Quilting Tools by Clover

Making a beautiful hand quilted applique table topper is easy when you have all of the right tools from Clover. From marking our units to adding some fusible applique to basting our quilt layers together and then hand quilting and binding. We can do it all using tools from Clover. We're going to start by making our units and assembling our table topper. This table topper pattern is made from basic rectangles some square in a square units and some flying geese. When making a square in a square units and flying geese both of them require you to mark a diagonal line on the wrong side of the fabric. When the line that I'm marking is going to be a sewing line rather than a cutting line, I always like to use a removable marking method. So I'm going to be using the water erasable marker by Clover for both the flying geese and the square in the square I'm simply going to turn over my fabric. So I have the wrong side facing up, position my ruler and then go ahead and draw that diagonal line on the wrong side of all of my pieces. Now I can start putting my pieces together and actually stitch them. So for your flying geese, you're going to take and start with one of your squares, placing it so that your marked line goes from one of the lower corners up towards the center. I like to always pin my pieces but if you feel comfortable just holding them go ahead and do that. And then stitch again, right on that line that you just drew using your water erasable marker. I'm going to go ahead and prep my square in a square units at the same time. For these, we can do two at one time. So I'm going to place two of my small squares in the corners of the larger square in a way that my line is going from off of the edge on one side to off of the edge on the other same thing here. So this is the direction of my line. Now it's time to do some folding and some pressing. Now when I'm making both square in a square units and flying geese, I like to fold and press first before I trim away the excess you're going to fold your fabric up and you're going to make sure that your edges align give it a good press, either using a finger press or with a hot iron, then you can come in and trim this seam allowance down to a quarter of an inch. You're gonna fold and press on both sides of your square in a square. And again, over here, fold and press on your flying geese as well. And then again, trim that seam allowance to one quarter inch. After we have our square in a square units assembled now it's time to add some of our floral applique and we're going to do that using the Wonder Fuse by Clover. So it comes in a larger roll like this but we're only going to need a small square. So all you do is cut off a a piece that's large enough for you to trace your shape. This Wonder Fuse is very easy to see through so I have my floral shape here that is provided with this pattern. And you can see that I can easily see through it in order to trace the outline of my shape which I'm going to do with just a simple mechanical pencil. Once I have them trace, I can simply fuse the Wonder Fuse onto the wrong side of my fabric. So I've already done that here with my flower centers and now I can cut out my shape. So this Wonder Fuse is a lightweight fusible web. It stays soft and pliable after you have fused it onto your fabrics you don't have to worry about your project feeling stiff or bulky. Once you have your shapes cut out. Now you're ready to put your flower and your flower centers onto your square in a square unit. So all you have to do is remove the paper backing from your shape. Very easy to do. I just like to fold along one corner and then just simply peel it away. You'll see a little bit of a shine. That means the adhesive is on the wrong side of the fabric like you want it to. Place it where desired go ahead and remove the paper backing from the center as well, place it. And then you're ready to fuse your shape down to your square in a square unit so you can stitch it. Add as many flowers as you'd like. If you're following along with the pattern provided with this video, you're going to do three flowers and three centers per square in a square unit. I'm going to stitch mine using a machine blanket stitch but whether you machine stitch or hand stitch the adhesive on Wonder Fuse will not gum up your needle. Once you have all of your appliques stitched in place then you can assemble the remainder of your table topper. You're going to want to refer to the pattern provided for full assembly instructions. But once you have that complete now we are ready to baste our quilt layers and do some hand quilting. Now I want to baste my layers using a Wonder Pins by Clover. So these are the Wonder Pins and what's great about these is they have a curved bottom. This makes it very, very easy to insert it through all layers of your quilt sandwich. These pins are also very easy to open and close. You can simply press down on it rock it to one side and it opens. I'm going to insert it through my layers using a scooping motion, bring it back up and then simply close it. Both the opening and closing can be done one handed. So I'm going to go ahead and add several pins, all over my quilt top to baste all of my layers together. Once I've added enough of the Wonder Pins in to hold all of my quilt layers together, my quilt top my batting and my backing. Now it's time to do some hand quilting. Clover has a wide variety of needles to choose from. So no matter what your size or length or type preference they are going to have one that's going to be exactly what you're looking for when it comes to hand quilting. Now, if you're like me, and maybe you like to do your quilting in several different colors or you know that you're not going to be able to sit down and completely quilt the entire top in one sitting and you're going to need to put your needle and thread away for a bit. Clover has the dome threaded needle case. This will hold up to 10 threaded needles and it will do so in a way that they will not get tangled up when you are storing them. So simply remove the dome. You're going to go ahead and insert your needle into one of the openings, right like so. bring your thread down through that slit, hold onto it just slightly while you start rotating this wheel around and then you're going to roll it all the way up until all of your thread is within the needle case. Then when we have all of the needles in that we want to we can go ahead and put the cover back on, right like so, and it's going to be ready for you when you are ready to go get back to hand quilting your top. Once you've done all of the hand quilting on your top now it's time to do some binding. There are different ways that you can bind your quilt. You can do it a traditional method, or the way I'm going to with this project is I'm actually going to wrap the backing fabric around the quilt top and use that as my binding. And I'm going to do that using again another Clover tool called the Hot Ruler. So I've swapped out and I have my quilted sample in front of me and my pressing service. And I have the Hot Ruler by Clover. So this is a ruler that you can press directly onto. It's rigid, but still slightly flexible. And unlike other metal ones it won't get hot when you press it. So to wrap my backing fabric around to be my binding I have started by of course, squaring up my quilt top first. Then I have trimmed my fabric, my backing fabric one inch beyond the outside of my quilt top. This hot ruler has all of the same markings and lines that a regular ruler has on it. And what I'm going to be looking for is the half-inch line right here. So I'm going to take and I'm going to position my Hot Ruler right on my quilt top with the half inch line, right at the edge of my quilt top. And again, since I cut my backing fabric one inch, when I wrap it around, my backing fabric should line up right with that one half inch line, I can double check and adjust if I need to. Now without having to remove anything I can bring in my iron and press. And again, I'm pressing directly on top of that Hot Ruler and I can continue moving down the ruler down my quilt top folding that edge up that one half inch right like so. Then once it's done I can go ahead and remove that Hot Ruler and again, it's not going to be hot and because I've used the ruler I have a nice crisp press right along this edge. I'm going to go ahead and do the same thing along this corner here. Once I've done that along the entire edge all the way around the perimeter of my table topper then I want to open back up this edge right at the corner because we want to create a nice mitered corner. You're going to have an intersection line right here where your two folds come together. You want to bring in a pair of snips or pair of scissors and just cut right across that intersection line. Getting rid of this little triangle here. Once you've trimmed away and removed all of your little extra corners. Now we're going to put our ruler again back on the corner of our quilt and we're going to bring our corner in and fold it so that these intersection lines right here now line up with again, that half inch line on the Hot Ruler. I'm going to go ahead and hold it. And then again, bring in my iron and give it a press. Not having to remove my ruler at all pressing directly on top of it. Once I've done that, now I can go ahead and refold right along the press that we have already put in place. And then we're going to fold one more time again. You can use your Hot Ruler again if you'd like. This time aligning the edge of the ruler with the edge of your quilt, folding it up and now the upper folded edge of your binding should align with the half inch mark on your ruler. Or since we already have that nice crisp edge, again using that Hot Ruler, we can simply fold it up and again folding in the other side as well. And we're going to create this nice mitered corner right here in all of the corners of our quilts. And I would come in with my iron and give that another press. Once you have your binding pressed and pin it's time to stitch it in place either by machine or by hand using those hand sewing needles from Clover. So for this project we were able to use several Clover products that made this project very easy to do from marking our flying geese and square into square units using the removable marking pin, to adding applique using the Wonder Fuse, and then bringing it all together basting our layers with Wonder Pins, hand quilting with needles, and then binding using the Hot Ruler. We were able to do it all with great products from Clover.