Tutorial

Courthouse Steps Quilt Block Pattern

March 20, 2013 by Mary H 1 Comment

While I’m waiting for the batting to get here for this quilt and still not in the mood to finish this one, I looked through my scraps and decided to actually use some of them to make a courthouse steps quilt block.

I love this block. They’re quick (all squares and rectangles) and cute, and there are about a million different ways to approach them. I decided to use white and my more solid, colorful scraps.

Want to make one? I’m going to give you my measurements that I used, but you can use any measurements you want. The size of my completed block is 7.5 inches square.

Cut a 2 inch square.

Now cut 2 rectangles (2 inches long ((the same length as the white square)) and 1.5 inches wide) to sew on the sides of the square.

Pin both pieces of fabric, right sides together, to the white square.

Sew them together. It looks like I’m going to sew over my pins, but I’m not. You shouldn’t either! From what I hear, you can really mess up your sewing machine doing that!

Press seams to the darker fabric. (But, let me point out something I’ve noticed. I always try to press to the darker fabric when making blocks like this one, but sometimes the fabric just does not want to go in that direction. I don’t know why, any ideas? Something to do with the way I’ve sewn it, perhaps? Anyway, in that case, I usually just let the fabric do what it wants. But it is ideal, in my opinion, to press towards the darker fabric.)

ta da!

Now get another piece of fabric and cut 2 strips 1.5 inches wide and longer than the piece you just sewed with the white square. Don’t worry about measuring the length! (This is why I like making these.)

But, if you can’t stand the idea of not measuring the length, by all means, measure away! I just like not having to measure sometimes. As I’ve said before, I am many things…..but a perfectionist is not one of them!

Now pin them (remember right sides together!) and sew just like you did before.

Sew.

After you press your seams towards the darker fabric, you should have this.

Use your rotary cutter and quilt ruler to snip the edges off to make a nice square.

Now you have this.

Now add a layer of white. (Of course, if you want to add a layer of color, that’s fine, I’m just telling you what I did.)

Just cut 2 strips 1.5 inches wide and longer than the block.

I won’t bore you with repetitive pictures, but just like earlier, you’ll pin those white strips to the block, sew them together, press your seams to the darker fabric, and trim the edges.

You’ll have this.

Repeat the steps again by adding strips of white to the top and bottom. 1) Cut 2 strips 1.5 inches wide and longer than the square. 2) Pin them to the square. 3) Sew. 4) Press seams towards darker fabric. 5) Trim edges. Done!

You’ll have this. (It’s under the quilt ruler because I was squaring it up. You can square your block any time during the process you want, you don’t have to wait until you’re finished.)

You can stop here or add as many layers as you’d like. It’s up to you.

I added one more layer of color to make it a 7.5 inch square.

Cute, huh? And pretty quick, too.

When (and if) I actually complete an entire quilt with these, I’ll probably put sashing between the squares.

Filed Under: Beginner Quilting, Courthouse Square Quilt Block, Quilt Block Tutorials, Quilt Blocks, Tutorial Tagged With: courthouse steps quilt block, courthouse steps tutorial, quilt block for beginner

Hour Glass Quilting Block Tutorial

January 7, 2013 by Mary H Leave a Comment

I’m in the process of making my son a twin quilt for his bed. I decided to make it using an hour glass quilt block pattern. Since I’m making (what feels like) a million hour glass blocks, I thought I’d write up a little tutorial.

I’ll go ahead and say that you can find this tutorial all over the Internet and everyone seems to have their own little spin on it, so this is just how I make them.

And I’ll go ahead and say that if you’re totally new to quilting, use my pictures to guide you as much (if not more) than my words. I try to make my tutorials as clear as I possibly can, but a picture’s worth a thousand words, right? Also, go ahead and read the entire tutorial before you start making your blocks. When I was new to quilting, I found this helped tremendously.

Ok….first cut your squares.

I cut mine 5.5 inches. You can cut yours any size you want. This tutorial will work with any size block.

Then put right sides together and draw a line down the middle, from one corner to the other. (It doesn’t matter which corners you use.) I used a regular pen (It was actually one of those Sharpie pens, they’re pretty bold.) and my quilt ruler and just drew a straight line. It doesn’t matter what kind of ink you use because you’re not going to be able to see your line when you’re finished anyway because you’re going to cut right down it.

Now sew a straight line down beside both sides of the line you drew. Sew 1/4 inch away from each side of the line. I used my quarter inch foot to keep my seams exact. (And if you don’t have a 1/4 inch foot, buy one. Now. Seriously. They are not expensive and they make quilting so much easier, exact and enjoyable. Just Google quarter inch sewing foot and you’ll see lots of options.)

I sewed down one side of the line I drew…….(remember, using a 1/4 seam allowance)

and then I flipped it over and sewed down the other side of the line. (again using a 1/4 inch seam allowance)

Now take your square and place your quilt ruler on the line that you drew. Your quilt ruler should touch both corners. (use my picture if you don’t understand!) Use your rotary cutter and cut straight down the line.

Don’t move your fabric at all. Take your quilt ruler, place it on the square (Now your square is in two pieces, but it should still look like a square because you haven’t moved your fabric yet.) lining up the other two corners and cut straight down that way, too.

Now you should have 4 pieces that look like this.

Take those 4 pieces and iron them open. Press your seams towards the darker fabric.

Take the 4 pieces you’ve ironed and arrange them so that you have 2 blocks that look like this. (These have not been sewn together, yet.)

Now you’re going to prepare these to be sewn together. Arrange them placing right sides together. (I put the green arrow to try to show you that I was folding the top piece down so that it lays on top the piece under it.)

Pin them together, if you want. (Not 100% necessary, in my opinion, but I like to pin these before sewing.)

Now sew them together, using a 1/4 seam allowance.

Now you should have this.

Go back to your iron and iron them open. Use your best judgement on which way to iron the seams. As far as I know, it doesn’t really matter, since there’s now way to totally iron all your seams towards the darker fabric. I iron the way the seam seems to want to go, if that makes sense. If I’m wrong here, someone let me know, but it seems to work just fine!

ta da! This is what you should have!

Square them up.

And you’re all done!

Filed Under: Quilt Blocks, Quilts for Beginners, Tutorial Tagged With: hour glass block, hour glass quilting block tutorial, hourglass quilt block, hourglass quilting block, making hourglass blocks, quilt block

Pinwheel Quilt Block Tutorial

July 24, 2012 by Mary H 1 Comment

My 5 year old has been asking me to make him a blanket for quite awhile and I’ve finally started on it. (If said 5 year old would ever give me more than 5 minutes to myself I could have made him a dozen blankets by now, but that’s a post for another day.)

I decided to make a little pinwheel quilt using some fabric that I bought quite several months ago. It’s probably a little babyish for him now, but he says he likes it, so I’m using it! It’s perfect, too, because it’s a dark and a light fabric, perfect for a pinwheel!

Step 1) Pick out 2 fabrics that compliment each other, one dark and light. (Of course you can use more than 2 colors, but if you’re new to quilting, I think it’s easiest to start this way, but you can do whatever you want.)

**To make your pinwheel block, you’re going to need to do Steps 2-8 TWICE! (So you’ll do step 2 two times, step 3 two times and so on.) Just scroll down and read through the instructions to understand why.**

Step 2) Next, cut a square out of your dark fabric and a square out of your light fabric. (I cut my blocks in 3.5 inch squares.)

Step 3) Take one block of each fabric and place them right sides together.

Step 4) Draw a line diagonally down the middle of the square. Make sure it goes straight down the middle by lining up your quilting ruler the way I did in the picture. Notice where the arrows are pointing in the picture below. The corners should line up exactly.

(Just a little trick I’ve learned. That white under the fabric is the non-slip stuff you buy to put in your kitchen cabinets. I just cut a small square and use it when I have to write on fabric because it helps keep fabric from shifting.)

You’ll need to keep your hand on the ruler to prevent it from slipping and it doesn’t matter when type of marker or pen you use to draw your line because you’re just going to be cutting straight down it anyway. (So don’t worry about using disappearing ink or anything.)

This is what your block will look like with the line.

Step 5) Sew a line 1/4″ from both sides of the line you drew.

To help keep my lines straight, I drew a quarter inch line on my sewing machine foot with with a permanent marker.

Line up the line you drew on your fabric with the quarter inch mark on you drew on your foot. Then sew.

If my captions in the picture above need more explanation, when I first started sewing, my instinct was to watch my needle, but it’s too late to make changes to the way your feeding your fabric through if you’re staring at the needle. If you watch the fabric as you feed it under your foot, you’ll do better. The arrow in the picture above shows where to watch your fabric. If your line on the fabric is lined up exactly with the 1/4 line you on your foot, your lines should be perfect!

Step 6) After you’ve sewn your 2 lines, cut straight down the line you drew.

Now your fabric should look like this.

Step 7) Iron your blocks open. I always iron my seams towards the darker fabric.

Step 8) Your blocks will have little tails. Just trim those right off. (This step isn’t 100% necessary, I just don’t like working with those little tails.)

**Remember! You should have done Steps 2-8 twice to be able to continue on with Step 9.**

Step 9) Arrange your blocks into a pinwheel pattern. It’s easier just to look at my picture than for me to attempt to write an explanation that would probably confuse you! Just play with your blocks until you get it right.

Step 10) Fold your blocks over to prepare them to sew. I folded mine from left to right. (Right sides together!)

If you’re looking at your block, you’re going to want to sew down the left side.

Step 11) Sew together using a 1/4″ seam allowance.

Step 12) Iron seams open.

Now you should have something like this.

Step 13) Fold over, putting right sides together.

Step 14) Sew your line. (1/4′ seam allowance)

Step 15) Iron. (again!)

Ta daa!! You’re done! You should have a cute little pinwheel block.

This particular block, while very cool-looking, has lots of steps that can make it seem tedious, but there are some things you can do to make it go a little faster. For one, you could simply make big blocks, meaning you have to do each step fewer times. You would follow these steps exactly, just start with 6 inch blocks maybe.

This quilt is going to me small, just a lap quilt for a 5 year old, so I wanted small blocks.

I’m planning on creating posts that will take you through step by step the entire quilt I’m making, so I’ll show you what I do to make it not take quite so much time. I will let you know as soon as I’m done!

Here you go, this one might save you a little time if you use the tips and how I made the pinwheel quilt top.

Have fun!

Filed Under: Beginner Quilting, Quilt Blocks, Quilts for Beginners, Tutorial Tagged With: Pinwheel Block, Quilt Blocks, Quilting, Quilts for Beginners, Tutorial

How To Attach a Walking Foot to a Sewing Machine

April 5, 2012 by Mary H 10 Comments

A walking foot is a sewing machine foot that helps feed multiple layers of fabric through a sewing machine more easily.

Quilting with a walking foot will make your quilting life much easier, trust me. The fabric will lay flatter, your quilting will look much better and it’s just so much easier.

It’s super easy to sew with one, the only trouble I’ve ever had, was attaching it to my machine, so I’m putting up this little tutorial in case anyone else has the same problem.

***Little disclaimer here. This is how you attach it to my machine. (I have a Janome.) I think the process is pretty much the same on most sewing machines, but some of these steps might vary a little depending on your machine.***

To Attach Your Walking Foot:

First, remove the current foot from your machine. On my machine, you push a little lever which releases the foot.

Now, please, save yourself some time and frustration and have a designated place to put what you take off your machine. Don’t just put it on your dining room table and assume it will there next time you need it….. not that I’ve ever done that. I just put mine in a plastic container that I keep next to my machine. Fancy, right?

After you’ve removed the foot, you have to remove the thing that holds the foot. I’m sorry, but I have no idea what it’s called. But this is what the part looks like with a foot attached.

And what it looks like without a foot attached.

To remove, you need to unscrew it. I use the little tool that came with my sewing machine to loosen it and then just use my fingers to finish unscrewing it.

Now your machine should look like this.

Now you can attach your walking foot. Slide the walking foot in from behind your needle.

You want to align the screw hole with the little space on the walking foot. I know those terms are vague, so hopefully the pictures will help.

Another view of the part of the walking foot you need to align withe the screw hole.

Now, this is the part that tripped me up when I was learning how to attach my walking foot. There is a part on the walking foot that moves up and down. Make sure you place this part above the thing that tightens and loosens your needle. Here’s a picture of what I’m talking about. Your walking foot will not work if you forget this step, but if you do forget, it will take you about .5 seconds to figure out something’s not right.

Now you just need to screw your walking foot on. This part was very awkward for me the first few times I did it. If you have someone to help you, it might make it easier if they can hold the walking foot while you insert the screw. You can do it by yourself, though…. it might just be a little awkward.

Now tighten the screw up and you’re done!

I always run a piece of scrap fabric through before starting to quilt just to make sure I attached it correctly.

Have fun! I hope this helped!

While I don’t really consider this a true beginner sewing thing, I’m going to link it to my Beginner Sewing Series.

Filed Under: Beginner Quilting, Beginner Sewing, Beginner Sewing Series, Tutorial Tagged With: Attach Walking Foot, Beginner Quilting, Beginning Sewing, Sewing for Beginners, Walking Foot

How to Make a Pillow Case from an Old Sheet

March 12, 2012 by Mary H Leave a Comment

If you have an old sheet lying around, then you can whip these up in no time. And, for the best results, I recommend using the oldest, softest sheet you can find. (So it might not be the prettiest pillow case you’ve ever seen, but it will be the most comfortable!) Old sheets make the. best. pillowcases. ever. My 3 year old calls them “cold pillows,” I guess because the fabric is so cool and soft to the touch. In fact, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night screaming for his cold pillow if it’s fallen on the floor and he can’t find it.

First, measure an old pillow case to figure out how much fabric you need. My pillow case was 18 inches wide and 31.5 inches long. So I needed my fabric to measure 37 inches by 32.5. (18 + 18 = 36 and + 1 for seam allowances = 37 inches.) (31.5 + 1 for seam allowances)

Keep the hem! This is the top of my sheet, which is what makes these pillow cases to easy and quick to make.

Since this is a huge old sheet, I wasn’t worried about wasting fabric, so I just used my scissors to cut out a rectangle the approximate size of my pillow case b/c smaller pieces of fabric are much easier to work with, imo.

Iron.

Using your rotary cutter, go ahead and cut your edges to the exact measurements that you need. (Or, if your like me, to “about” the exact measurements that you’ll need!)

Then pin, with wrong sides together. Most of the time you’ll pin right sides together, but not now. Just fold the fabric over to where it looks like a pillow case, all sides lined up and touching, and pin around the top and side. You’ll leave the top open so you can slide your pillow in.

Using a 1/4 seam allowance, sew around the side and bottom.

Iron your seam.

Turn your pillow case inside out.

Now that you have your seam ironed down and your pillow case turned inside out, sew around your seam, this time using a 1/2 inch seam allowance. This is actually called a french seam. When you sew around your seam you’re enclosing the raw edges in fabric, so you won’t have any strings or unraveling! Fancy, right?

Remember, you’re now sewing on the inside of the pillow case and your seam is on the outside of the case. You can’t actually see the seam, but you can feel it if you run your finger over it.

This is what your french seam looks like, the view from the “inside” of the pillowcase.

Now turn your pillow case right side out and pop a pillow in there! You are done! I’ve found making pillowcases instead of buying them to be one very easy way to save money and if you can use an old sheet, they’re so much better than new ones, at least in my opinion.

I’m going to come back later and show you how to make a pillowcase out of your sheet that doesn’t use the hem that’s already there. They aren’t quite as fast, but they are easy to make, they just require a couple extra steps that this pillow case doesn’t.

Filed Under: Beginner Sewing, DIY, Pillows, Sewing for Beginners, Tutorial Tagged With: Beginner Sewing Project, DIY, Pillow Cases, Pillowcases, Pillowcases from old sheets, Pillows, Sewing for Beginners, Sewing. French Seam

Holiday Decorating: Make a Wreath out of Holly Berries

December 2, 2011 by Mary H Leave a Comment

My finished Christmas wreath, waiting to be hung in my kitchen window.

I wanted to dress up the four windows in my kitchen and dining room for the holidays, so I decided to make a wreath for each window. This was a very easy project, but not as quick as I thought it would be.

If you want to make your own, here’s what you’ll need. Hot glue gun, spray paint, wreath, (The wreath was originally white, but I took the picture after I spray painted it brown.) wire cutter, red marker and berries.

You don’t have to spray paint your wreath, but some of the it is going to show under the berries, so spray painting it a dark color camouflages the white styrofoam a bit. You could use any dark color, I used brown because that’s what I had, but forest green would also work well and I think black would be fine, too. Since you’re covering the wreath with berries, don’t worry about doing a thorough job. One coat is plenty.

I bought a berry garland at Michaels and snipped the branches off. (If you do this, know that scissors probably won’t work. I used a pair of hand pruning shears, but a wire cutter would probably work better.)

After detaching all the berries, I used my hot glue gun to glue them to the wreath. Since I used a styrofoam wreath it was easy to push and arrange the berries so that they covered the it.

The berries, it turned out, were also styrofoam and during the process of cutting, gluing, and arranging some of them chipped off and the white styrofoam was revealed. I just took a red marker and colored in the spots.

Now you can hang it up! (I plan on using burlap to hang them in my windows.)

I think this project turned out great. But, it did take a good bit longer than I anticipated. It took me about an hour to finish this one, mainly because I wanted it to look really full, so I spent a lot of time gluing berry pieces on top of each other and on the wreath’s sides. I still have 3 to go. Maybe I’ll get them all done before it’s time to take them down in January!

(Also, I would recommend doing this in a ventilated area, especially the spray painting. I’m just guessing, but I would think breathing in spray paint and hot glue on styrofoam isn’t exactly good for you.)

Filed Under: Christmas, Tutorial, Wreaths Tagged With: Christmas, Christmas Crafts, Christmas Wreath, Crafts, DIY Christmas, Easy Christmas Project, Holiday Decorating, Wreath, Wreath Tutorial

Kitchen Sewing Project: Decorative Dish Towel Tutorial

September 12, 2011 by Mary H 2 Comments

If you’re looking for a way to use up scraps, an idea for teacher gifts or just a way to brighten up your kitchen, these dishtowels are for you! They’re very easy, so they’re a good project for a beginner and they don’t take long to complete.

Iron your dishtowel to get the wrinkles out. I used a bright yellow dishtowel I bought at Target.

Measure the width of your towel so you’ll know how long to cut your fabric strip. Mine measured just under 17 inches.

Cut your fabric strip about 1/2″ longer than the width of your towel. It needs to be longer than the towel so you can fold it under and not have any raw edges showing on the finished product. I made my strip about 17.5 inches long. (And it’s from a Frolic jelly roll by Moda, if you were wondering.)

Fold down the edges about 1/4″ and iron them so they lay flat. Iron all 4 sides. (I just “eyeballed” my 1/4″ folds, no measurements. They’re probably not perfect, but the towel still looks fine.)

Cut 2 pieces of rick rack the width of the dishtowel. You don’t have to use any rick rack, it just adds some more color and detail. To keep the rick rack from fraying I singed the raw edges with a lit match. If you choose to do this, hold the flame a few inches below (don’t place the rick rack in the flame) the rick rack’s raw edge and do it over a sink in case you need to drop the match quickly. It literally only takes about 1 second to singe the edges. (Obviously, don’t let your kids help with this part, I’m not responsible if you burn down your house, be careful, etc.

Pin the rick rack and fabric to the towel.

Stitch around all 4 sides of the fabric, about 1/4″ from the edge.

Backstitch when you start and stop sewing to prevent your thread from unraveling.

Admire!

Maybe even make another!

I am linking up over at Get Your Craft On @ Today’s Creative Blog, Too Cute Tuesday @ The Funky Polka Dot Giraffe, and Turquoise Lovin’ @ Sweet Little Gals.

Filed Under: Beginner Sewing, Kitchen Sewing, Sewing for Beginners, Tutorial Tagged With: Beginner Sewing Project, Decorative Dish Towels, Kitchen Sewing, Scrap Fabric

How to Zigzag Stitch to Prevent Fraying

September 8, 2011 by Mary H 3 Comments

This post is part of my Beginner Sewing Series.

When I first starting making quilts, I would just throw all my fabric in the washing machine when I pre-washed. I wouldn’t do anything to prepare it, and when I got it out of the washing machine, half of it was unraveled and I’d have a bunch of wet strings where my pretty fabric had once been. It didn’t phase me too much, I would just order extra fabric and cut off the strings. (Can we say wasteful, much?)

I finally decided that I should do something about all those yucky little strings, so I started doing a zigzag stitch across the raw edges before washing.

It’s super easy and only takes a couple of minutes to do.

First, if you’re zigzagging as part of the pre-washing process, you should know that you only need to stitch around the raw edges. You can stitch around the selvedge, but there’s no real need for you to do so. If you can’t tell the difference between the selvedge and the raw edges, look closely and you can probably see some tiny little threads already unraveling from the raw edges. You shouldn’t see any unraveling on the selvedge.

First, find the zigzag setting on your sewing machine.

On my machine, it’s setting 8. Look for the zigzag pattern on your machine. Even the simplest of machines should allow you to do a zigzag stitch.

Run it through your machine like normal.

And you’re done.

You have a nice zigzag stitch that will keep your fabric from unraveling in the washing machine.

(If you have a serger, you can just serge the edges instead.)

While this tutorial focused on the zigzag stitch to prevent fabric from fraying in the washing machine, you use the same concept to zigzag stitch for other purposes, as well. For instance, you might use a zigzag stitch around an applique.

Filed Under: Beginner Sewing, Sewing for Beginners, Tutorial, Zigzag Stitch Tagged With: Beginning Sewing, How to Zigzag Stitch, Sewing for Beginners, Tutorial