Today, we're using leftover precut fabric and batting strips to create a three dimensional stacked cylinder.

We'll show how to create fabric tubes using a special tube making tool, as well as decorative stitching options, and will even use a sideways sewing method that you may not have known your machine could do.

Whether you're making a tote, a basket, a tube, or a carryall, you'll want to watch this 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 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.

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

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

And Sara.

You have got so many fun things, I can't wait.

It's like sculpture.

What are we doing?

So we are going to make a tube, bucket or basket.

It could be a basket.

It could be a tote bag.

It could be anything that you want it to be.

But what's fun about this is that we get to use these precut 2.5in strips of binding along.

Excuse me.

Batting.

Thank you.

Yes.

Batting along with 2.5in strips of fabric, you know, like you'd find in one of your strip rolls.

Yeah.

And just kind of have a little fun with it.

So we're going to be creating a little smaller version of what you could create.

But I know we've got a bag down here to show you.

Right.

Yeah.

So I'm going to show you how to create the bucket portion of it.

But you could add handles to it.

You can make it any size that you want really.

And then put a little bling on it.

You could put some fancy buttons on there.

There's all kinds of options for this type of a project.

You can really customize it and make it your own.

Yeah.

So I'm pretty excited because we're going to play with all of these precut things.

And sometimes you just have scraps from a strip roll left over.

This is a great project or from binding.

It would be a great use for all of that.

And it's something that comes together pretty quickly, and you can play with some of the decorative stitches on your sewing machine too.

So lots of neat things happening here.

So what we're going to start by doing is creating the tubes here.

And for that we need our piece of batting.

And I just kind of left it on the roll sort of next to me.

I'm going I move this over here, if you don't mind.

I'll just kind of unroll some of that.

And then we also need one of our fabric strips.

And I like to leave a little hanging off the edge.

I'll show you why in just a moment.

But don't worry about cutting off your salvages, because we're going to use that as like a runway to start sewing.

So we're just going to take the strip just as it is.

And we want to layer the batting right inside of the strip.

And I've got this so that the right side is facing out and the batting is on top.

Okay.

Then we're going to be using this tool and it's going to do it's going to work in two parts.

It's going to first fold our batting toward the middle.

And then it will also one more flip it over.

Yeah.

So it makes this a lot faster and easier than trying to do this yourself on the ironing board.

So I'm going to take this first end and just sort of push it into the chute here.

And we just want to get it to come out the other end.

And you can see it's already starting to fold it.

And then we need to keep that steady.

So we're going to place the second piece without pinching the fabric and just kind of snap it into place like that.

Oh wow.

There we go.

Then we're going to pull a little bit out.

Oh look at that.

It's not neat.

It's already making the first fold.

Yeah.

And we have a second chute to put it into.

So again I'm just going to take that end right inside.

Kind of help it get through there.

Boy the brain that came up with this right.

It's like a four piece magic trick.

So it's just kind of pulling through like that, And now we have another one of those little second pieces just to snap right into position.

Just like that.

So as we so we're just going to keep moving both of these pieces down the tube.

So now we're going to take this over to the sewing machine.

And this is why I like to leave that little extra hanging off the edge.

Because we want to get a little bit.

Exactly.

And when I start to sew I don't want to put my foot and my needle right here because the machine's going to have a bit of a hard time climbing that onto that mountain.

So I like to place this so that the end of the strip is behind my foot.

So my needle is in front of the back of the foot.

So I'm going to start sewing right about here and then continue down the strip.

So we're going to place this all the way underneath of the foot kind of shooting out behind.

And that's also going to allow my walking foot to grab the fabric from the top edge before I begin to sew.

So this would be something you'd absolutely want to use a walking foot or an integrated walking foot, something that helps all these layers move through the needle.

It's very helpful, that is for certain.

So now I'm going to let that foot drop down.

And I'm using just a straight stitch.

And normally we sell with really dark threads.

So you can see really well.

But it looks pretty bad if you use a dark thread for the top stitch and then a decorative thread on top of that, a darker one.

Or when you put the decorative stitch on top, it looks a little icky.

So I'm using a really light colored thread, and that's what I would recommend for you.

I've got the quarter inch foot on, even though I'm not trying to take a quarter inch seam because my foot has a little marking on it, and I'm trying to line that marking up with the edge of the fabric.

And because it's a single whole foot, it's got a really narrow opening and it puts a lot of pressure on the fabric and holds those layers together.

The other thing that I found really helpful for this is to turn off that hover position.

Normally, I like it when my foot, when I stop my needle drops and my foot comes up.

But I found that I don't like it for this technique because it allows some of these layers to separate that.

I would rather keep them pinched together, because you do have to stop to move the tool.

So let's start just kind of slowly begin here.

So just a straight stitch.

And again I'm trying to just stay real close to the edge.

And now I'm getting to where my tool is kind of creeping up on the foot.

So I'm just going to slide the back piece, back slide the front piece back, give it a little tuck under and then continue stitching so the needles in the down position did you just because some machines you can adjust the the pressure that the foot is putting on the fabric.

Did you have to adjust that or just standard this particular stitch on this machine kind of defaults to a 50.

And I like that.

I like that it's pretty heavy because it flattens everything.

But you could certainly adjust that up or down to give yourself a little additional help.

If you need it.

So I just moved it up to a 65 and it's really, really mashing those layers together for me.

Such a great suggestion.

So we'll just kind of slide this backwards again.

And so I'm unclear if if you go if the you increase the number, does that increase the pressure that it is.

It increases the downward force, the downward force against the fabric which sometimes can make things hard to feed.

But in this case, because the batting is so fluffy, I think it kind of compresses the batting and almost makes it easier to go through the machine.

And then I've got that walking foot just really helping to pull it out from front to back.

Right.

So, you know, I'm typically a pretty speedy slower knot for this technique, right?

Yeah.

You're asking a lot of that needle.

Yeah.

And it's just really hard to keep it all straight and flat if you're flying along.

So there we go.

Yeah.

And I've seen you can certainly do this by folding it and clipping it.

Sure.

That's one way to do this.

You can use a tool but there are other ways.

If you don't have the tool, you could certainly at the iron press everything to the center.

So both long edges to the center and then press it in half again and then clip it.

But that's going to take a little longer.

Okay.

So we'll slide this down and we are almost to the end of this strip.

And the moth of the butterfly that's on your fabric.

It just it really does add a little pop of color.

Oh yeah.

Edge of the of the tube.

Sometimes we're afraid of using a larger scale print for something like this.

But you all you don't necessarily still know it's a moth.

You just get all that fun color around the edge of the fabric.

And I did make a really pretty quilt out of this.

And these were all leftovers from the quilt that I made.

So it's of the strips.

Yeah, yeah.

So I had a full, strip roll.

And for the quilt that I made, it didn't use quite all of the strips.

So I got to make this out of it.

So I'm getting toward the end here.

So I'm just going to cut my batting.

And would you say that the batting should be 100% cotton, or can it be a cotton poly blend like that could be bamboo?

Does it matter?

I would say whatever you can find in a already cut 2.5in strip.

Yeah, that's the beauty of this.

For this is primarily on strips.

You're going to need to keep a little roller nearby.

That's right.

Yes.

That would probably preclude me from doing this project.

The roller part, just the cutting of the batting.

I'd be like, yeah, I have so much, I have so many strips of batting and batting excess.

Just scraps and strips.

Well, no, but that you cut them off your long arm or you cut them off your machine quilting project, and you could.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, you know, you could also do this with rope.

There's I've seen lots of really cool rope balls, but I thought it'd be fun with the batting.

Yeah.

Okay.

So now I've got, I've gone all the way down the length of it, and I've got a couple of pieces here that we can kind of play with.

Now, I think just to save a little bit of time and allow us to show more stitches.

Yeah, I'd like to cut these in half.

So if you've got a rotary cutter or a pair of scissors, there, let's see.

Let's find ourselves.

And we're just going to kind of ballpark it.

We'll make an estimate.

Yeah.

There we go.

We got it.

And that's what I did with this one.

I just kind of worked with a shorter piece.

So and I noticed you did kind of light and dark and light and dark.

Exactly.

I liked it, you know, you could also go from light to dark and dark to light and kind of radiate it, but strata like a strata, I like it.

So now for the next bit here, we're going to use a decorative stitch to piece these together.

So I want to make a couple of modifications to the machine.

I'm going to change the thread to something a little bit bolder so that you can really see it.

And then I'm also going to change away from my quarter inch foot, because if I'm using the quarter inch foot, it's got that single needle opening.

So it's really intended for you to only use it with a straight stitch.

So you've got to make sure that you switch that foot out, before you try to select a decorative stitch.

So we'll thread the needle there.

Yeah.

And so I'm taking a look at the decorative stitches you've done, over here.

And you could, you could change them up and do a different one with each, which with each row, you sure could just thread there.

So I'm rethreaded.

I've changed back to a foot that's got, a little wider opening.

That's nice for decorative stitches.

And we want to start by choosing a stitch that we want to play with.

And we could begin with something just as simple as a zigzag stitch.

And I'm just going to make it a little bit wider and longer.

And just like before, I'm going to shoot that fabric just a little bit behind the foot so that it can really grab as I begin to stitch.

And this foot also has a center marking.

So what I'm doing here is I'm lining it up so that I've got the folded edge of one strip kind of coming right up on top of where I stitched the other.

And if you can really kind of just hide that first stitching row as you place them next to each other, I think you'll be happier in the long run.

Run with your results.

And then I'm going to take that center line in the foot and just follow it right between the two strips, and you'll just kind of stop and make adjustments as you need.

So there we go.

So this would be like the most simple basic stitch you could use.

And everybody's got a zigzag stitch on their sewing machine.

Right.

Just about.

And you can generally with just the width, just length.

So you can make it really close together.

You can make them further apart and, and you can I would definitely say to take a couple of scraps, make it a couple of shorter pieces and play with the stitches to decide what you like best for your project.

And it's almost like making a little stitch sampler.

And of course, we cut those tubes in half, so that's going to kind of dictate how big of a circumference we can reach, right?

Our tote, we're going to be making a little tiny tube.

So mine are kind of coming apart a little bit.

So I'm just going to lift my foot and just kind of reposition.

And that's totally fine.

You can do that as you go and then we'll keep on going.

Okay.

We're almost to the end.

And I'm just kind of pushing those layers together as I stitch through.

I am almost imagining like a variegated thread.

Oh, so pretty.

It would be really pretty.

Okay, pick up your peaches and your lovely.

Yeah, Very nice.

So that's it.

And then on the back side, I still have my light colored bobbin thread in.

So you could decide what you like the best.

Right.

So let's play with something a little fancier.

Okay.

Let's just see what else we can find.

So there are some really pretty sideways motion stitches that add a little bit of extra embellishment.

So I'm going to work with this one here.

It's kind of like an X shape.

And then we'll just pick another piece to add on.

And we're going to follow all those same rules.

We're going to put a little extra behind the foot as we go, drop that foot down and just try to keep those centered.

Now with this sort of a stitch your fabric is going to move a bit forward and backward as it forms the stitch.

And while I am putting a little bit of pressure to keep my pieces of, batting tube together, I don't want to be putting so much pressure that the machine can't move that fabric side to side and forward and back.

So just kind of, again, practice on a scrap piece to get the feel for it and be careful how you handle it.

I think that is one of the things that throws a lot of folks is you're looking at that center needle position that's on the foot.

It's kind of engraved on the foot.

And but the feed dogs are moving the fabric away from that line as you kind of get like, well, how do I drive, right, to stay on the road or just trying to stay as straight as we can?

And I do think it helps too, if you know, you think about when you drive a car, you don't look at the hood ornament, right?

You look at the road in front of you.

And the more I fixate on the needle, the less I pay attention to what's happening down here on the strips.

So you want to really trust that if you're holding it right before it approaches the needle and the foot, that it's going to stitch right as it comes through the machine.

And I would say the needle here would also probably be ideal for your needle pretty quickly going through the rest of a piece of wire.

If you start hearing the sound, that's the wrong needle.

If you are getting your thread shredding, that could be the wrong needle.

Or if you're starting to see little tufts of that inside that maybe those needle in your needle.

Yeah.

So if at any point your, your stomach goes, this doesn't seem right.

That sound was weird.

Put a new needle in I agree.

Okay.

So how do you like that one?

Oh, I like that one a lot.

I think that's really fun.

Yeah, I like that better than the zigzag.

Actually.

I think it's a little bit prettier elements.

And if you had the right color thread in there, that would really pop and be fun.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So play with your decorative stitches, take some scraps and just go a little crazy playing with those stitches.

If you haven't played with them yet, now is the perfect opportunity, right?

So once you have created a piece of fabric and of course you can make it larger than this, we're just kind of doing this for for show here.

How in the world do we put this together.

So the first thing that I want to do is I'm going to bind one edge, because what we're going to end up doing is overlap our pieces.

And you're going to have both edges showing inside and outside.

But you definitely want to get that outside edge bound.

So we're going to do that now.

So I've got a piece of another piece of my 2.5in strip here precut.

And we actually could just do it right on this one.

Yep.

Okay.

And I did cut it about an inch larger or wider than the piece that I'm binding, because we're going to use that to tuck our raw edges under.

And we have a half inch wide, double sided fusible tape here.

And you know, I love this for bindings.

So we're going to lay that right on one edge and give a little snip.

Oh I went further than I should have.

There it goes.

And if you do it's okay.

It's inside.

Look as I don't do your finger don't you.

Maybe you're good but yeah these things happen.

Okay.

So now we'll do the second edge okay.

We haven't taken the paper.

I guess I could have precut these if I would have thought about it.

And then if you want to just iron those down, then we'll peel that second piece of paper off.

Yep.

You're the only piece of paper I should say so.

It's sticky on both sides.

But there's that piece of paper in there that covers the first side of the sticky.

Okay, so the adhesive is against that.

I'm just using a little pressing sheet here so that we don't get it on our mat.

Very important.

Especially if it's your favorite wool pressing mat okay.

And then we just peel the paper off.

And sometimes that can be a challenge.

But I think I got it.

I'm glad you got it because she says yes.

She says there I got mine.

You two.

Bingo.

Yeah.

Okay.

So if you would then turn both of those under and press them for me, I'm just going to switch back to my quarter inch foot real quick here.

I'm actually just to be sure I'm going to kind of flip that over to make sure I don't get my iron.

And I'm just kind of telling the machine that I've got that quarter inch foot on.

So press is good.

If you don't have a pressing mat, some parchment paper will work as well.

Yeah.

And even if you were to flip that over and work from the other side, maybe.

Oh, okay.

There you go.

Just watch it a little.

You go okay on the side.

And that's a silicone mat.

It is meant for you to be able to put the heat of the iron directly on it without damaging it.

So for her to just set the iron right on that silicone.

Yeah.

It's it.

We don't have to worry about that.

Then somebody at home went, oh no.

Yeah, yeah, I know sometimes people worry about us.

Angela.

Yeah, well, sometimes I should go okay.

There's that one.

Okay.

So we're going to go ahead and stitch that on to the first side.

Just a straight stitch.

Just a straight stitch with our quarter inch seam there with a quarter inch seam.

That was my next question is would you do a bigger a wider seam you surely could find a quarter inch.

Works well zip around that.

And right off the edge there.

Okay.

And now what we're going to want to do is we're going to turn one edge under, and then we can wrap it around and fuze it again.

And to make that super easy, we're going to use that same half inch tape right along here, which I kind of stalled.

Oh good.

I was like, I don't have it.

Where did it go?

Okay.

If you want to cut that edge for me and we're going to do the same thing where we're going to go ahead and press that down, and then we're going to turn it and flip it over and we'll be right back.

So Angela, you've done an excellent job with that little binding edge there.

Toasty a little warm.

Yeah.

Now while we were stopped I also took the insert out.

So if you are fortunate enough at home to have a sewing cabinet where you get all this flat space, I'm going to show you why we took that insert out and just a sack.

But real quick, I'm just going to stitch right down my binding edge here.

And so I'm basically just stitching in the ditch and I'm going to engage my walking foot.

And here we go because I changed my foot.

There we go.

So we're just going to topstitch that down.

And I love the the quarter inch.

But for this because I can see exactly where my needle is dropping.

And I'm just going right in that ditch.

All right.

If you don't have a table that your machine has sunk into, you just need to take off and any kind of extended table.

So you have the free arm you usually have, like an accessory compartment here that covers the free arm.

You just take that right off.

And the reason we want that off is because now we are going to overlap our project, and we want to be able to stitch this down.

Now, it might look a little bit funny because usually we kind of stitch from front to back.

Right?

But there are stitches on a lot of machines that will allow you to move left to right.

You've probably seen them in a menu on your machine and not had any idea why in the world you would want to use a stitch that moves from left to right.

But it can be really, really helpful, depending on what you're working on.

Because right now, if we were to try to stitch this front to back as you normally would, it won't it won't go right.

It simply won't go.

So I'm going to disengage my walking foot, and I'm going to put on just a standard sewing foot.

And I will say that if you don't have this ability on your machine, you can always hand stitch these two layers together.

You sure can.

Okay, so I'm going to go into a little motion here that's going to allow me to move that stitch from left to right.

And now we are going to place the tube under the machine.

And I want to really watch where my needle is going to drop.

And I'm going to put my foot down.

And once again, I'm just wanting to look to see that it's kind of doing a little ditch quilting for me, and I would use a matching thread to make it a little bit more invisible.

But now the machine's actually going to move side to side and allow me to stitch right down that tube.

So think about what the dogs are doing.

They're now moving laterally rather than front to back to exactly that fabric just to help it right through.

And some machines will have it where it can go side to side.

It might go diagonally.

There are a lot of different directions they can go, and it's great for mending or for sewing on patches.

I've even used it to help with hems on some of the kids, band wardrobe uniforms.

So I've had a lot of fun with those sideways stitches, and we're almost to the end here.

I could definitely see it with patches or something more uniform.

Okay, so I've gotten to where I'm in the inside of the machine, so I'm going to stop there.

And guess what?

If it's rotated and go the other direction around.

So the only thing you're limited by is the depth of the space of the machine.

So we're just going to go back the other way.

Now.

So that free arm really is there.

If you were a garment so or you could, pull your sleeve leaves hands or legs.

Yeah.

That neat.

Yep.

So it just stitched it right down for us now.

Cool.

Very cool.

And again use a matching thread okay.

So now we have the base of our little tube.

And at this point what I would do is I would just draw on something with some stability to it.

Like this is an oval shaped one, but I would just draw the circle right onto this interfacing.

And in order to cover it, I like to use a double sided fusible web.

So I fuzed it right to my fabric.

You can peel that paper off just like we did with the skinny strips.

It's the same product, just in a bigger sheet.

And then you can fuze your base right on it, cut it to the right size, and then it's just a little whip stitch around and you've got a nice I want to put a wineglass on.

It is what I want.

Wouldn't it be fun?

Yeah, it'd be a really fun wine carrier.

You could and you could even do it in like holiday fabric.

Or if you're going to a housewarming party, maybe a fun little gift.

Yeah, there's lots of different stuff you need.

If you need handles with little handles on it too.

Yeah.

And you can use the same batting strips and those same 2.5in strips of fabric.

Or you could do a rope, anything you like.

I mean sky's the limit.

Sky's the limit there.

Yeah.

So save all those 2.5in strips and you have a new use for them.

Go play with your decorative stitches and have some fun.

Grab a pencil, tips and other useful information.

Coming up next.

This tip was in from Joyce Nonte from Patoka, Indiana.

She says.

Here's my tip for making easy ruffles.

They're great on baby quilts, she says.

Step one fold the fabric wrong sides together and sew a half inch along the cut edge step to secure the end of a length of embroidery floss to the fabric, with a piece of masking tape lining the floss along the stitches.

Step three use a wide zigzag stitch to sew over the floss, making sure not to catch the floss in the zigzag stitching.

Step four gently pull the floss to make the gathers.

You can sew it to a quilt or garment and then remove the floss.

And Joyce says, I love your show!

Thanks, Joyce.

That's a great method.

Okay, this comes from a Michigan friend, Saundra Murphy of Midland, Michigan.

She says when she does fusible applique, take a straight pin and score 30 degrees across the back of the center of the paper backing.

Then it makes it easier to remove the paper from the center out, which prevents the edges from raveling.

And it doesn't pull so much on the bias or the grain of the fabric.

Great tip, that is, it can be hard to do that sometimes.

I'm sure.

This one is from Stephanie G from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and she says, hi ladies, I love your show.

A friend gave me a clear silverware tray.

You can tell from the photo that I put it to good use.

It's full of my most used items and sits beside me on my cutting table.

I can fit it into any drawer, but that hasn't happened yet.

All the things got all the things.

Thanks for sharing your tips with us.

If you've got one to send, then you can send it to the address on screen.

And of course, we always love when you send a little prop with it.

See you next time!

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If it can be imagined, it can be created.

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