On today's episode, we're presenting a quilt called We Are Connected by Maria Mathews.

But instead of patriotic colors, we're going a festive route and we're challenging ourselves with some directional prints.

Stay tuned for excitement on today's episode of Love of Quilting.

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Hi.

You're watching the 4700 series of Love of Quilting.

I'm Angela Huffman, and I'm Sara Gallegos.

And Sara, you have brought a beautiful quilt of valor is called We Are All Connected.

Correct.

And you did it in a totally different color way, though.

Yeah, Maria Mathews designed this and did the red, white and blue palette for the Quilts of Valor, which is stunning, of course, yes, but one of the things I love about Quilts of Valor is it feels like such an easy swap to go from blue to green, and you can make a really pretty festive holiday quilt as well.

So that's what I did.

I never thought of that.

Yeah, kind of fun.

You've got two different shades of blue.

So I worked with just two different shades of green, and then there's a white background, and I kind of thought it would be fun to pop a polka dot in there.

And so a polka dot in there.

And then I decided to make myself a little extra crazy by using a sweater knit print for the red.

It's it looks kind of houndstooth.

We'll talk about the direction on that.

So it's fun to play with directional prints a little bit.

Just come up with a plan as you're going so it doesn't make you crazy.

Now this quilt is made up of just one block nice, but it does have two different colorways.

So we've got one that has more of a white kind of.

You mentioned that it looks sort of like a wreath float.

It does.

Yeah, yeah.

And then the other has the green.

So here's the green.

And what we're going to start with is creating one of those white blocks okay.

So the first thing that we need to do is make a lot of half square triangles.

So we're going to do those the eight at a time method.

So what I've got here is my light and my dark.

And I'm going to put them right sides together.

And we're just going to mark diagonally to find the center in both directions.

You can use any kind of a marking pen for this, because you're going to end up cutting on the line that you're marking, not sewing on it, so you don't have to worry about it showing anywhere.

And when I'm positioning my ruler to do this, I find that because of the angle of the pen or pencil and just how I hold it myself, I end up putting the ruler just a tiny little bit to the left of center.

And then I find that when I mark, I really, truly do go very nicely from point to point.

So, I guess I got to go over that one more time, just a little bit here.

So it depends on the thickness of the end point of your marking utensil, whatever you're using.

And I do also find that if you're using like a really fat tipped marker, it can actually skew your quarter inch seam a little bit because it takes up so much space.

So now that we've marked that, we're going to go ahead and take that to the sewing machine, and we're going to sew on both sides of that marked line.

And we've got the quarter inch foot with guide on the machine.

So you can just run that guide right down the marking.

Yeah.

And then I'm just going to go around the bend pull it a little bit of excess.

And now I'm going to use that guide on the other side of that line.

Slip on down.

Yeah.

And of course I bet you do all of these at the same time.

Right.

I do a whole bunch at once.

Yeah, yeah, a whole mountain of them I so, so so it's on my back.

It's stiff.

Oh really?

And then I get up and press, press, press.

I cut it there and go around and I have the, the foot here programed so that it will do all that for me so that I don't have to like, find the button and take the time.

You find little ways to kind of go a little faster as you do more of them.

Those little efficiency tricks that we find in the sewing machines and the settings really, really just make me happy.

Okay, so now that we've got that, we are going to be cutting, for different directions.

So first we want to go, I guess you would call it north to south right.

South.

Yeah.

And it is a little wobbly wonky.

So before I am going to just give it a little press there, I think that'll help it lay a little flatter.

That'll help with accuracy too.

And of course one thing that will really help with accuracy is if you starch your yardage before you cut your units out of that yardage as well.

Nice crisp fabric helps.

All right.

So now I'm just going to cut one direction.

And then I'm going to rotate my mat to cut the other side direction here we typically recommend that you do cut that north south east west first before you do the diagonals.

Because really the diagonals are kind of encased with a seam on each side.

So they stay nice and stable.

So making that first cut on the unstable side of the world is more helpful.

Yeah.

So now I'm doing my diagonals.

So I'm cutting right on that marked line.

So it doesn't really matter what you mark with.

And now we've got eight of our little half square triangles and it's time to press.

So this is where you do your mountain of pressing.

And I like to do it with the dark side facing me, so that I can just flip that right over.

And as I go, I just place the next one right inside.

And I kind of use the first piece as a bumper for the next one, and it just really helps to keep everything nice and flat.

And then each one is getting extra pressing as I keep moving through the stack.

So it helps to everything to just lay really, really nice and flat and a nice hot iron.

You've got a wool mat or something that reflects heat back up to the patchwork from underneath.

That also helps.

Yeah.

So here we've got four of them.

Yes.

These squares are cut to the right measurement.

So we really don't need to go through and trim them down.

If you feel insecure about your quarter inch seam, it might be a good idea just to do a little measure and make sure that they are nice and square.

So we've got our half square triangles done now.

Next we need to create hourglass units.

So the little hourglass units are what go around the center of the block.

There's so little I like them.

They're teeny tiny.

Yeah.

And for those we're going to be working with our same light colored fabric and a little bit darker green this time.

And I've already marked diagonal.

And on this one we're only going to sew in one direction.

So you're going to stitch on both sides of that line.

I found it interesting that these little hourglasses, you chose the larger print, the larger.

Yeah, the larger print, larger floral print, the larger floral and put the small one.

But I think you probably do that because the larger print is also used.

And the outside patches that kind of surround that center star.

Correct.

Yeah, yeah.

So thinking about scale of your print and how that's going to read in the final block.

That's one of the things that makes quilting so fun, isn't it?

Yeah.

And it's okay to chop up your larger prints because you do get a lot of really fun color.

And if you still want to really see that large print, of course you could use it on the back, right?

If you have a border border, you could use it in that border for sure.

So now again, we're just going to cut right down that diagonal lines.

And we would then press these open just like we did.

Just like we did.

So I've got a couple here that are already pressed.

So what you're going to do now is you're going to take those two units that you just created, and you're going to layer them on top of each other.

So the opposite fabrics are touching.

So white to green and white to green.

Then you're going to mark diagonally and once again we're going to stitch on both sides of the line.

I like to kind of finger scooch and make sure that it's really lining up nicely at those points, because that's going to help to give us a nice perfect corner.

A finger, scooch a finger, scooch like that.

It makes sense.

And I'm just going to flip that up.

And there it goes.

Yeah, I stopped with the needle down quite a lot.

And then it gives you the opportunity to flatten out one of those seam allowances.

Yeah.

Anytime you see that, you can just do a little pause and alter those seams in the direction you want them to go.

Yeah.

All right.

We got, we got.

And this will make the hourglasses for, the one block, one whole block.

Yeah, yeah.

You could do two of them.

So you need two sets of squares to get your four hourglasses that you need for one block.

So that's where it ends up.

And you just press really nicely.

And I do like to really, really press.

And we've got quite a bit of thickness in the middle there.

So I just kind of let my iron hang out for a minute.

If you like to spin seams, you could spend that seam in the middle.

And that would also help that bulk lay a little bit flatter in your quilter.

Well thank you.

And your quilter will thank you.

Yeah.

So there they are.

Nice I like these little hourglass units.

They're sweet okay.

So now we want to construct what becomes the center of our blocks.

So we've got our red and white square.

And then we've got our, hourglass units.

And I'm just taking a peek to make sure I'm putting them the right way, but that neutral goes against the middle.

Yeah.

So you end up getting a little square, and then we're going to place our medium green into the corners.

Nice.

So I like to kind of work in rows.

And it's not uncommon for you to see me stack all of these pieces up on a little bitty mat like this and just take it right over next to my sewing machine, because then I can just keep chain piecing and working through.

Okay.

And do another one.

Yeah.

Just be to the next me.

There you go.

Sorry about the dog ears.

Okay, I don't really worry about those dog ears either, unless I'm going to hand quilt it.

And I'm definitely not going to hand quilt it.

Right.

That little bit of bulk won't matter to the machine.

I was going to ask you how the quilter feels about that.

It's really the seams with the seams.

Not the same.

So the way that those could get.

Oh, you want this out of the machine?

The way it could get to be a problem would just be that you've got, you know, they're not going in the right direction or they're kind of piled up, that sort of thing.

Sure.

So now we're going to cut those apart, and I'm going to press and I'm going to take the easy route and pressing.

So the easy route to me is to press the solid square, not the pieced unit.

And if you do that on all of these pieces, everything nests together when you put your rows together really nicely.

So like that, and it's happier going towards that plain block too.

Yes, the path of least resistance.

Yeah.

There we go.

So now you can piece those.

I like to take, the block and just sketch out or maybe write on the pattern, to help me, especially a quilt like this where, you've got you don't have sashing in between, right?

The block.

So paying attention to the direction that you press will make life easier down the road.

So just make a little notation.

We've talked before about, kind of doing a trial run on your block.

Yeah.

Before you start to cut everything that you need for the whole quilt.

And that's another thing that I would do on that trial run, is kind of discover what direction, pressing is going to, bless me later.

Strategic pressing.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I like the trial run, too, just to make sure I like my color placement.

You know, it's really important.

Okay, so now we'll cut those apart and we're almost ready to construct our whole block.

And that's the thing that struck me about this quilt, is those blue stars.

They just really jump out of the eye, and it's kind of hard to see the the block itself because your eye is so drawn to those beautiful blue stars.

First and, I just I never would have thought of of making a quilt of valor into a Christmas quilt just with one simple color change.

Is that neat?

Yeah, it is one of my favorites.

And of course, looks.

Think you could go orange and black and make something?

Really?

Yeah.

For spooky season, there are a lot of different color palettes.

You could do a light blue, dark blue and have something really pretty for Hanukkah.

There are a lot of different choices.

Or if you were making a quilt for a certain, you know, service.

Sure.

You could, lit those colors.

I think it'd be really striking in there, too, if you popped a little gold.

And where that lighter blue is, that would be kind of fun.

You could swap that out for a gold and still have a different spin on something really patriotic.

So then we would just add the second, top part there.

And we've got a cute little block.

So that's what that looks like.

And now we construct the ring around it.

So we're going to need to create this unit right here.

And that's really simply done with one background piece and two of the reds.

And this is where we start kind of paying attention to this, directional print.

So I just kind of made the decision as I was working with these, maybe this would not bother you, but if half of mine were facing a different direction, that's something that would bother me on the frame of this block.

So I just decided just north and south, we're just going to put all those directional prints north and south.

And I just kept that rule as I sewed the whole entire thing.

So that was kind of fun.

I did switch it up a little bit when I actually laid out the whole block quilts, but we could talk about that later.

But so now I've marked diagonally and we want to sew opposite directions to add those, squares to the corners.

Okay.

And I'm sewing right on the line.

That's right on the line, not away from the line.

That's correct.

And you can still use your quarter inch, but you're just watching your needle drop right onto that marked line.

Right.

But what also struck me so that would bother me too, about the, directional prints and watching the directional prints.

But where these blocks come together, it makes like an economy block and makes a square as great a square.

Sure.

And so because you were deliberate about the direction that you put the, the print, it kind of does a little ring around that, economy block that shows up where the, four blocks come together.

Yeah.

That's fine.

Now we're going to cut those and we're cutting a quarter of an inch away.

And you want to be careful because you don't want to cut on the wrong side.

If you cut over here you're going to cut your block apart.

Right?

So be really, really careful.

Another little tip when you're sewing these, if you have a straight stitch needle plate where it's just a little single hole, it's a good idea because when we start on that little peek, it wants to kind of pull down into the needle plate.

And that's frustrating.

But if you are not, if you don't have one of those, you can always start from here because then you've got a little bit of something for the machine and the feed dogs to grab to pull that through.

So just a little tip for that.

If you find that you've got points kind of finding themselves inside of the needle plate.

Now we press away.

And there we have that outer portion.

Super easy.

Yeah okay.

So now we get to construct the outer portion of the block.

And this is where those half square triangles we made are going to come into play.

So we're going to be putting all of our little I guess that's a faux flying geese right.

It's a goose with a very broad.

Yes.

Big broad blunt beak.

Right.

And these need to be going outside of the block.

And then we're going to place our half square triangles.

And the way I try to remember is the greens point to each other.

So we've got our greens pointing to each other.

Kind of helps me to keep it together correctly.

And again, we can do this kind of chain piecing style.

Now, I do find that when I'm starting on a piece like this, sometimes I like to work from the back side, where I've got a nice square corner.

I feel like I can read that corner a little bit better.

I don't know about you, but I think it's more precise.

And sometimes I'll use a little piece of fabric initially to kind of get the thread going, get the feed ducks going, and then put my patchwork on a little leader.

First.

Now we're going to be positioning on the side here.

And I flipped it over because I really want to be able to see where my hourglass units are.

If you sew from this direction, you can't see where the peaks of those hourglass units land.

Right.

So I like to sew from this direction because I'm looking for that little x mark intersection as I stitch through, I want to just land it right and land the needle right into that little x mark.

And should we talk about a baggy bottom at this point?

Should we talk about.

Because it's just a little bit and it's probably because I didn't hit that.

With my seam.

So it's just a little tiny bit bigger.

So if you ever have that patchwork quilt, just a little tiny bit bigger, you can actually go ahead and pin that together.

Just put that baggy side against your feed dogs and it'll it'll kind of ease all of that in.

So don't think that that's a ruined block because it's just a wee hair bigger.

You can still you can still use it.

The other thing you wouldn't want to do is cut that off, because if you cut that off, you're going to really affect the points on that unit.

Right.

And so at this point, what I'm kind of doing is I'm just letting those feed dogs do their job.

And, you could pin this, but I'm just kind of easing it into it.

And that will help that baggy bottom.

But it only works if you put that bagging us against the feed dogs.

So I'm just going to scratch it all in place.

But don't think that that's a rolling block or anything if you see that it happens.

But I would look at if it happens, look at your seam allowance, look at your cutting.

Maybe you cut it, cut a little.

You were at a different, point on your ruler than you should have been.

But it happens.

It does happens to the best of us.

It does say yes.

You know, I always talk to people about quilt making, and sometimes this always kind of makes me sad.

I'll have people say, oh, I'm intimidated to show you my quilt because, oh, no, it's not perfect like yours.

And I like you.

Goodness, I don't really feel like the best quilters are necessarily always perfect, so I think we just know better tricks.

Great to know.

I think what it is to is you know when to panic, right?

Things that are really crucial and things that upset about and the things to be like, it's going to work itself out.

It's going to be fine.

Right?

Okay.

So I have done it's a little bit of strategic pressing here.

And so when I press that, I took the outer unit out to the side here and then in that case I went toward it this way also.

So if you think about that, you're always pressing toward that, ring units.

And now when you put that together, it'll nest really nicely.

All right.

So let me piece the two.

And you put this on here.

Yes.

Sure.

Okay.

And we're going to go this way.

So how did you keep track of this directional fabric.

And who went which way and who went the other way.

Good question.

So when you are working with something like that, as I mentioned before, when I placed my squares, I always went North-South.

And so they're always kind of going in the same direction just because I made that choice leading into it.

So I wasn't like super fussy about it.

I just stuck with a rule throughout the whole entire thing.

So when I was sewing those squares onto these rectangles, I just made it so that they were all facing the same direction every single time.

Whether you choose north, south, east, or west, just be consistent.

So I did not, play with direction on these.

I kept them the exact same.

And then when it flips through the quilt, as you're positioning it at different angles, it does, I think, look like an dancer.

That's fabulous.

Yeah.

The only thing that I was intentional about, if you were to look at the quilt really carefully, was, when I put my rows together, I had my dark blocks.

So these are all going in one direction.

So imagine we've got like east west here, right?

Yes.

And then my light blocks, I had them go in the opposite direction.

I don't know if that really is obvious in the quilts, but the reason I kind of did that was that way.

Like it doesn't matter which direction the quilt hanging on the wall, it's all the same like and dark blocks are going one way and light blocks are going the other.

And my brain just kind of was happy that way.

You could be less fussy.

Well, and I thought for sure that you were going to say that you had to be very particular about these units and the direction that the directional print went on these units.

But you just made it consistent.

It's just consistency, dark block.

And it worked its way out.

Always the same.

I always followed the same rule because when it goes around that square in a square, it just it just draws the.

I like it a little circle all the way around.

I thought you deliberately did that.

It's just kind of what happens.

It's awesome.

You know, you can make things more challenging or more complicated than they need to be.

Yeah.

Let's say it looks like we don't have a bad you about it.

They're good.

So you can go whichever way you want.

Okay.

Yeah.

It is those little tricks that you learn the more you do it and the more you learn.

And you also have to think to yourself like, is this something where that little, that little, I don't know, fullness is going to affect things in the end?

Or is the person I'm making this for?

We're going to love it no matter what, right?

So I need to just move on.

I the way I describe it when I teach classes, if you want to stitch that one up and we're getting close, there is there are things worth worrying about and things that are not worth worrying about.

And that is a pro tip in life too, right?

Isn't that the truth?

So there are certain parts that I will be pretty pretty particular about.

And we're going to talk about that.

Yeah.

As we show how to put the two blocks together.

Ooh we get to put the bottom on now okay.

So I'm going to hand this to you and grasp the one that you just did.

So now we get to nest those seams because I think I'm gonna be really strategic.

Good idea.

Or you could use clips either one, but they will nest together.

But that'll just help keep everything aligned, aligned and pointy.

We don't want to lose the points on our blocks.

I want it to look like a spiky star.

Yeah, of course, pinning does slow you down a little bit, but I got it.

And of course, as you play, approach those pins, you want to take them out, and then I'm just kind of holding it together with my finger as it goes by.

I may not necessarily agree with quilt police, but I am absolutely 100% a Pin policeman.

You cannot run over a pin when you're sewing.

And I see people say that it's okay online and it's just it's really not okay.

From a service perspective, you'll dull your needles faster and it does little weird things to the machine.

Just just take the second to pull them out.

You love your machine.

Take care of it.

Be nice to it.

That's one way to be nice to it.

Read your manual to find out how your machine likes to be cared for.

You'll get a lot more longevity out of it if you'll take the time to.

Do you know your machine maintenance Monday or whatever day machine?

Maybe you've got a little time, All right, so now we're going to add that bottom row.

And then I'll get to show everybody how we can easily put two blocks together okay.

All right.

So I won't pin this one.

We'll go fast just because we're kind of in a little bit of a hurry now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No pressure, no pressure.

It'll be fine.

It'll be great.

You got this.

Do you just wish you had a sewing cheerleader?

Instagram all the time.

You're doing really good.

Really great job.

And also, that other person could be your presser and maybe your maintenance person.

And maybe a picker.

A picker.

Yeah.

And the pick.

Certainly the coffee delivery person.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay, so we've identified a lot of jobs for that person.

I don't know about the when to get the cat to get off of the pieces.

There you go.

Get your cat out of there.

The cat.

Sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

So now a press first.

And this time I am going to use a little bit of spray and just get it all nice and flat.

I do like to press those final blocks before I try to sew them together, just to make sure everything's going to line up and nest and be nice and straight.

So now we're ready to attach a light block to a dark block.

And this was where it kind of did pay attention to those opposing directions here.

Right?

Okay.

So what we want to make sure that we have lining up are going to be these points right here and right here, because it'll look pretty obvious if they don't.

And then they also have to line up in this little centerpiece too, because this does become a four patch in the block.

Kind of right.

Like a square.

Yeah.

So when I press these I'll press them all in the same direction.

So I can't nest the way that I typically rely on.

So I will sometimes kind of cheat and just reposition the one on the bottom.

And I'm going to put a pin in that so that it nests really nicely.

And then when it comes to this portion right here, I want to feel that those two red pieces are directly on top of each other.

You can really tell if they're not lining up perfectly.

And if I peel this back, you can kind of see where they're touching each other, right?

You don't want them to be askew, right?

Because that's going to be really obvious in the final quilt.

So I'm just going to make sure that those are lined up really nicely.

And then I will put my pin into that seems so that it stays as I sew, and then just follow those same rules as I continue down the block.

That's going to give you perfection in your piecing.

Just be careful.

It'll be beautiful.

Grab a pencil, tips and other useful information.

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This tip came in from Linda Blakemore from Bertram, Texas, and she says, your show is the highlight of my Saturday.

I've learned a quilt from your program.

Thank you.

Linda, she said.

I bought a piece of sheet metal, two foot by four foot 26 gauge and cleaned off the oil.

I put the sheet metal on my cutting table under my cutting mat, then she stacks magnets two at a time on rotary cutting rulers.

And now she can cut with no slippage.

Works.

Super clever.

I like that one.

Okay, my tip here is from Jacquelyn Reynolds of Lockport, New York, and she says, I enjoy your show and love the tips.

I was looking to replace my 65 year old red pincushion I received when I first started sewing.

I had a wool dryer ball which worked great, and I had an antique t shirt that only ever sat in my China cabinet, and the dryer ball fits in the cup nicely, so she used double sided tape to hold it in place.

In the saucer is a great place for her eyeglasses, the seam ripper, etc.

isn't that pretty cute?

So sweet.

Thanks for sending in your tips.

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We'll see you next time.

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