to make a decision. This sashing bar joins to this nine patch. When I joined those together I'm gonna cross two seams right here in order to press this toward the darker fabric I would have to bend back both of those seams it wasn't the direction the fabric wanted to go. So in general, most everything in this quilt the seam allowances are pressed toward the gray or the darker value.

But when I came to having to cross seams I let the fabric go the direction it wanted to which was towards the white. So I didn't have those seams trying to buckle back up. It doesn't seem like too much of a problem here but when you start to layer that quilt with your backing and your batting, those seams are gonna wanna pull up and not lay nice and flat when you go to quilt and then you might get some buckling and some uneven stitching and distortion so there are times we break the rules so press toward the dark when the fabrics can easily fall in that direction. But there are times when you do press the other direction so let the quilt tell you which way it needs to go. Okay.

So rules can be broken. Another question from Vicky, "I have been sewing a lot of two and a half squares together as Leaders and Enders shocked me how fast two big piles came up to be stacked up." Leaders and Enders those are words that maybe if you're new to quilting you may not have heard before. And some machines don't like to jump onto the edge of fabric, really easily. The tails get all tangled up and you get kind of a nesting of threads at the beginning. So when you go to put your piecing under there, you get this nest, so what some people will do is to take a scrap of fabric and if you've trimmed off the selvedge edges or the small pieces of the berry as you're cutting your pieces out do you always have that little leftover scrap, put them beside your sewing machine, that little scrap of fabric put it under the machine stitch on that first and then jump into your patchwork and you will get a very nice, smooth transition.

And it doesn't make that nesting at the very beginning so just leave that sometimes people call it a spider. Sometimes people call it a Leader or an Ender and you can do that at the beginning of a line of stitching and at the beginning and the end of your piecing of pattern, it's tight say that three times fast. That way you also then are piecing two patches two squares together for a future project and it would've gotten really great to use them up in this project so those are really great ways you also don't waste much thread because you're just snipping in between blocks. These thread gets expensive after awhile. So instead of filling all the waste basket full of long pieces of thread that little leader or spider can be really helpful.

Okay. Someone asked, "looking at the pattern what does W O F stand for?" Oh, you don't know how long it took me to figure that one out either with of fabric and with the fabric runs from selvedge to selvedge across the fabric so it's approximately 43, 42 usable cause usually there's a space near that selvedge edge that you're not gonna wanna put into your quilt so the width of fabric means running from selvedge to selvedge, which is how it comes off the bolt selvedge is matched up. So as you unfolded it from a bolt you'll find a folded edge and a selvedge edge so with the fabric so if you're asked to make a cut with the fabric that means you're cutting across from the fold to the selvedges. Very good question. Valerie asks, "when doing a nine patch could you strip piece." And yes you can.

The only reason I didn't in this case was that I was using scraps literally scraps cut off of past projects. And in this case they were off these large triangles so I was finagling, literally squares out of my scraps. But if you want to very quickly make this pattern you could easily strip piece and cut strips from with the fabric remember though that as you cut with the fabric ruler, to me making a lot of pieces and to get them in the right combination. So for example, in this block here if you were gonna create this as a strip set you're gonna have two pieces of gray and the print in the center. So you'll have long strips of each of these fabrics and you'll need two of those for each of the blocks.

Now you need another color combination because you're gonna need one with two prints and the gray, and you're gonna need half as many of those to make this block so just be aware of how many you're gonna need in the right combination unless you decide to be totally scrappy and do your own thing, which is totally acceptable also, Laura from California says, "I've been having trouble with Charm Packs not measuring the same. what is the advice to share along with using Charm packs?" This pattern was originally set up so that you could take a charm pack which if you're new to quilting a charm square is a five inch precut fabric that comes into a little bundle of coordinated fabrics usually from a fabric line. And since there are many fabric producers out there who make these precut five inch packs they all have a little different way of preparing them for shipping. Some of the companies do a very small zigzag not a zigzag, a pinked edge. So its a zigzag or pinked back and forth kind of like the pinking shears that you used when you were a kid to cut paper and you thought it was great cause it made the zigzag across your paper same thing with fabric It tends to not ramble as much so it's a great way for them to package them, but some of that pinked edges are very small pinked other companies is very wide pinking across those edges.

And some companies use a strict cut altogether. So when you open them up, don't just assume they're gonna be a perfect five inch square. Realize that they are cutting down through layers of fabric at once when they're cutting these to prepare for you to purchase. And they may be off just a bit, so open that pack take it to a ruler lay it down and see where the five inch line actually is on some of them. The five inch will be in the valleys.

The deepest portion of the cut into the fabric. Some will be in the peaks on the outer edge of those pinked areas. And some will be five and an eighth by five inches. So you may want to trim those to make them perfect five but know what you're working with before you just chop into it and divide thinking I need to cut this at two and a half here and two and a half here and then this guy over here ends up a totally different size. So just double check before you use them, they're all usable.

I wouldn't throw them out and say, no I don't wanna use them at all. What you can do with those and a lot of people are adding a background fabric either a light or a gray or a tan or maybe it's navy blue or black. Those if you cut those nice and precise, so for example, in this quilt if I were to have had a charm pack here they're not exactly gonna be two and a half but they're gonna be close. Make sure that you're as accurate as possible on those other fabrics. When you go to match these two up use this one as your guide, make sure that you can get your quarter inch seam, by keeping this as kind of your frame of reference to keeping some square.

The backside of the quilt is between you and your long armer which could be you but it might be someone else. And you know what? As long as it's close and there's enough seam allowance there to hold it together, you'll be fine. But we don't have to tell everything about the backside of our clothes. Okay.

Brian asks, "what are some good tips "for beginners doing curve piecing? "And do you use two layers of batting? "What's your favorite batting?" Oh, so that's a loaded question. When it comes to doing curves there are great videos out there. Patience is going to be, your friend when doing curves.

Don't over pin. If you see a video that has a ton of pins in it step back and maybe find a different one. If you search my name and curve piecing you can find a video of me teaching. I should be hopefully doing a new one soon but with the ease of like two or three pins you can easily put a curve piece together. Just remember the first ones you do are gonna be your kindergarten piecing.

They are not going to be perfect but your learning curve goes up very quickly by shape two or three or four, you're onto it. And you just have to remember to breathe a bit. I'm trying to think without actually having pieces in front of me, how about next week? I'll do a little video or I'll put in some pieces of curves so there's a teaser for you to come back and see I can walk you through the at least the biggest hurdles to get over doing curve piecing. Okay.

Yeah. Keep me accountable. Okay. When using batting, do I use two layers of batting? I have not used two batting two layers in my quilts.

I have friends who have, they've taken a cotton batting and layered a wool batting on top because they're looking for that extra poof wool batting doesn't compress very easily and your machine quilting then has lift to it. So it gives it a very fluffy and extra layer of warmth also. So those are things to consider If you live in a warm climate you're probably not gonna wanna add that extra layer. But my favorite batting the dream company probably will get my favorite vote. I've used quilters the dream combination of it's either the 70 30, or 80 20 but it's a cotton polyester combination, very stable, It has a scrim to it So it's made for a long arming not gonna wanna hand quilt through it.

I like it. And then the person that I long arm with Laura and I know she's watching love you dear we use that batting because we can easily put it onto the long arm and give it a little tug and it doesn't shred or pull apart. It is economical. It has the qualities of a hundred percent cotton because as that shrink ability. It gives us that crunchy kind of feel when it's washed, but isn't quite as expensive as a hundred percent cotton.

So dream, select. I think culture's dream. Look that up. You'll like it. Okay.

I've gotten two people so far I've run across quilts that you actually got made, which is fabulous. Trying to think names. Janet sent me a picture and I think Carol was the other one here. I even made notes cause I was impressed that you had quilts done. Sandra, Sandra had a really scrappy version that was great.

And Janet had one that she made from cream with a green and a really pretty rose prints that she had left over from a few past project and they were delightful. So if you would like to share either the progress you're working on your quilts the color combination, just a few blocks, there is a gallery link that we're putting up so you can go there and share pictures. So please share what you're working on. I'd love to see what people come up with. Okay.

And Cindy ask, "I understand that not all measuring tools are equal. How do you know when you're getting an accurate measurement?" Accurate measurement? The biggest thing I think is to make sure that you purchase high quality equipment tools. There are, sometimes people have had issues with measuring tapes being off a bit. And a measuring tape is from, I come from a garment sung background.

So I'm not saying anything bad about it but it's a measuring tape has a little bit of stretch to it even it's usually a vinyl and we use those when we're talking about big numbers and not worrying about super exact things. But if you are purchasing, you know those kinds of rulers made for rotary cutting the accuracy on those is very high. The only issue with some of them is that they can slide around a little so find a tool that works for you. At this point you may want to wait until you can get into that quilt shop to ask the expert near you which is your favorite tools but accuracy in those tools is really important. And that also means keeping a nice sharp rotary blade.

If you haven't changed your blade lately do that because when you make a cut and there are still threads that haven't cut through, It's time to change it and you're gonna get shift as you go back to the nick those threads to get the cut clean so keep a nice sharp blade in your rotary cutter. Something else I wanted to point out is that there are a lot of areas in this quilt that you can use for inspiration. Now the original quilt had a border on the outside edge and the blocks just kind of stop, and a border was added. Now that's a root area that you can play with. I decided that this is the outer edge of my quilt, and I wanted that little fenced area to actually be completed so I went and figured out if I'm using those four and a half inch squares as my cornerstones within the quilt I'm gonna use those also on the outside and then all I had to do was extend here to create a wider strip so that all my blocks were float.

So if you're trying to figure out what I'm talking about in all of that because it's very hard to do that in a small space here I will put my picture up of my quilt in the gallery also and I'll make a note of what I used, as the outer border So if you want to alter yours, you would know then the math simple math in order to do that we're getting close to our half hour. Let's see. We've have Sue asks, "Do you recommend quilting a queen-size quilt to a Minky fabric backing on a domestic sewing machine?" Depends on how adept at machine quilting you are. The Minky fabric or a cuddle fabric, any kind of a fleecy fabric on the back It's a little bit more challenging to make sure that everything stays layered properly. So spray based is going to be your friend for that kind of a project It also kind of depends on how big of an area you have to work at laying out that quilt.

So you can move it around. You may also wanna consider the depth of the sewing bed that you have. I personally have only gone up to about a baby size quilt with the cuddle fabric on the back. And it was spray basin. Well, I shouldn't say that I did do a throw, so not more than 60 by 60 or 60 by 70, it gets heavy.

It's very warm to work with so be prepared. You're gonna want to have maybe some help even moving the quilt around and you may need to do some very simple in the ditch kind of, or straight line quilting but test out a small piece see if you feel comfortable doing it, it's gonna be challenging. It can be done. I usually end up taking mine too the longer arm when I'm working on that, on the back for backing It does make a wonderful back though on quilts. So those are things to think about when you're dealing with the cuddle fabric.

Don't count it out. Maybe just find a long armer instead, okay. Since we're getting to the end of our half hour here today I want to challenge you to jump in make some more of your pieces, work on two or three rows maybe even join those rows and maybe get half of your top put together. Now remember the size of this quilt is not set in stone. My two quilts are actually different in size because I ran out of pieces of the one and I decided five rows by six was good enough but this one I wanted a little larger.

So I made it according to the the pattern that you can download. So work on a few rows so that's your first thing to do determine what you wanna do for your outside border. Do you wanna expand it out? If you have the center of your quilt top done as per the the pattern you can add on you can change it yet If you haven't put your outside borders on. And maybe you're waiting until the fabric shops open because maybe you wanna a really fun focused fabric to go out there so try to think about, and figure out what you wanna do for borders.

And then reach out to a quilter. It took me a couple of texts to get to a couple people this week, and it's not easy but we need to be able to make contact with that human contact, not just texts, talk to them. You know, these things are great for texting but they're also great for talking and having that chat helps you reduce that fear reduce the anxiety and shout about your projects. What progress have you made? I actually talked to a quilter last night, who I work with who found the binding for a quilt she's been looking for, you know sometimes we put things away from ourselves really well and then we can't find them, but she found it and it's going on the quilt as we speak.

So you never know what you might find. Have a great week. National Court Circle family. Keep in touch, stay safe, have a good week.