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Gear You Need to Make a Quilt

To make a basic quote how many have made? I know you guys have made quilts and you have great quilt of you guys made a quote, we're going to make a cold so basic quote, making supplies you can go deep in any of these there's all sorts of gear that you don't need all the gear, so we're just going to go over the basics today, um, you need a rotary cutter and have any any of you that have not made a quote? You know what? This is basically a razor blade on stick and it's very sharp, but this in combination with these clear quilting rulers, um, and a self healing cutting, matt is your friend. It makes really accurate cuts don't see how, quote makers I mean, you can certainly make a quote with a pair of fabric scissors and it's so much easier, so these air really good, I have a couple of different sizes, but it's always important when you're using these to close them when you put them down. I don't always, and I've heard of teachers and classes that find their students like some crazy and ma...

lik five hundred dollars when they don't close their rotary cutter, so if you see me not close it just do as I say, not just ideo, um, but fabric scissors also I have fabric scissors, I have kids at home who think that they need fabric scissors for certain things, but I would suggest labeling them and hiding them from everybody, so nobody no two favorite pair nobody knows where they are and they stay sharp. I keep him sharp end and it's just it's such a joy to make something with sharp tools for sure, and then the clear rulers that I use for this four patch. So we're cutting shirts and pants. You don't need a super long when I have a few that I really like. This one is three inches by eighteen. Yes, and this is just a good basic one to use and what's great about these if you've never used these is that you can lay this on the fabric and you can see the little lines and you can line everything up really nicely. Um, this one I use a lot when I'm making shirts are making quotes from shirts or pants. This one is twelve by six and squares that we're going to be cutting or five and a half by five and a half. So this is a really good one to get those nice squares, and then I also use this one sometimes, although you wouldn't need necessarily this one it's good to have just for cutting stray squares. You need a sign machine? Of course you could also hand piece, but you could get a lot of movie watching out of the way if you hand pieced but a sewing machine and coordinating thread so a lot of people are sometimes they think that you need white thread to teo quit with you don't you just feel like a neutral color threat? You're not going to see it from the from the face of from the top of the quilt, so just a neutral threat for so for something like this, I may use I had cream already, but I may use like a tan or a medium gray or something like that. So, um, just a neutral thread and, um an iron and ironing board it's really helpful you're gonna be doing a lot of ironing, sewing, ironing actually gonna be doing a lot of ironing, trimming, sewing so it's really good to have all of these together unless you're like me and eat a big meal the night before. Then you put your ironing board in the kitchen and your studio's downstairs so that whenever you iron, you have to go up the stairs. I have actually done that and that's how I get my work out it um you need a design wall, you don't have to have this, but boy, is it really helpful a lot of time, my first quilt, I spread it out on my bed or I think on the dining room table, he can certainly do that, but unless you're on a ladder looking down, you're always getting the skewed perspective of what it looks like. This is the design wall that we're using today. It is a flannel sheet, and you can buy a flower sheet at the thrift store and wrap it around a piece of foam core you could get a large piece, you can even attack it up to the wall just temporarily. But what this will do is as you create your design, this will allow the's squares to stay up so you can play and it's really great, because then you can stand back and you can look and see what you're doing. It's really very helpful, very helpful, and I would recommend either a gray like this or a white something neutral that won't distract you a quick question. Blair, will any fabric stick to that plan? All design wall? You know, I don't know like those taffeta pieces in the silk pieces, I'm not sure they would that you could stick a little pin in there. Really? Any of the fabrics like the corduroys, the wool, any of that will stick to this, and then once you're cold, gets bigger, sometimes you might have to add a pin just to hold up the bigger strips, but, yeah, it's it's really fun, it maginness its work? Yeah, and so the iron I am boring. We just talked about to put your quote layers together, there's a couple of tricks that I use and we'll go over those, but one of the things that you really need when you're putting your layers together is some of this painters blue tape this holds the bottom layer in place so that it doesn't wrinkle up your get creases on the bottom because you can't really see the bottom layer when you're putting the others on top said this is pretty this is pretty helpful and then a lot of there's a lot of different ways to base to the layers together to hold them in place, a lot of people whose safety pins I actually have. I don't like to use safety pins, but I like to pin, so I'm going to show you guys a little trick that I use to pin the layers in place because you need to hold them in place while you're tying or attaching all of the three layers together. And that's really all you need like I said you can get deep in supplies there are probably ten thousand different shapes of these but you don't need him you know I have a question and if you guys have any supply questions feel free to let me know but about the rotary cutter you said you use a couple of different sizes and could you tell us what those sizes are and then also how often are you changing the blades on those so I used a forty five millimeter I think a lot of cultures used this one and this one I think is a sixty I actually like the bigger one better because I find that it goes dollar a little slower maybe because the blade is uh is bigger but I would change the's when you get to a point where you're really having to press down when you're cutting your blade needs to be changed and that's when you're going to make mistakes and cut into your ruler or make really crazy cuts and again there is nothing nicer than slicing fabric with a nice sharp rotary blades so I would change it you know it's hard to say how often I changed because I just switch there like right now they all have clean nice sharp blade so I'll just switch until they start to get dull but yeah the sharper blades make such a dramatic you're chopping they do they do does anybody else have any questions? Yes really she tape instead of like the blue painter's tape I don't know that the attack would be a strong what I like about this is that you can get wide pieces and it will hold but it will not damage if you're taping that's on your floor something it won't damage the surface of anything because it's got just attack toe hold it washi tape it might work you know you could try it for sure would be acute wayto tio put your layer down for sure yes constructing a men's button up are you using the rotary cutter or fabric since yes so I we're going to do that next so we're going to cut up a shirt and I'll show you how I do it I used both scissors and rotary cutter so we'll go into that right now actually in just a moment on so yeah, the basic rules I don't know if any of you are do you garment so at all so okay it's a little bit different than that quarter inch scene is really think e I think in garment selling there's like a three eighths inch seeing five eight ths inch scene yeah so that was really hard for me t switch but you can buy a I'll show you guys if I can my patchwork foot this is a patchwork foot that has a quarter inch wide on either side of the needle and it makes it super easy when you're selling a scene to stay at the edge of that fabric to get your kid assistant quarter inch but you don't need five days, you know we're not altering these, and so you don't need to be anymore any larger now on some of the bulkier fabrics, like if you were going to do sweaters, you might want to make a little bit larger, same allowance like a half an inch or something like that. But this is what is really helpful and these patchwork, but I think you can buy universal patchwork fits for almost any machine if you have trouble finding one and I think most of the basic ah machine feet have like a five eighths inch to the edge allowance on their basic foot, you can mark this there's a way you know you could just mark this with like a little stack of post it notes just to keep your consistent quarter inch. But having a consistent quarter inch in your seems is once you get that down it's super super helpful, it keeps it all so nice and consistent you'll be glad that you figured that out there's, no back stitching all of the seams that you so will eventually cross each other, so you do not need to back stitch you can it's another you know you can you can break that rule it's totally fine but you don't have to and then I don't know if this is the way everybody works but the way I prefer to work is when I'm deconstructing garments I prefer to cut everything first and then so everything last and do it in batches so um some people need to feel more more productive like they need to see a result a little differently so they might want to do it in a different way that that's the way I do it to try and just keep everything organized as you can see, we have these in stacks and it just it's really helpful working in patchwork is always messy there's always a lot of different fabrics so it's easy if you can keep it organized any other questions before you move on in terms of mixing different kinds of fabrics what's your take on that like, do you stick to a certain kind nicole gotten or would you makes like or dry with cotton or something like that? I mix everything and honestly it's because when I started doing these quote, I didn't know any better and I find that sometimes you know if if I have like maybe this shirt has a little bit of lycra in it it might behave a little differently, but over time you learn how to make that work maybe, you know, maybe it's stretched a little bit in the scene you could just turn that off or something like that so yeah and different weights work fine, you know that will quote but I showed the ski jacket for those air all different weights, but they all if you take flow and sort of experiment a little bit, it'll all work together for sure. So this is a design that's in my book. Um, this is a beautiful illustration done by lisa condon for my book I think she also has created what club, but this is a four patch for patch designed the one in my book is a little bit different than the one we're going to do today, but I'll show you this is the one in the book that's actually a picnic blanket, so it has a liner on the back so that waster doesn't soak through. But what I'm talking about when I talk about four patch is this basic design where you have four fabrics are I'm sorry for patches with two fabrics each that all that's, a basic four patch designed there's nine patches there's all different variations, but this particular design is such a good one to start out with, and it really gives you a chance to play with the different types of fabrics that you have when you're sewing, I incorporated some of the pockets and then also the flea plaque. It's, it's, really fun to incorporate those. I'm going to show you how to do that. But this is the basic idea of what we're going to put together, and the first thing we're going to dio is, we're going toe that's another example of the different example of the the four patch. So are squares are going to be five and a half by five and a half, and again, when you take into consideration the quarter inch seam, allow its off the edges of each one of those you're finished for patch square is going to be ten by ten, so I'm going to give you the basic recipe and walk you through it. But if you decide that you want to make a larger quil, you do it in increments of ten inches across and ten inches down. It's. Super super easy.