Inset Circles for Wedge Rounds

I am so terribly in love with wedge rulers, guys. We've been spending a LOT of time together over the last year and we're going public with our relationship. 

I covered a bunch about wedges in my original wedge webinar that I did for the MQG, but one thing I didn't cover is how to finish the center of the wedge round with a pieced, rather than an appliquéd circle. See all those orange circles on the book cover? This technique is how I pieced them. I can't wait to show you more about this book, but for now if you click over to C & T Publishing's website you can see a preview of a few of the quilts! 

This is the inset piecing technique you may have seen by another name, Dale Fleming's "six minute circle". I took out one of her steps, and I made the directions specific to wedges in this tutorial but let it be known we are all better quilters now thanks to Dale's innovation!

You will need: 

• Your finished wedge round
• A square piece of fabric for the center of the round, about 1" to 2" wider than the open circle in your wedge round
• A square piece of freezer paper, it should be about 4" or 5" wider than the open circle in your wedge round
• Temporary (washable) fabric glue
• pencil, scissors
• a zipper foot for your sewing machine

1. Trace a circle onto the dull side of the freezer paper, in the center. The diameter of the circle should be 1/2" to 3/4" larger than the diameter of the open hole in the center of the wedge round. Trace around something round such as a bowl, cup or plate.

2. Using sharp scissors, carefully cut the circle out from the center, leaving the edges of the freezer paper intact.

3. Lay the wedge round to be finished right side down on your ironing surface, being sure it is lying flat and not distorted. Position the freezer paper shiny side down, aligned over the hole.

4. With the iron on a warm setting, press the freezer paper to the back of the pieced round. The warmth will cause the freezer paper to adhere until you pull it off.

5. Increase the iron heat to high and press the seam allowance of the inner circle to the back along the edge of the freezer paper template.

6. Apply a scant amount of temporary glue to the exposed side of the pressed-back seam allowance.

7. While the glue is wet, lay the center circle fabric face down over the hole and smooth it with your hand from the center outward, pressing the fabric over the glued seam allowance. Be sure the seam allowance is glued around the entire circle.

8. Allow the glue to dry, pressing to speed this process up if necessary.

9. Remove the freezer-paper template by peeling from a corner. Set it aside to be reused as it will usually stick for several uses.

10. Install a zipper foot on your sewing machine. Check that the machine is set to a straight stitch setting.

11. With the center circle fabric on the bottom, begin stitching right on the crease created by ironing back the seam allowance. Stitch around the entire circle, moving the wedge round out of the way as you go. Be careful to keep the center circle fabric from folding under itself as you go. 

12. Check that your circle looks right from the front. Trim away the excess seam allowance from the square of center circle fabric. Press the seam allowances toward or away from the center as desired.

Stitching Lazy Eights on Fresh Quilting!

Hello quilty blogland loves! I've been super quiet, right? It's all for good. The good of raising my little folks with lots of outdoor time and home cooked meals and friends and reading. And the good of conjuring up my next book and online classes!

I also got invited to appear on the second season of the suddenly-everywhere show Fresh Quilting. What an honor! Here is my very first segment from the new season, how to quilt Lazy Eights, or Crazy Eights if you prefer. Whatever you call them, I hope you have fun stitching them.

If you want to see when the show is running in your area, go to www.freshquilting.com and look under the TV Listings tab to find what station is playing it! I feel so lucky to be a little part of this big project. The last time I was on a plane the lady sitting next to me happened to be a quilter (her husband sort of moaned that she somehow ended up sitting next to aNOTHER quilter!) and told me she watches the show every week, that's so cool!

Back to blogging soon I hope, as the school year gets going! Both kids are in school full time now! I hope you are looking out onto big beautiful futures too.

Tough gloves for Free-Motion Quilting

BIG NEWS in my little world. I'm on DVD! My Craftsy class Free Motion Quilting Essentials is fresh out on DVD, which I know a number of you with slower bandwidth have been asking for! I'm so thrilled Craftsy is taking this step!

Here is a link to the DVD, which includes the same 7 lessons that are in the online class as well as the course materials. And of course, it also shows me in my cutoff gloves on the cover which I know makes me look like tough stuff.

I cut the fingers off my gloves because I like having fingers that can do things, like thread my needle, take out basting pins and of course, use my touch screen phone to take pictures of what I'm doing. The internet needs to know!!

I find that when I'm using my gloves to FMQ it's really the palms and outer fingers that are doing the work of moving the piece, so cutting off the fingertips doesn't change my control over the piece I'm quilting. But it does make things so much cooler and I don't have to take the gloves off and on all the time.

I bring sample gloves with the fingers cut off for my students to try in my classes and most find that after they've tried them that way, they don't want to go back. Seriously, it's cutoff season everyone. Summer is almost here. Pull out the scissors.

If you're just starting and not so sure about cutting up your gloves, try starting with just the tip of the first finger of your dominant hand. Pretty soon you'll probably want the other tip free, and then the thumbs and then you'll be stopping me at QuiltCon telling me how we are badass fingerless gloves soul twins! I love it. I'm so glad we met in the future. You rock.

Oh, another note about the DVDs, Craftsy is releasing only some of their classes on DVD but happily ALL THREE of my classes made the cut!

Free Motion Quilting Essentials
Wild Quilting 
Secrets of Free-Motion Quilting

Happy stitching everyone!

Free-Motion Quilting practice from your stash

I bring a bunch of quilted swatches to my classes to demonstrate different ideas and students really love seeing this particular series. They're  bits of fabric straight out of my stash that work great for FMQ practice. When I was starting FMQ I knew I wanted to practice but I didn't know on what. Using fabric that's already in your stash as your base can get you out of the deciding mode and into stitching mode where you can improve your eye hand coordination and your stitch length. These are the things that you need "practice, practice, practice" to get better at!

Take a look at my examples and see if anything catches your eye.

You probably have some vines in your stash: what if you just quilted right on the edge of the pattern? Up one side and down the other: this gives you practice working both "forward" and "backward" which is helpful for improving your FMQ. Bonus: look how great the back looks!

Here I've got big circles that I just quilted like giant pebbles. If you're working with large circles like I do here, you'll get to practice making smooth sweeping movements and keeping your speed consistent as you go around a curve. 

I chose this fabric because it had so many lines, I thought it would be great for eye hand coordination.  With so many passes over the same area, you get a lot of FMQ practice in a small area! And what a great texture on the back!

Even simple wavy lines can be a source of practice: here the challenge is on keeping a consistent distance from the design you're following. This is great if you like to echo quilt (I'm looking at you, Appliqué Nation!). Now what if you made the wavy lines and then filled the empty space between them with pebbles or lazy eights? 

Some fabrics will give you practice filling in a space. Here I used some Pearl Bracelet fabric and filled each bracelet with a spiral. Remember to leave yourself some space to get out of your spirals! To get to the next bracelet I just snuck out between two pearls and into the next one the same way.

Anything with large blocky areas can be used to practice space filling as well. You could try different designs in each distinct area or just work on getting your stitches consistent. In this sample, whenever I ended in a place that wasn't adjacent to where I wanted to stitch next, I just stitched right along the edge between the ares over to where I wanted to be. This is good practice for travel stitching!

If you need a little FMQ practice, shop your stash, cut a piece (about 12-14'' square is ideal) and sit down and quilt it. Don't stop in the middle to decide if it's good or not, quilt the whole thing! It always looks better after it's finished, and repetition is the best way to learn a new skill. Happy stitching!

Free-motion quilting Hot Tip: Density is Everything

I came back from QuiltCon realizing there is a lot of things I talk about in my quilting classes that I've never blogged here. Outrageous! Let's fix that. Starting now.

This is one of my favorite things to show in my quilting class:

I wish I could hear your appreciative murmurs and "oh"s right now like I hear in class. These two blocks above were pieced exactly the same. See that? Pink in the middle, orange on the edges. But then I quilted them differently and they don't look the same anymore do they? The one on the left feels like it has more pink than the one on the right. And the one on the right has more orange now that it's quilted. Isn't that strange? This is how I teach the lesson: what you don't quilt is as important as what you do: anything you don't quilt lifts up and comes forward on the quilt and catches the eye. 

Here's another thing I like to show; two swatches quilted very similarly. But do you have a favorite? 

I sure do! The one on the left is so powerful, that center ribbon comes forward because the horizontal lines are quilted more densely. They smash down and become the background, allowing the wavy line to poof up and catch the light. In the swatch on the right the spacing between the straight horizontal lines and the vertical wavy lines is so similar, there is no foreground or background created so the piece ends up looking flat. What I want you to notice is I didn't do anything hard here: wavy lines and straight(ish) lines. I just made a choice with how to use those lines to play with the light and shadow effect of quilting. You can do this too!

Here's a sample from my Craftsy class Wild Quilting where I talk about this concept a fair amount. Just quilting densely around any motif pops it forward and creates a "wow" effect. When there's a big difference in density like above (look at the largest open space in the spiral design as opposed to the largest open space in the flowers and leaves) then you get a lot of drama. But it doesn't have to be dramatic. In the swatch below there's less difference in density. The open space in the feather and the wavy lines are not as far off. There is still a foreground/background created, but this one has a subtler effect. 

I hope this gets your quilting wheels turning! More hot tips coming soon (ish). 

Making wedge quilts without a wedge ruler

I have some wedge rulers and I really like them. But quilting tools are expensive and one thing that I love about quilters is that we are generally pretty resourceful people. I know some of you are thinking, sure I'd love to make a wedge quilt but there's no way I'm spending $20+ on a new quilting tool. Wise people you are, that means more money for fabric!! Can't argue with reason.

This method allows you to use your regular quilting ruler with your paper template to get the nice sturdy straight edge of the ruler without needing to buy a specially shaped one. If you liked the block I shared in my last post, print out the template and use this method to cut your wedge shapes! It works for cutting wedge shapes from strips of fabric.

To use this method you need two copies of your template. Tape them to your quilting ruler so that the edge of the template is aligned with the edge of the ruler. Make sure you align one template so the left side of the template is on the edge and the other template so the right side of the template is on the edge of the ruler.

You'll use these templates alternating between them for each cut as you work down your fabric strip. In the pictures below you'll see I first cut along the right edge of the template.

And then I slide my ruler down and align the other paper template with the edge I just cut, to cut my next wedge shape. After this I switch back to the original template, and so on, down the whole strip.

The only thing that's at all tricky about this is making the first angled cut. I didn't get a picture of that but all you need to do is use the top and bottom (the wide and narrow ends) of the template and align them with the edges of the fabric strip to make that first cut.

Now one of the things that I love about wedges is that you can make pretty big quilts with them. I'm talking about rounds that measure 50" across!

If you're using a big template like this, you won't be able to get two template on one ruler like above. In that case, hopefully you have two quilting rulers. (Or a realllllly good friend who'll let you borrow theirs!) Tape one template to one ruler and the other template to the other, and enjoy! Hope that helps you practical wedge quilt lovers!

The Magic Triangle Block tutorial

I'm thrilled to show you a versatile block that you can make with wedge shapes! No paper piecing! There are so many ways to use this little block, the picture above is one of my favorites, see more possibilities at the bottom of this post.

I demonstrated how to make this block on Fresh Quilting recently, and if you haven't seen the episode yet, here is my segment!

You may also want this link to these instructions in a printable format, provided by the Fresh Quilting show, including a printable template for making this block. In the episode I use the 10 degree wedge ruler from Phillips Fiber Art.

For those who are curious, if you follow these instructions you end up with a block that finishes at 10'' from point to edge, and 11 5/8'' along any side.

Materials

Fabric for wedges:  various colors, 1/4 yards or fat quarters

Fabric for triangle points: one 4 1/2’’ square for each block

 10-degree ruler or printable template (see attached)

Cutting

Cut wedge fabrics into 9’’ strips

Subcut strips into wedges, aligning the wide end of the wedge template (OR the 11 3/4’’ mark on your 10 degree wedge ruler) for each cut. You will need 6 wedges per block.

Join the wedges in sets of two. Match wide ends and sew from the wide end to the narrow end. Use a shorter stitch length because we will be cutting across these seams later.

After wedges are joined into pairs, Create wedge sets by joining three pairs together, for a total of 6 wedges per set. Again, align wide ends and sew from wide to narrow end. Press seams open.

Now this is the chance to square up your piece for accuracy. You can do this if you have a cutting mat with a 60-degree mark on it, or a 60-degree triangle ruler.

Lay the wedge set down, aligning it with the cutting mat’s angled 60-degree line on one raw edge and a horizontal line (or vertical line, depending on your mat) on the other raw edge of the wedge set.

Align the wedge set so the fabric comes completely to the lines with as little over the lines as possible. Then, use your quilting ruler and rotary cutter to trim any fabric that extends over the lines.

Trim the wide end of the piece to a straight line by cutting from corner to corner. Align the center seam of the wedge set with a line on your cutting ruler to make sure your cut is perpendicular to the center seam of the wedge set.

Measure 7 1/4” from the previous cut and make a straight cut across the narrow end of the wedge set. Again, align the center seam with the marks on your ruler, to make sure your cut is perpendicular.

Join a 4 1/2’’ square of fabric to the narrow end of the wedge set. Press.

Use the edges of your piece as your guide to trim the triangle tip.

And you’re all done! Have fun playing with layouts!