Quilted Cord Wrap

I always want to say good morning, but I know that some of you are joining us from around the globe. So good day. Glad you are joining us. My name is Colleen Tauke, and I'm your instructor. During this half hour to 45-minute tutorial, we are working on a project today called the Quilted Cord Wrap.

And, um, I don't know if you're like me, but one frustration I've always had with all of the technology and all of the items that we have in our home is all of the cords. There's always cords somewhere. We need cords for our power bricks. We need extension cords, maybe, for our sewing machine. We have cords on our irons.

We have cords to our phone for charging. And without something to kind of contain them and control them, it seems like it's just one big knotted thing in the drawer. Or when you go to, um, travel, you shove all the cords in a bag and then later you're at the airport, you're like, I need my, my charging cord. From my phone, and you pull it out and you're pulling out three more cords with it. So this is a way to kind of keep organized, get it contained, and have a little fun with those fabrics that maybe you have picked up and didn't know what to use them for, or you have scraps of things that you absolutely love and you just can't part with those smaller pieces.

Well, these were actually cut from a curated batch of back quarters that I bought on a trip, and I love them so much that I want to be able to see them a lot. So if I use them in something that I use every day or every few days, that way I get to enjoy all the colors and the fabrics. The pattern, you'll see the QR code that's popped up at the bottom of the screen. That is the link for you to get to the pattern, and that will be in the comments. Section so you can go back later if you haven't downloaded yet or, um, if you already have yours downloaded and printed out, you can work along with this and make some notes so that whether you're making the small version or I created a larger version also because some of those cords need to be contained a little bit more, um, and stored more easily.

So the larger, we have a small and a large cord wrap that we're working on today. Remember to pop in like Lisa did, saying good morning. And we have, uh, probably some more here in a few seconds. Um, saying hello, um, let us know where you're watching from. Tell us maybe what kind of genre of fabric you like to see in your life.

Maybe you're a boutique person, maybe you like a bright kind of fabric. Maybe you have a favorite kind of novelty fabric. I love the florals with a little bit of pinks and gray blues in them. What kind of fabric would you use to make your cord wraps? We have, um, taken out some fabrics that we want to use, and we've cut those about 3/4 by 1/4 inch in width.

They don't have to be perfect. They can be, um, wedge-shaped. They don't have to be perfectly parallel strips, and they need to be about 5 inches long in order to create the small quilted cord wraps. And we've got our back. Adding ready to go.

And I believe I dropped off at the point where I was discussing whether or not you want to plan, um, how your fabrics will appear on the, um, cord wrap, but you can also just let them be random. For most of us, we fall into one of two categories. We're either extremely planned and we like to control where everything falls, or in our quilting, we like to be, um, random. We're fine with however, uh, the fabrics come together. We don't mind if two lights are next to each other, but I tend to fall into the planned scrappy category.

I'll do a little blend. I like to use a variety of fabrics, but I kind of like to know where they're gonna fall in the project. So I've laid out my strips, and I've got my sewing machine set up with, um, this is some of the dark threads, so you'll be able to see the stitching on the back of the batting as we progress. And we're going to do a quilt-to-go process to put the strips onto the batting. We're not using our backing fabric at this point.

And what I usually will do with this is I want to start kind of in the center and work my way out and think of it this way. We're going the length of the batting, and we have Kelly from Arizona. I'm hoping you're still with us. Um, jump in and say hello, let us know where you're watching from, um, and maybe what kind of fabric genre you would use to make cord wraps. Some people want to have the brightest fabric they can find so that they can locate these when they lay them down somewhere.

Others of us just like certain colors that appeal to our sensibilities. So, I'm gonna start doing my quilt as you go. I'm gonna select about the center section. We need about five or six fabrics. You may need fewer depending on the width you cut your fabrics.

I'm gonna pick this navy blue to put down the center, and then I'm going to put a pink strip along one edge, and we're putting right sides together. And a quarter inch seam down this piece. You don't want to use anything much narrower than that. We need some integrity because you're going to be handling this quilted piece back and forth. And if you use too much, too narrow a seam allowance, you may pull.

Out. So we do want to have some good integrity in our seam allowances. So a quarter inch seam is what I was using in mine. You could experiment with narrower seams if you prefer, but in this case, I'm just gonna put a quarter inch seam. I've got my pieces right side together.

I'm gonna open this up so it exposes the first piece that I put in position. Now, on something this small, and it doesn't need to be super precise. My iron is going to wait till later, and I'm a proponent of ironing after every seam. So in this case, I'm gonna break my own rule. Finger pressing will be sufficient to open this up, so that we have the two right sides of the fabric exposed like that so we can see where we're going to cover one side and then the other edge.

It keeps from getting twisted. You can start at one side and work your way across, but it can skew the entire piece of batting. So I'm gonna work in one direction here, one side at a time, place another right side together with the second piece that I've put down, and that's why cutting the strips, giving yourself straight edges, whether your strips are perfectly parallel or a little bit angled, doesn't matter, but you do need to have a straight edge so that as you lay them on, you can use that to follow your quarter inch seam so that you get a nice integrity to your seam, enough seam allowance that everything will be held together nicely. And this is one of those things that you. Created a nice stash of strips you could just sit down and cover your piece of batting very quickly.

Now, my piece is close to the edge here. I'm gonna actually say that that is probably enough to cover. It comes right up to the edge of my batting, so that side is covered. And now I'm gonna work the opposite side. I love this gold fabric for some accent, so let's put that one on next.

And like I said, it'll be from 4 to 5, maybe 6-piece fabric depending on the width that you cut yours. I've seen some things where the strips are cut that narrow, narrow width. It's just a peak of color, each one popping out. Something about when you make things small, they're just adorable. I don't know if it's my sensibilities or what, but as we do this, that gold is gonna get really narrow.

It's just gonna give a little pop of color there. I'm gonna add one more, I think, well, one more after that. OK. So, right sides together again. And cross we go.

Most of you will probably wanna use a neutral color thread. I'm using that darker thread for demonstrations so you can see. That I've got seams going down the batting on the backside there holding everything together. Right sides together, open it up and that little gold strip is gonna pop out there nice. And then I'm going to put, let's see, one more dark color, I think on here just to make that batting, make sure that the entire batting is covered.

You don't wanna have any of it sticking out because beyond your fabric, that edge is going to be the one you're going to use when you put the backing fabric on. So that's gonna be your margins. So you have to have that completely covered with fabric. There's my last strip in place now. There we go.

So this is what mine looks like for now. On the backside, you can see the seam lines making stripes across my batting. Now, I'm gonna go in and I'm going to trim. That. Get a ruler here.

We have a couple of, we did use, we'll use those next time on the next one around. Now, it sets a trim. Um, the outer edge up to the batting. So we're gonna trim away that extra. That's why it's important that our batting kind of kept its integrity and its shape.

So that's the finished size of our project. Now, if it happened to distort a little tiny bit, it's totally fine. Remember, this is to wrap a cord in. It's not gonna get a state fair prize for creativity. It's just for fun.

OK, we've got some scraps. Finally, we can discard. I've got this all trimmed up nice and neat. Now, in the instructions, this is a trim the batting at a 45 degree angle at each corner. The reason for that is that we are going to put a backing fabric on here, and we're gonna be turning it.

And if you've made garments in the past or you've done anything where you had corners, batting it in the corner makes it very hard to turn. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna come in and clip. Those corn, just the batting, not the fabric, and it can go down into where our seam allowance is gonna be later, but we need to trim that batting out of there now so that it will make an easy turn for our finished project, so I'll show you really quick up close. Here's what I mean. We're trimming that batting at about a 45 degree angle so that as we put our backing piece on there, there won't be a lot of thickness in the corner.

If it got into where the seam is at, that's totally fine because, um, as long as we can stitch and turn, that's, that's what we're looking for. So I've cut my backing piece. Remember I said that the instructions gave you 6 by 5.5, but that was for 2 of them. So cut it. And have to be 3 by 5 1/2.

And yes, it's larger all the way around. That's the idea. Just like when you put batting or backing on a quilt, you need a little bit of a margin so that if things shift a little, you still have backing on your project, correct? OK. So if you want to, to make sure that that doesn't shift while you're, um, stitching, you put a couple of pins in.

Not a big pinner, but sometimes on these small projects, but we kind of want to have control of the project, OK? And we don't want things to slide out of the way. The last thing we want to have to do is use a seam ripper on something this tiny. OK. Shirley says good morning from Canada.

Patti says good morning from Washington State. We're glad you're with us. Sandra says, uh, good morning from Florida. We are glad that you are with us. We had a little technical difficulty there as we dropped, um, our signal, our, our feed.

We are back and working on our wrap, our quilted cord wraps. Now, when we do this stitching around, I use a quarter-inch seam allowance and, um, you have to leave an opening along one side. And it's easiest to leave the opening along one of the longer sides so that you can manipulate it to turn it right side out. So, 1/4 inch seam allowance, use batting as your guide for your 1/4 inch seam. Do a reinforced stitch at the very beginning.

So that it doesn't pull out when you're trying to turn this, because this is small, and we're gonna do that 1/4 inch seam. Up to the corner. And there's a trick that I learned. Um, I don't remember who it was that taught me this, but pick up your presser foot, with the needle in the down position. Get it at approximately about a 45 degree angle.

Don't, don't turn all the way for the next side. Turn it halfway. Make one stitch. And if you have to use your hand wheel, that's totally fine. Make one stitch at kind of an angle.

Instead of being perfectly sharp in our stitching, we're gonna have a blunted corner and it turns more easily. Good trick to know for even bag making and those kinds of things. We, um, want to have a nice turn on those corners and by just doing one stitch at an angle, you can get a bit nicer corner. OK, right there. Turn partway.

One stitch. If you have enough control with your foot pedal, otherwise, use your hand wheel on the end of your machine. You can just make one stitch at that angle and then come back down the other side. It allows just enough space for all that fabric that we have in the corners. And as we approach the last, or no, third corner, do the same thing.

One stitch at a little bit of an angle, then come back to the last side. Move my pins so I don't knock into those. Get to the last corner, one stitch at an angle, and if it drops right off the edge of that batting where you did your clip, that's perfect. That way it won't be extra thickness there. And then stop with about one and a half inches or so.

If you need two inches depending on if you have, uh, sometimes I feel like I have fat thumbs to get it turned. I do a little reinforced stitch. Take it out of the machine. Gonna trim up my threads here. It's one thing; I have a pet peeve about stray threads everywhere.

OK, I've stitched my bobbin thread, I guess it isn't black. But you can see I've stitched around there. You can see on the side how I've left an opening here. I've stitched around. I've done that little blunted corner.

We have Norma watching from Newfoundland, Canada? I think that's what NL stands for. Susan says, love your tips, and Patricia says hello from Lincoln. Nebraska. That's a neighbor to me because Lincoln, Nebraska is not too, too far away from us.

OK. Now, once we have this stitched, we're gonna go in and we're gonna trim. Um, trim all the sides that have batting. So taking in your scissors and pull the batting back. Since we used our batting as our guide for stitching, now we're gonna trim it right down to the stitching line.

And through that opening space, so that it won't be in the way when we're trying to turn our project. So we're just trimming off little pieces. You can even pull back on the ends a bit, pop the end stitches. We stitched across it. It's totally fine to pop them now.

And you can trim a little batting off of each of the short ends. This is the part where I do all the, I would do all of the, um. Piecing part at once, and then I would sit all the backs on. And then find, um, a good podcast or a TV series or something. And sit and do all the trimming then.

and the turning, because it does take a little bit of time, but if we keep our minds busy with something else, we don't really mind doing that trimming, and I'm pulling back on my piecing on the short end here. Just so I can trim that batting back away. that's what makes them turn very nicely on the corners. We're going to diagonally trim each corner. through all the fabrics.

and I'll hold this up as soon as I get them trimmed. Ok. So if you haven't done a lot of um garment sewing, this is kind of a garment uh thing how we used to trim the, the points on collars or the corners on cuffs at a diagonal um direction like that because when the fabric goes in here to lay down, it will lay nicely and we can reduce some of our backing also. I would do it as a graded seam. Here's another term that if you're not a garment sewer, a graded seam is when seams are diff seam allowances are different lengths.

So, I've got the seam allowance from the front here, the seam allowance of my backing, and they're different, um, distances out, so they aren't all bunched up on top of each other. That will help smooth out the cord wrap as we get it turned. So, make sure that our iron is hot. then I went in and I turned the seam allowances all toward like the backing towards the back, all the way around. it's a little tip on pressing that helps those outer edges pop out nicely when we go to turn our project.

So, my iron is nice and warm. Turn those seam allowances of the backing toward the back. The tip of the iron works really great to just turn, kind of nose those pieces in the right direction. I could almost turn you into garment sewers, because this is exactly how we would be preparing a cuff for a blouse or a top. Ok.

So I've turned all my backing fabrics, those edges toward that. Now I'm gonna turn the others the other direction. This is a little bit more difficult because you do have thickness there, but if you can turn them just a tiny bit, put a little heat on them. they will behave nicely when we get to the other side. Put that back on its base.

And in your opening section where you left that to turn, trim that batting back at least to where the seam line would have been had you stitched through there. Like getting that kind of out of the way. It will turn really nicely in that opening section. OK. Now, these two edges will press more easily than the ends.

I think those will flip as soon as we turn this right side out. So we've got our prepared area right here. Here's where it's gonna turn. Put your finger in and flip it right side out. Now, there are point turners out there you can use if it's harder for you to get your fingers inside of the little wrap, but since we left a fairly good sized hole there.

Should be able to get the turn done. Fingernail or thumb right into the corners. I go in and put my pointer finger inside, into the pocket where the corners are, my thumbnail on the other side and turn. Found that that's kind of the, I can kind of direct traffic. If I've got a pointer finger on one side and my thumbnail on the other, then I can really get that corner turned outward.

And down to the last one. There we go, perfect. And the point of our scissors can also be used, not too, too aggressively, just gently nudging the fabric out because we don't want to make a hole in our fabrics. You can also use a skewer, but I like a blunted skewer. There are, like I said, there are point turners out there on the market that you can purchase also, but try to get those corners.

Popped out as best you can. There we go. We have one completed. And then we're gonna go in and press that outer edge, nice and flat. So that we can go in.

And we can topstitch that outer edge. And I topstitched fairly close. It's about 1/8 of an inch from the outer edge, so that I was actually closing up my turning space at the same time. A lot of times it'll say go back and hand stitch that little piece closed, but nobody really ever likes to do that portion. So if we topstitch really close to that outer edge.

One corner that didn't wanna quite turn. And by using a T-pin or a heavy straight pin, there, I got my corner to be a little more square. There's some things that just bother me. I have no idea why. Uh, let's see, Ren says I got the purple thing years ago to do corner turns.

Perfect. It's a little plastic tool they call Tang, T-H-A-N-G, I believe, purple thing. And it has, um, kind of a squared off end on one side and kind of looks like a nutpick, but made of plastic on the other, and it's great for turning corners. Um. Could we use magnets for the closures?

You could, as long as your magnets are fairly small; a magnetic closure would work. Um, the only problem with the magnetic pieces is that you would have to apply the one before you put the backing on and you would have to put some interfacing or something on. The lining portion just so that it wouldn't, um, pull out unless you're going all the way through all the layers. If you don't want, the magnetic closures are made to go through one layer of fabric and then have a metal piece on the inside like a washer, where you flip little, um, edges to secure it. And if you're securing that to the inside here for the opposite for the connection, just, uh, I would say reinforce your lining in that area before you apply it just so that you wouldn't tear out because magnetic ones have, you're gonna cut through the fabric a little bit more aggressively and if you want that magnetic closure to be sturdy, that would work.

Um, could we use Velcro instead of the snaps? Yes, Velcro works totally fine. You can do that also. Um, you could stitch the Velcro in place before you put everything together, otherwise, your stitching will show on the other side, but that's totally fine. If you're good with, with the stitching, you could just do, um, a really close, um, match of thread.

Everybody knows it has to be something that holds it together. So if your stitching shows, it's not that big of a deal. It would be very, um, I've used, um, Velcro tabs, baby bibs, and those kinds of closures work totally fine. Um, just make sure that, um, you have a sturdy needle in your sewing machine if you're going through Velcro because the base of Velcro is quite tough. So maybe upgrade one size of needle from maybe a 12 to a 14.

Um, also make sure that you don't buy sticky back Velcro. The sticky back Velcro will gum up your needle on your sewing machine. Make sure that it's a stitching style. Why do I know these things? Cause I've done that before and it didn't go well.

So, um, let's see. I was late joining, uh, we're, that's totally fine because we had technical difficulties. I've seen clothes, uh, sewn clothes since I was I was, uh, but quilting is a real challenge for me, plus, yes, I understand. It takes, um, a bit to adjust from clothing to, uh, doing quilting. Our seam allowances are totally different.

Um, our techniques are less in the curved and fitting and more in the flat. Um, I was a garment sewer. I cut up my first pattern. My mom let me cut out a skirt when I was in kindergarten. So I came to quilting from a garment sewing background and didn't really look back because quilting is so much fun.

You get to use more fabrics. In garments, you use one or two fabrics, that's it. In quilting, you can use a whole array of fabrics and have so much fun. Okay. I am going to go ahead and topstitch this.

You're gonna see my topstitch cause it's gonna be dark. But I'm gonna set this at about 1/8 inch and topstitch this outer edge. And if you have a like a magnet guide for your machine, which I do not on this one, I, um, I tend to put my finger down where I want, it needs to, the fabric the project needs to sit and just use my finger as a guide to hold it so I get a straighter stitch along there, um. Don't ask. It's a strange, strange way to get your top stitching straight, but it does work really great.

Um, those magnetic, um, little guides can work great. You can uh also use a flange foot that has, um, a bumper along the side to do your topstitch so that, oh, I ran out of bobbin and thread. Mm, great. Perfect timing. All of a sudden.

OK. Well, I'll show you what this topstitch is supposed to look like. I've got it on two sides. So the topstitch on the outer edge is closing up the, turning section of this, but you would topstitch all the way around like I did on this one. And you can use more of a matching thread.

Then I purchased, let's see if I can find all my pieces. The tool for doing snaps online was fairly inexpensive. If you're gonna be making a lot of these, or if you're going to be making, say, baby bibs or some other thing that you you're gonna be making, like little wallets, um, you might want to invest in a snap tool. I put it off for a very long time and then decided to just bite the bullet and go ahead and purchase one. So, I'm using my previous made closure wrap to figure out where my center is, but you can simply put it up against a ruler, find the center mark.

There's a tiny awl that comes with this tool that you then insert into the fabric and make yourself a hole for the application. So I'm pushing all the way through the layers. It doesn't really rip the fabric, it just kind of works its way between the weave. And then I'm going to select, how about we use the pink one today? We use the light pink.

And there are the various, they come in all kinds of colors, and I have to find the right combination of pieces here. I need the nail head piece for the outer portions of the snap. Then I need the male and the female. I think that's how they classify the different shapes that fit together. That's the second one.

Here's the other I need. And of course, in this little tiny container, the pieces that will fit together there. So that I put the nail head portion through that hole in the fabric that I made with the awl. And I'm gonna follow mine here. There are really simple instructions that came with the tool on how to layer the pieces together.

Then how to work them. Into the tool, line them up, and simply squeeze. And it applies on one side. Now I need to find the center on the other side. And I would do the exact same thing.

I'm gonna line it up so that they'll totally match. And fit together. And I'll probably apply this one later because right now I don't have my topstitching on there yet, since I ran out of bob and thread, but I'm gonna make the hole through just widen out the weave of the fabric there. The nailhead portion goes through the fabric. Until the little point comes through the other side.

It does help to put that all through because it makes a hole in the batting then too, an area for the nailhead to work its way through. It's got a really sharp point on that side. Make sure that the fabrics, the nailheads go all the way through. And then put the second side on, so that, um, whoops. So that it sits properly.

And apply the tool till it's smashed, that little nailhead gets smashed and then it has a perfect match to snap closed. But I'm going to do that after I, um, get my topstitch in place. So you have the two portions of your snap so that they easily snap together. It could easily be a Velcro there. It could be a traditional metal snap.

Um, either of those will work really well, so that you're ready to go to wrap up those cords and keep everything neat and tidy. Now, I want to just walk you through the steps of the large cord wrap we had created. I created this one first and then I decided, but I wanna, I want something smaller to go around these smaller cords because this kind of swallowed it up. Now, this is my other pet peeve. We always have extension cords.

We need them at holiday time, we need them, um, when we're, um, hooking up equipment in our house, but sometimes you have to store these, and then they get all messy, and who wants, uh, a bunch of cords all, um. Tied together, and a large cord wrap kept them from kind of being—they were self-contained this way. So when I store them, I'll just go grab a packet and I know I have one cord. So this one. It is a bit different in its construction.

In this one I did quilt as you go through all the layers, so I use my batting and my backing. As a sandwich. Then I applied my strips in the same manner as we did on the small one, quilt as you go to cover the entire batting. And then I decided to get a little fancy. I decided that I wanted to use I gotta find, oh, here, my corner trimmer.

You could use this, you could leave it square if you'd like. But I've used this in the past and I love this little tool. When I first purchased it, I thought, will I ever use this again? And I have so many times used it for placemats. I've used it on runners.

I've used it. On hot pads, coasters, it's fun to put kind of a flair to the edge instead of having it square, plus you don't have to do miter corners then. You do have to use bias binding, but the creative grids multi-size curved corner cutter. It's got a long name. If you remember Creative Grids and something for doing curves, you can Google it and find it really quick.

I use the medium sized one to cut the corners on my project. I kind of like that rounded edge look on my finished project. And yes, then you do have to use bias binding so that your this is all I have left of my strip from this project. I also use this to make the tab for my button. So the bias binding is applied to the front, rolled to the back, and hand stitched in place.

But it will do that nice curve for you because bias binding has stretch to it. OK? So bias binding, we have videos if you've never done bias binding or haven't cut bias binding in the past. We have videos at National Quilter Circle, probably Craftsy also on how to cut bias binding and how to apply it for inside and outside curves. This is an outside curve, so you can jump over there and watch a really fun tutorial on using bias binding if you're new to that idea, then.

I used a piece off of what was left from my binding. I got my binding all ready to go, but I decided to plan, and I had it all the way done, I guess on this one. I did my binding all the way and had it completed, and then decided, hmm, do I want to put snaps? How about a button option? You could use snaps.

You could easily put two snaps, top and bottom. If you like that plastic snap application, you could do Velcro here. But for those of you who don't like either of those, I decided to give you a button option. Here, so I took a piece of my binding and folded the cut edges toward that center fold. And then folded it again, and I made a strap that I made my loop for my button.

And then literally just folded the ends under and stitched it along next to the binding. Pushing my button and stitching it in place, and the larger cord wrap came to life. Now, this could also be used to wrap your cord around the handle of an iron if you don't have one. I was going to demo it on this iron, but this iron has an automatic wind into the base, but on a larger iron, because this is a smaller version, you could use this to wrap through the handle and wrap the cord for taking to a class or retreat also. So, or you could use the cord wrap for the sewing machine.

Um, cords so that you don't forget them. I've had a person forget their cord to their sewing machine for a retreat before, so if you make it pretty, you won't forget it, right? OK. So we've now created the large cord wrap, we've created the small cord wrap. We've investigated bias binding, we've talked about using a snap closure, and we've done some quilt-as-you-go.

So, I think we're done for today. Uh, Sanders says, uh, you may be making a lot of those cord wraps. How wonderful. I think it has to be so fun to make. Don't tell my daughters, my daughters-in-law, they might get some in their Christmas stockings.

Um, I don't think they watch. And if they do, I just blew my great idea for, um, a fun little stocking stuffer for them. But for your next quilt retreat, for your small group, uh, quilt group that needs just those little projects or a gift to put into a birthday card, a great project. Use up those scraps and have some fun. Thanks for joining me today.