On point Illusion by Cory Handler is a stripped set boot camp.

On today's episode, we'll build our strip set skills, starting with proper cutting and pressing to pop intersections and nested seams.

The gradation of fabrics create an illusion of seamless shifting values for a stunning quilt that should be next up on your project list.

So join us on today's episode of Love of Quilting.

Funding for Love of Quilting is provided by.

The Bernina 990.

If it can be imagined, it can be created.

APQS longarm quilting machines allow you to express your creativity.

APQS quilt forever.

The Warm Company manufacturer of battings and fusibles is for quilts, crafts and wearable arts.

Panasonic, maker of the 360 degree freestyle cordless iron, magic quilting and crafting collection, ironing sprays and more.

Hi there.

Welcome to the 4700 series of Love of Quilting.

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

You have quite a stunning, graduated quilt to share with us today.

It kind of glows, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, this is on point Illusion and it was made by Cory Hadler.

And she used a lot of solid prints and was very deliberate about her color choices so that it kind of flowed.

And that glow happens as the blocks come together.

It's really stunning.

And when I first looked at the quilts hanging on the wall there, I didn't really realize that it was even set on point.

Yeah, it's on the trade.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's a lot of great lessons in this quilt that are especially attributable to like, if you've just started quilting or it's a way to double check, if you've been quilting for a long time and so there's strip sets.

So I just wanted to talk about the preparation for yardage and the things to look for, to see how well you're cutting, taking that little time to really prep the fabric before you begin is really going to make this quilt come together much more precise.

Right.

And every other quilt two ever.

Yeah, yeah.

So if you take your yardage, the first thing I do when I take yardage, especially if I have a lot of yardage, I know when I first got started, I was like, how in the world do I use a three yard piece of fabric?

Like it's way too much fabric.

So the first thing that I do is I cut it down and I do that, that, you know, this is about a yard from my nose to the tip of my finger.

So I cut about a yard off, and then I grab some of my fabric spray, and I head to the ironing board.

And I really give it a nice healthy dose of fabric, spray it, and then I wait, and I let it kind of sink in a little bit, and so that it soaks into the fibers of the quilting cotton.

And then I hit it with an iron.

Right.

And so you could do that with layers too, if you were doing a lot of different layers, like I did a couple episodes this season where I use fat quarter bundles.

Yeah.

And so what I did with those is I would just unfold wine.

You've got all those marks, spray stack, spray stack.

And I just kind of let them hang out together, let the moisture kind of absorb and they press out and really nicely.

Yeah.

And especially pre cuts like that that have been folded for a while.

Right.

You're going to need to to use some fabric spray to get those wrinkles to come out.

So this is a piece of yardage here.

And what we're going to just talk about is how to prep it for those strip sites.

So I generally just kind of hang it in front of me.

And if you look like it can hang impolitely, so it kind of has a little it doesn't look that in here.

Yeah.

It doesn't look happy.

So I just want I've got my fingers between the two pieces of, of cotton here and I've got it selvage to salvage.

And so then I can kind of slide the fabric back and forth until it's hanging politely.

And then it's on grain.

Right.

And it's on grain.

So once I get it to where I like it, can you move that rotary cutter right underneath me?

Then I'm going to lay it down on my cutting surface and pick it right back up.

Okay.

Now my fingers are between the top piece and that fold.

Sure.

And again, I can slide these back and forth until it's hanging politely again.

So you can see there it is not hanging politely.

Right.

Then when I hang it over here, it looks happier.

Right?

And so I give a little shake and now I can lay it down on my cutting mat.

And then I feel this fold, and you can feel as you run your fingertip down it, that it's not sitting inside that fold.

Well, right.

And so gap there's a little gap and so if I just brush the fabric up with my fingers and then feel again now it's their double thickness right in the fold.

And so then what we would do is we would do a clean up cut.

And then I would rotate this around.

You could use a spinning mat.

You could just rotate yourself and start cutting strips.

So this quilt uses 3.5in strips.

But don't go cut all these strips at once.

Check yourself.

Check your accuracy with that first strip.

So I wanted to show you what will happen if you haven't laid your fabric where it hangs nicely and checked that fold to make sure it's nested into the layers of the of the cotton before you cut.

So I've got one here that's cut where it has a little bow in it.

So we cut this straight off the bolts just as it was folded before we prepped it at all.

So this is what happens when you don't prep fabric.

So if you see I'm just going to put it here on the mat.

So I've got a line and you see how it kind of goes up like a little mountain.

And then it goes back.

That's going to cause me some issues.

Absolutely.

So it's a way to check your accuracy.

Check that very first one.

And if you see this little bow then do that whole process again to have it hanging, politely double check that your fold is tucked inside of its fold clean up.

Cut.

Cut one more strip and check it.

It's just not something that we can quilt out or ease out.

It's just going to always remain a little wonky like that.

What happens?

Is it compound?

Because if you do this with all of your strips and then you build out a strip, set your whole strip set is going to have a little hill to it, and that is going to make your blocks hard to get square.

So here's one that is, that I cut earlier.

And I'm just going to lay it down.

And you can see that it just falls right on the, line of my mat.

It's nice and straight.

It's ready to go into a strip set.

It's good.

Okay.

So I'm going to give you those and I have, the fabric here.

Cut.

So let's make a strip set.

Yes.

So we're going to be putting these, colors together.

And many of these are a solid, so it doesn't really matter.

Right side, wrong side.

But I'm matters.

Who goes with who?

Okay.

Color.

Color with with who?

So I would give yourself a little cheat sheet.

I like to take little snips of the fabric, so I'm not like, this one is cream and this one is tope.

And then I get an hour into the project.

I'm like, I don't remember who was Tope and who was cream, right?

An actual little sliver of the fabric, onto a piece of paper or onto, you know, your actual pattern will help you tremendously.

Little labels, literally, with so many similar shades here.

And we want those similar shades because that's what creates that glow.

That's what creates the illusion.

So having dramatically different colors will give you a pretty quilt.

It won't give you this illusion that we're after.

I just kind of wandered off of the quarter inch.

So I'm just going to feed back in and redo that one little section.

Okay.

And if you notice that this is another place where you're going to want to check your seam allowance accuracy, and if you have like one machine that you use when you go on retreat or to a class and you have one machine that you have at home, double check because I'm gonna bet that you're getting different seam allowances, certainly out of those two machines.

Yeah.

Even though it's a quarter inch foot on two different machines, it does not mean that you're getting the same quarter inch seam.

So I always like to just have a little ruler with me, and I'll measure my seam allowance and find out was I accurate.

So I've got I've got the strip set here on my mat and it's been a matter the direction that you press these strips at towards because you're going to need four different strip sets.

And colors are located in different areas of the strip set.

So this first strip set, we are going to press it towards, the light.

And so I'm going to have the light side up because that's the side I want it pressed towards.

And I'm going to first just warm it up with my iron.

And I will say that if you are going to knock a strip set out of skew, this is probably where it happens.

This is probably where it happens.

So one thing that I like to do is on my actual ironing surface, I will take a permanent marker and I will draw an actual line on my the length of a width of fabric, and then on that line, as I bring it over to iron it, I line it up with the line I've drawn on my ironing surface, and then that way I know that when I flip this over, it's going to be nice and nice and straight.

Yeah.

And then I'm just going to gently use the side of the iron to encourage that, seam to go in the direction that I want it to go.

So we've done two pieces here, and we're going to put them into forces.

I've actually seen grid fabric and made, an ironing board cover out of the grid fabric.

And then I had those lines just right on.

The fabric was really, really handy.

Use a grid fabric.

So like a plaid or something.

Yeah.

And I've seen actual just a grid that might be used for a design wall.

If you wanted to cover your design wall or create when I'm on your wall on a piece of like, foam board.

But it was also really handy for a large, nice, straight, flat ironing surface.

I had never looked at a plaid that way.

That would be a really nice way.

I will say that if your ironing surface that you're using for quilting as a seam ironing surface that you use for clothes, I would have you change to something else that is a little, harder, a harder surface.

We'll start right there.

Okay.

So, because the ironing board pad that's on an ironing board for clothing has some squish to it.

And you need to, press some harder.

So I actually went and got, a door.

I built my own, my own pressing station.

So I went in, got some old kitchen cabinets and a door, and then covered that, put that door on top of the kitchen cabinets and put, a batting.

You could use a roll in the ears.

I like the batting because it kind of reflects heat back up.

Sure.

Yeah.

And then put your fabric on top of that.

And I just invented it back.

And so it's a square.

This is a as a pressing station using what your pressure clothes on it has got that point triangle.

That's great for clothing.

Not so great for quilting.

So I wanted it the width of a door.

Sure.

That's a great suggestion.

Okay.

So we are going to and I just want to make sure I have the light side up because whatever I have up is the direction that that seam is going to go into.

So these are all the 3.5in squares.

And again just pay attention.

You're going to need four different strip sets and be deliberate about the position of the colors.

And now we're going to sub cut this okay.

Okay.

So we need 3.5in strips.

And I've got a larger 12.5in ruler here.

And so the first thing that I want to do is I want a clean up cut.

So I'm going to not use the, lines on my mat.

I'm going to use the lines, in my seems to line up this as closely as I can, and I want to make sure that I don't hit any of the, selvedge.

And then I'm just going to slice off and now have a nice clean up cut that I can trust.

And I want to preserve that for as long as I can, because every time you make a cut, you have a tendency.

You can wander a little bit.

Yeah.

Just your hand pushing against the ruler.

It kind of shifts the line a little bit.

So we said we're doing 3.5in cuts.

So three and a half and three and a half, is 7 7 and three and a half is ten and a half.

So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to line up my 10.5in on my ruler, right on the edge of my strip set.

And now I'm going to cut, and then I'm going to back that ruler up and move this over.

So I have enough room to back it up to that 7.5in.

7 oh 7 thank you.

Oh goodness.

I'm glad I said that out loud.

Yeah.

Oh hits to seven and then I'm going to back it up one more time to that 3.5in.

And I trust that first cut.

Now I've preserved it that many times.

So I'm going to go up just a little bit.

I like when I can just keep sliding my ruler over and get multiple cuts before I have to do a clean up or reposition.

Yeah.

Really nice.

So you would keep going, and making all of those strip sets.

And then I've got the other strip sets here tucked under.

Let's set this one, these three.

We'll set those aside.

So there's that strip set from the first, the cut from the first strip set.

Here's the next strip set.

So you can see the strip set was built with the colors and a little bit of a different position.

Right.

And then there are the next two.

And following that strategic pressing plan for each strip that will help these two all nest together as we basically shift one color over right.

So these two positions, they go towards the light and these two go towards the dark okay.

And that way they will nest.

Yeah.

All right.

So we are going to put these two together.

They're going to nest nicely.

And if you would do a quarter inch seam there and I'll get these ready here I think it's really fun how you've got all solids except for one that has a little bit of a print to it, but it was obviously just the right shade for you, Yeah, I so we've talked before how some people, they, they are unsure about mixing batiks with prints and some people are unsure about mixing solids with maybe tone on tone.

And if you kind of depends on look that you're going for, first of all, don't believe those rules.

They aren't rules.

It's your quilt.

You do what you want.

That's right.

I find that I like a little bit of a tone on tone mixed in with my solids, just to give the eye a little bit of something to latch on to as it looks around.

But it's a little more interesting.

Yeah, yeah, because I think some solids, when we use only solids to me sometimes start to fall a little flat.

Yeah I agree, I agree okay.

So I'm going to press this one.

And again if I had something on my mat that I could line this up with, it will help keep everything straight.

Because the ironing process, if you are noticing that you are not as accurate as you hope to be, it very well could be how your ironing your your fabric.

Absolutely.

So be gentle with it.

Don't iron.

You want to press nice hot iron?

It will help the heat, the the cotton and help everything lay nice and flat.

There's your next step.

Okay, there's my two.

These.

And one option that you do have is to spend your seams.

And so my friend Melanie, made some of these blocks for me.

Can you turn that top one over and show them she is such a rock star.

Look at what she did.

It's a thing of beauty.

Every single seam is spun.

Yes, she's a rock star.

Yeah.

Melanie is very, very talented.

So if you want to spend your seams.

I just was going to show you.

This is the point where you would spend your seam.

So we've done we've done this seam here.

And so you would just take that and you just give it a little twist on each of those little intersec stitches will kind of pop right out.

Okay.

So then I can take this and iron it, and every other little guy is going to sit perfectly.

It's a really important to make sure that you do it before you press the seam open.

Once you've kind of pressed it once to set the seam, pop your seams, do the twist, and then take it back and flatten it, right?

Yeah.

So you can be a rock star like Melanie or you could nest nested either one.

Yeah.

So you're going to make, a lot of these, 16 patches and and then they kind of rotate throughout the quilt.

So make sure you look at the illustration of how all of these go together and how many you need.

And, and the position that they go in.

This is one of the quilts that I say you could definitely get lost in the twist.

One thing around the wrong direction.

It's going to take a while to figure out where you went wrong.

So pay attention to that picture, right?

And I will say that if you have a way to, put you could put flannel on a wall or you could, just some, some way to lay your blocks out and then take a picture with your phone.

Because when you take a picture, all kinds of things show up that you can't see with the naked eye.

Nice.

And so that will really help you if you have, one of your strip sets flipped over.

You will certainly notice that on your phone.

Yeah.

The worst part is, if you have the whole dang thing put together and then you go, oh, look at that one.

I like that trick a lot too, when I'm shopping for values and tones too, just to kind of see the picture on my phone.

Sometimes one color will jump out a little further at me than when I just look at it, you know, on the cutting table.

So the next thing we're going to need is we're going to need the setting triangles, because this is an on point, quilt.

So they're setting triangles and there's corner triangles.

So let's talk about the setting triangles first.

And the setting one to use one of those strip sets that we were just working on.

And I'm just going to lay this out here so that we can keep everything kind of organized.

Sarah.

And there are some, triangles as well.

So this is the setting, triangle that goes on the sides all the way down.

We've got this one already put together, and I'm just going to hand you these.

And this is where if you're going to get things out of order, this is probably where it's going to happen.

Okay.

So I know some people even take a picture with their phone, and refer back to it or again, look at that pattern and make notations, cut little snips out of your fabric so you keep everything kind of lined up.

So you're sewing two squares together, simple and easy.

The next thing we're going to sew together is this triangle with this square.

Okay.

And he's taller than the square.

Right.

So I just want to pay attention to that bottom edge, that right angle edge and lay that on top.

And you aren't a huge fan of starting with the tip of the triangle in the sewing machine.

You prefer to slip it this way to start with a right angle.

Yeah, and I will say I do see an exception here because it's such a big extra piece.

So what I what I can do is just drop that foot, drop the needle, and just place that right up against the needle in the foot and start, because I've got fabric on the feed dogs when it's really, really pointy and there's not a lot of extra fabric and nothing is touching the feed dogs to start.

That's where I find that thing sucked down into the needle plate.

So I like that little trick of just kind of placing it up against the needle.

So we have another triangle to go here.

And if you would put that one on and I will iron this one.

And hopefully all of this helps you see if you are getting sizes that you don't anticipate, where you're getting quilts that have a bubble in them or kind of bow at you.

All of these, tips will help you get all of that to calm down.

This is a nice introduction to working with triangles in a quilt, for a beginner.

So now we have this one to go on top.

So we're going to build our row.

And I'm just going to flip this one over so that I those right angles are what we're after.

Perfect.

And you're going to sew that one together I'll iron this one.

And strip sets are one of those kind of fundamental, you know, skill sets that you're going to see in quilting over and over and over again.

So learning how to do them so that they are polite and accurate will help you.

Having the extra chips checks makes for a better quilts right?

Almost there.

And you could certainly pin when you put them because they nested.

What Sara's doing is, as she approaches an intersection, she's using her finger to kind of be a pen, to kind of hold it into place as it moves under the needle so it doesn't shift right.

Nice.

Okay.

So there we go.

Now we just have the top half to put on.

Okay.

I will hand you that beautiful.

And I've forgotten how many of the setting triangles are in the quilt.

So look at, look and see how many pattern.

But there's, there's two different versions of the setting triangles you're going to need to make because of the way the blocks rotate.

So take a look at the pattern again.

Look at the position of those colors.

Yeah that's a little bit.

So those setting triangles are what we use on the sides.

Let's see how that works.

Nice nice.

And look at how beautiful Sara.

Look at how beautiful all those intersections came out.

Very good.

Yeah.

So you're going to need to trim this one up to where are we going.

This.

Because this was at strip set.

So he's too big on this side.

Let me hit him with an iron and then we will, trim that up.

And I'm probably.

Do you have a longer ruler?

Right.

Yeah.

So then I'm just going to lay it down on that edge and then trim that little extra guy off.

And there's my setting.

And I do like to point out here that we're not going directly into the corner of the triangle.

We're leaving about a quarter of an inch of seam allowance here, too.

So don't be feeling like you need to be going directly into the corner of that bottom square.

I should say you've got a little excess for since when your needle flies by, it needs that for the seam allowance so that those points don't just cut.

You have the triangles right now that corner there's four corner triangles.

And those are slightly smaller.

It again uses a strip set and again uses two triangles.

So you're going to put that together.

And then you've got that center seam that will align right up with that center seam.

And again you're going to trim both sides just like we did.

And you'll have your four setting triangles.

Nice.

All right.

And then I thought for these fabrics well let's just lay them out real quick because I do want to talk to you about a little bit of, of finding.

Let's see a little rotate that one that way, and I'll rotate this one this way.

And so that is how you'll start making those rows to go across across your quilt and follow the diagram.

Follow the diagram.

Right.

Okay.

So I brought I brought a binding that I intend to use with these colors because I really think they go, well, pretty.

And I just wanted to show you it's kind of a cool way to think about binding.

So this is a piece of fabric selvedge to selvage that has little stripes on it.

And this stripe this piece is 2.5in.

So it's the right size for binding.

And so it's a printed binding.

And let's put two of these together.

So to make binding you're going to lay your right sides together.

You're going to lay them at a right angle and you're going to sew.

And I just want to make sure I have them.

Yep.

And you're going to sew from corner to corner.

So I bet that it would help you if I mark that.

So it's if you if have heard of cheater panels where it looks like pre pieced fabric, this is just all ready to go a cheater binding.

Yeah.

And you actually have multiple choices on this binding.

And it just depends on how you, fold it and which side you attach to the front and which side wraps around to the back.

Right.

So we would trim this up.

So I just joined it at a 45 degree angle.

So that gives us a miter join.

And then you're going to take it to your ironing surface.

You're going to fold it in half and give it a nice healthy press with a hot iron.

And this is where I get to decide, when I attach this to the front of my quilt to I want this to be on the front, and therefore this is on the back or vice versa.

Right.

Or I could have it fold where this is on the front and this is on the back.

I think you should choose the flowers.

You know, it has that boho kind of look to it.

Yeah.

And so you would just prepare the binding the way you wouldn't any other binding.

It just gives you a little flash on the side.

Very nice.

Beautiful quilt.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Grab a pencil tips and other useful information.

Coming up next.

This one came in from Mrs.

Robert Dick from McAlester, Oklahoma.

She says to keep my thread spools from unwinding and tangling, I tie yarn snugly close to the bottom of the spool and pull the thread from the bottom.

This is great for on the road projects.

Awesome, I love that.

Okay, here's one from Brenda Cookson of Stetson, Maine.

She says thank you for the fun and informative programing.

I've been quilting for more than 50 years and I'm still learning.

Fabulous.

I'm always learning, right?

She says she has two tricks for stabilizing bias before cutting.

First, she marks or press a very scant quarter inch from each side of the diagonal line.

Then iron on a lightweight, non-woven fusible tape along the diagonal line and then cut spray starch also help, so she is stabilizing before she cut cuts.

I've got it running.

This one came in from Carol Holland from shingle House, Pennsylvania.

She says, I make these little string scrap banners of the fabrics I'm using in my quilts, in case I need to run to the fabric shop for more fabric.

And when the quilt is finished, I'll mail these little string banners to my great granddaughters, two and four years old.

They love getting these pretty fabrics in the mail to play with, and it's good for card making and bookmarks too.

She makes also a little bracelet with embroidery floss.

So cute!

That's very cute.

If you have a tip to share, you can send it to the address you see on screen.

And thanks for watching!

Additional quilting ideas are available in the pages of Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting magazine.

In addition to the magazine, you will receive all 13 shows from this series in digital video format.

The cost is $49.95.

Explore loveofquilting.com/LOQtv Find out more about this episode.

Discover ways to watch the show.

Explore patterns, find supply lists, and browse earlier seasons.

Explore loveofquilting.com/LOQtv and connect with us on Facebook and Instagram.

Funding for Love of Quilting is provided by.

The Bernina 990.

If it can be imagined, it can be created.

APQS longarm quilting machines allow you to express your creativity.

APQS Quilt forever.

The Warm Company manufacturer of battings and fusibles for quilts, crafts and wearable arts.

Panasonic, maker of the 360 degree freestyle, cordless iron, magic quilting and crafting collection, ironing sprays, and more.