Deb Stanley's table runner, called Lights of Hope, features fussy cut lighthouses.

But today we'll try a different take.

We'll learn how to play with on point fussy cutting, matching dense points and creating a mitered border.

Let's get together for some playful piecing 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 for quilts, crafts and wearable arts.

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

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

I'm Angela Huffman, and I'm Sara Gallegos, and this is a beautiful table runner.

It's got lighthouses on it, some border setting triangles.

We're going to have a little fun.

Yeah, it's really neat.

This is from Deb Stanley, and I really love that she had this cute lighthouse prints.

And then the little sand dollars is really fun, but it's the perfect place to play with focal prints.

Yes.

And so we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, choosing focal prints, how much fabric to buy, how to get things lined up nicely and to to match them repetitively.

She's kind of lucky on this one because there were so many different lighthouses.

You didn't have to worry about cutting them identical, but she's got them all center too, right?

And they're all lined up.

Oh.

Facing north.

Yeah, I'm sure she, she worked on that.

Yeah.

Really pretty.

So that's our example.

And we're going to make ours with a little bit larger focal print.

And one of the things that I wanted to kind of start by talking about was when you work with Focal Print, we've got kind of some decisions to make about the direction that we want to cut them, and that is going to affect the amount of fabric that we need to buy.

So if you're wanting to fussy cut where you're perfectly cutting out these little owls, you might find that you need a little bit more fabric than what the pattern calls for.

So I've got what the pattern called for here, and we'll kind of open it up.

And we're going to just kind of pick and choose our little owls to cut out.

So we need a 10.5in square.

And there are so many different sizes of rulers out there.

If you don't happen to have a 10.5in square, you can always take a larger ruler and just run a little tape along the 10.5in marking.

It's really, really easy to you as it just peels off and it's fairly transparent, so I try to kind of line it up right at the bottom of that line, and it sticks right on.

And then when you're done with it, you can just rip it right back off again.

So that's one way to kind of make it easier.

And I and I like this ruler because I can really see through it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or of course you could also do an actual an actual 10.5in square.

So the benefits of this is that generally you've got a lot of lines that are drawn into that square that you can use to center things up too.

Exactly.

So with this particular print, in this amount of yardage, I can see that I would be able to easily cut out my owl pieces, but let's say I wanted to turn it on point.

Oh.

Now I'm running into some problems because I don't have enough fabric up here, and I find that throughout the whole entire piece of fabric, it's just about where those owls are positioned and how much yardage I have.

So you would need a lot more.

So we're going to start by cutting one out, just straight up and down.

And you want to kind of look at the lines on the ruler in the body of that little owl to make it nice and straight.

So what I'm kind of looking for is I know that I'm not going to be able to get this full tail in my 10.5in square, but I want to make sure that I've got seam allowance up top.

So I'm going to be cutting this like at least a half of an inch above his little eyebrows.

Not an official name for that.

That what it is.

Yeah, yeah I definitely you go towards the eye of the owl and the tail.

If he's losing a little bit of tail that's okay.

It's really striking.

Then we need to look at the size of this ruler.

We've got a half inch here and one inch here.

So we want to kind of look at the sides.

And I know that over here is 2.5in and here is two inches because of that extra half inch.

So just kind of pay attention to your ruler.

And in this case I would need to scoot that over, you know, a quarter of an inch to make up the difference.

Now we can cut out our owl.

And you'd want to be consistent I would think.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And we're going to talk about a cool tip for that.

So I've got the first two cups.

And just to make sure I get it nice and even and I'm not going to hurt myself or cut off at a funny angle, I'm going to rotate this all the way around.

And just to kind of show you if you wanted to use the larger ruler, sorry, I'm getting it out under here.

I don't know that I'm helping or not.

You could always helpful.

Then you would be positioning your tape lines along that first cut.

So again, you could use a 10.5in square.

Or you could utilize the tape lines to have that marking.

So we're just ignoring all that extra ruler bit.

And so the way that she did her lighthouses, there was a different lighthouse kind of in each of the blocks.

Right.

Would you repeat the owl and every block repeated every block.

Exactly.

And I'm going to show you kind of a neat trick for that.

So you could what you're looking for is, is the measurement on this one.

So remember I was a half inch above its little horns and I was about what we were two and a quarter, two and a quarter on either side.

So you would just want to really pay attention to that.

Right.

But things become a little bit different when we start working on point.

So here's an example of what the owl looks like straight up and down.

But like we talked about, I can't really get an on point owl with that amount of fabric.

So here I purchased like twice as much so that I could kind of pick and choose my little owl spots.

You end up with Swiss cheese fabric.

So you'll see here that I've already cut out several of my owls.

So I've got like lots of weird scraps, right?

But right here I have the perfect owl spot, so we'll place our ruler on there.

You don't have your first owl under there, do you?

I don't okay, good.

Yeah, right.

Double check that I go and I'm actually going to turn them right side up to us, because it's a little easier for me to visualize that way.

So what am I looking for here?

I've got it.

Center.

Yes.

I've got this really nice straight line at dead center and that makes it a lot easier.

But how far up or down should I be?

I kind of practiced and played with this.

And then when we have our our owls cut out, we're going to be adding full squares flippy corners to it.

Right.

And you end up cutting off a chunk.

And what I found was really helpful is if I took that first one from my first block and I lay that chunk that I cut off right in the corner of my ruler, just like that.

Okay, now I'm going to position my rulers and I'll scoot it forward until the prince line up from the chunk on my ruler to the fabric below it.

Oh pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm still nice and straight here, but I want to make sure that those leaves, which are really, really great for visual alignment, are nice and straight.

I think we got it.

What do you think?

Yeah.

And lined up there.

Now make sure I'm still on my mat.

And I am now we're going to cut this owl out.

And I can see why you would need a little bit more yardage than you think if you're going to be fussy cutting, especially a big, focal point like this.

Absolutely.

All right.

I'm going to come down here.

This is where I wish that I was also ambidextrous and I could get my left hand around.

Since you've got oh, there's one little one little bit during the area now we'll just kind of rotate carefully.

We should have put a spinning mat under here.

That would have been a good idea.

Could have.

Should have what a. Yeah.

So you are dealing with this big chunk of fabric and lots of funny holes.

Okay.

I think once we get this in here, it'll be nice and flat.

There we go.

Okay, so I'm going to line up my corners.

And of course, you could certainly cut off the excess to get it out of the way, but okay I think if you would stop pulling.

Oh, okay.

I'm not helping.

You're working against me a tiny little bit.

There we go.

Okay.

So we'll get it nice and straight edge and right on there.

Perfect.

And we'll just lob that right through okay.

We got it.

All right.

Yeah.

So lots of holes.

There's our owl.

And again if I just kind of lay this right up on top there.

Check it out.

It's like it was never even cut off.

That tells me that all of my owls will look identical on my project.

So let's take a peek at what comes next.

So I'm going to move my rulers out of the way.

I don't need my rotary cutter.

Here is what I did with my owls.

Oh, fun.

No fun.

So when you add our little triangles on the sides, you could have all of your owls facing kind of up and down right.

So we'll just kind of lay those on there so you can see what it'll look like.

And I don't love this on a table runner because, because I feel like half of the people at the table are looking at the owl from the right direction, and half of them are looking at upside down owls wishing that they were on the other side of the table.

Yeah, this is a little things, you know, you certainly could do half of them one way and half of them the other, but I found that it was kind of fun to put the owls on point as I cut them, because then I was able to just rotate their direction to do.

And now the owls are looking at everybody at the table.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Right there.

Eyes on you.

You've got choices.

So we'll continue on the wrong fork.

We're not that fussy in my house.

Okay, good.

It's all the same fork.

Oh that's funny.

So now I'm going to go ahead and press this a little bit before we add our floppy corners on there.

You did a really good job pulling out the color to to compliment, those purples in the owl that fun I sometimes I think that we get a little hung up on using the fabrics that are in the collection only because of course there were coordinates to go with this, but a lot of them were really, really bold prints.

Some of them were totally different colors.

But I really wanted to kind of stick with this periwinkle and aqua kind of color story.

So I found some blenders that are from different group, different design or different brand altogether that really just pulled those colors nicely.

So don't feel like you have to stick with a collection, right?

So now we're going to place these squares on the corners and you're going to sew diagonally, from point to point okay.

And right on the line.

So we're stitching directly on the line.

Ironed these for you to.

Now these are big leftovers.

So you could certainly do your little trick where you sew a half inch away.

But on one of them we need to keep it ideally at the top.

You want to keep that little scrap from your first block because you're going to use that for positioning the others.

Okay, so one more.

Level I don't have to worry about which part to use when I come into your house.

Sarah.

We're just not that much.

Yeah, my my mom, though on special occasions, she had this little salt, bowl.

This little, teeny, tiny, teeny tiny little spoon.

I'm sure there's an official word for it.

I think it was from my grandmother.

And so you could use the little the little scoop of salt.

Did it feel extra fancy?

Like, did you look for it to kick your little pinky out?

The whole thing felt very fancy.

I do have, a set of China that was my grandfather's when he was away.

It at war.

And, it's my very, very favorite because I feel like it reveals this bit of his personality that I never would have guessed because it's these really neat, intricate dragons.

Dragons?

Yes.

So for special occasions at my house, that is what we get to use.

And it's like Dragon Plate, these special of all the things, you know, people get flowers or trees or whatever for their fancy China.

And my grandfather got these really cool dragons.

My Grandpa Jim, he was a neat guy.

I think mine, we're birds.

Awesome birds for birds.

Yeah.

Also fun.

Okay, so I cut those off.

I just kind of yaps through the whole thing, but I cut those off and pressed them out.

Okay.

And now we're going to add to the other sides as well.

So you do the opposite sides both at once.

Well I don't know.

Sorry I would have preferred Dragon Place.

I think it's pretty neat because we weren't allowed to use the bird plates very often.

Well, and it's it's scary to use the dragon plates because if one breaks, I just can't go get another dragon plate, but also hard to replace.

It's sad to just leave it.

I didn't quite get it on there.

Sorry.

It's sad to just leave it sitting in the cupboard, you know?

So use the fancy plates just like you should use the fancy quilts.

Yes, I'm sure you know, it actually would make me sad if I gave a quilt to somebody and I came over and they had it in a cupboard or something, right.

To honor it.

No, I want you to use it until it falls apart and there's holes in it.

And it was then.

I know it was love.

My girlfriend said that to me.

She's up there.

I'm so afraid to use your quilt because it's so special.

And what if it gets destroyed?

And I said to Nancy, I have an endless supply of quilts.

You can come back over and pick another quilt.

I know you love it.

And then I know you loved it.

And I'm so happy to give it to you.

Yes, all the quilts.

It's fun.

Okay, so we're going to press these out.

I think the other thing that my mom had, were pickle forks.

Have any pickle forks?

No, we had the specials.

Yes.

For pickles.

Oh.

Which I don't serve many pickles.

And come to think of it, I don't know why or how or when I would use a pickle fork other than like a backyard barbecue.

We need to do an exchange because the pickle forks and I have all the fancy relish dishes.

Oh, that was a big thing with my grandma.

So yeah.

So we could do a little swap through and we'll have a whole set together.

So you got them going in opposite directions?

Yeah, I kind of put them opposite directions.

They're all pressed out.

And now we're ready to stitch two together.

And we want to line up those side edges and kind of just try to get your peaks to line up here.

I kind of feel them together and okay, could put a pin or a clip if you like.

All right.

A lot of times what I do is I'm aiming for the X. Yeah.

So there's an x. Let's see when I approach it.

Here's an x rate I get that guy all the way right there.

And so I'm aiming to go right down the middle of that x x marks the needle spot.

Yeah.

And I'll stop in between and go slow.

Get right through the X and then keep on truckin.

And then I know I've got a really nice point there.

Lovely.

So I guess she had lots of different kinds of relish, because you can have just one relish and one relish dish.

She had lots of relishes that she served your mom types.

No, you you said you.

Oh, my grandma, lots of relish dishes.

You'd have to have lots of different kinds of relish.

Well, we have this.

So this.

My grandpa Jim had the the dragon plates.

That's on my dad's side.

On my mom's side.

Grandma Leonard with the pickle dishes.

Huge family, huge family.

So we had several relish plates on the table.

Oh, okay.

Because everybody's got to be able to get to a pickle or an olive.

Right.

And one for the kids table.

So, yeah, just really big families open.

Yeah.

So tell me why you make that choice.

I just felt that it laid a little flatter.

It's when we look at this corner right here, we have I don't know, what do you get?

At least eight layers of fabric all coming together at a big X, and I really had a hard time getting them flat, so I made the choice to press those seams open and then oh, looks pretty good.

Sometimes when you press them open, you reveal that your match wasn't as perfect as it could have been.

And I do have one of those on here.

That's when you put it relish dish.

Exactly.

We're just not even going to worry about it.

Okay.

So there we have it.

What do you think?

Yeah.

Now we're going to talk about borders.

Okay.

I don't know if I've told you this before.

I've told a lot of people by the time I get to the borders on a quilt, you're ready.

I am so sick and ready to move on to the next project.

So one of my favorite things to do is to put my borders on at the same time.

So this has two borders and I chose to sew them together to make one border that I'm going to put on.

But then how do you match them?

Right.

We're going to miter the corners not like to.

You're showing them as a strip set okay now I understand.

Yeah I just kind of like how it looks better, when you miter the edges and also then it's just it's one trip around the project instead of two.

You know, I've done quilts with 3 or 4 borders and how striking it looks to show those together in strip sets and then miter those corners, especially with a stripe.

Like what?

I love it with a stripe because it miters it.

So I want to talk a little bit.

How about how to do mitered borders?

And what I've got here is a big long strip.

So it's longer than just with the fabric.

I've sewn two together and I've got my skinny and my wider outer border, and I sewed these together one sets for each of the four sides of the project.

But what I did was on half of them.

I pressed my seams toward the aqua, and on the other half I pressed toward the periwinkle, because that's going to allow me to nest really nicely on my my mitered corner.

So that will be a trick that you like a lot.

So how long do we need our pieces to be when we're monitoring?

Because you think longer than you think.

Exactly.

So is there an exact science?

I'm sure, but I just kind of ballpark it, right.

So I'm going to go by the full length of my project, and then I'm going to measure my border width.

So these borders together make three inches.

We want twice that.

So we've got the length of the project plus six inches.

So we're at about 46.5 right now.

And then I'm going to add like say ten inches more.

So that I've got enough to be able to handle that miter.

So you want extra plus six inches on this end.

You also have to do plus six inches.

It's that the same length okay.

It's the whole length okay.

Yeah yeah okay.

So yeah six plus six plus 40 plus some extra I guess is what you're seeing.

Right.

Okay.

Then I just kind of add it, centered.

Which one goes inside, the periwinkle goes inside.

I'm going to center the strip on the piece, which is kind of easy on here because we have the center seam.

I'm not worrying about measuring and making it perfect.

I'm just eyeballing.

What really counts, though, is that we want to start and stop sewing one quarter of an inch away from the edge, so we're going to leave that seam just a little bit unfinished.

So let me just put this the right way on there.

So I'm going to find that center again now that I flipped it over.

Yeah.

Oh boy we're twisted twisty.

There we go.

Okay.

So let me find my center.

Like that.

And we can maybe stick a couple pins in here.

Okay.

Thanks.

I'm pinning backwards.

Here we go.

And I'm going to put one down here just to hold it in place.

But this is where we're going to want to really mark.

So what I'm looking for is I really want to make sure that I'm going to start one quarter of an inch in from the edge of my fabric.

Okay.

So I'm going to put my ruler on here, find my quarter inch spot like that.

And then I'm just going to make a mark.

And while I'm here I might as well mark the other direction to.

So I'm almost making a little square in the corner there.

And a skinny marking device here is going to be your friend.

Right?

So that spot right there is where I want to start and stop.

When I saw my borders on, I need to do the same thing down here.

Just get that out of the way for a minute.

So I'm just going to find quarter inch and quarter inch.

I like the other side better.

There we go.

So I've got my quarter inch in both directions.

Well, mark and mark.

Okay.

Now we get to start sewing okay.

So you'll probably want to start down here.

And it's okay to sew with the border on the bottom because what we're looking for those markings right.

That's what we care the most about.

There you go.

And I miter border.

This is actually a really good project to practice miters because miters can be intimidating.

So a smaller project like this will be your friend.

And I do have a little, beam of light here to help me know where that needle is going to drop.

So that I know I'm right on your, right on your line.

Now, I did not just do attacking or some kind of backstitching there.

Would you recommend that I would do a backstitch, especially if you have one stitches in place.

So some of your sewing machine locking stitches are going to be like forward, backward, forward and traditional back tack or some will do just a little stitch in place because if it were to go backwards, you're into that quarter inch and you're going to have issues.

So yeah, if you can just do a little tack right in place, that's going to help you a ton.

I think that that did bite me once was that I was like, oh, I'll just do a little tacking stitch here.

But it took one little step back and that was right into that quarter inch that I needed for the miter.

And then you're making friends with the seam ripper.

Yeah.

And it will put a little pleat in the corner of your project.

So if you have one extra stitch, it does create a little pleat in your mitered corner.

And that doesn't really make us happy.

So get to know the locking stitches on your machine, because chances are you've got a couple different options that you didn't even really realize that you had.

Sure.

Yeah.

And get to know the, the backwards button to cross that can do a number of things.

There.

Yep.

Yeah.

And there's tons of good information in your owner's manual.

It's such a boring read, I understand that, but there's so much good information if you just take that little time.

All right.

And so I'm going to stop right at the edge.

Right at the edge.

And I'm just going to watch my little light.

That gives me kind of a cheater of where that needle is going to be.

And got it Sara.

Good job.

Okay.

And then just cut the distance and then I presume we're going to do the same on the other side.

Right.

So I'm going to add one of the short borders now and then I'll show you how to get that perfect miter.

Well Angela you did an excellent job landing on those points.

Thank you.

And now we have, sewn both of those borders on.

And I just want to point out that I do press one of the seam allowances toward the table runner, and then I press one toward the border.

And that's going to help.

So if you kind of look at the back, you'll see they're pressed in opposite directions.

Right now we get to have the fun part.

So what we want to do is we're going to pick this up and we're going to fold it over itself.

So that's where we've got our little start and stop stitching.

And I'm going to line up this side seam.

And I can feel right where those spots are that we started and stopped.

Then we're just going to continue that all the way out to the border, line it up because of the way that you press them.

Exactly.

They're nesting.

Everything's nice and easy.

Then we're going to take our ruler, and we just want to get a nice 45 degree angle.

So thankfully this ruler has got a nice clear, straight edge.

And I am going to mark from that dot all the way across my border.

So it looks like a funny angle.

And then we're going to pin that and we'll stitch it real quick and check out the big reveal.

All right there you go Sarah.

Here we go.

The big reveal.

Big reveal.

Drumroll.

Oh, it looks so good.

It's perfect.

You did a great job.

Grab a pencil, tips and other useful information.

Coming up next.

This is from Lisa Jackson from Council Bluffs, Iowa.

She says, I have learned so many tricks from the tips segment, and I would like to share mine.

When pressing Dresden plate blades, mark an index card with a line to keep the blade straight.

That's a good one.

Good.

Take that.

Okay, this is a little bit involved from Beth Teletski of Chestertown, Maryland.

So I'll let you handle that if you don't mind.

Okay.

After surgery, the doctor told me I might need to keep my left arm immobile for as much as three weeks, but I needed to keep exercising my wrist and fingers.

As an avid needle turn applicator, I prepared to stitch my way to recovery with an applicator sampler.

I prepped as many applique box as I could, pre cutting the appliques on freezer paper, basting the fabric and storing all the blocks in plastic sleeves in a three ring binder.

Recovery time.

She discovered, goes quickly when you set yourself frequent small goals.

A couple of tips if you plan to do this, mark the grain with a thin pencil line inside where the seam allowance will fall.

After folding in quarters, mark the center by basting an X and white thread, and if you have fabric that phrase, use a pinking rotary cutter.

Worth the price because it makes a big difference.

I like that look at those circles.

So pretty.

Pretty.

Yeah.

This is from Beverly Ness from Lenox, North Dakota.

And she says, first of all, I love your show.

I always learn something new.

She has limited wall space, so she created a design wall by hanging a rod pocket with a piece of flannel so that she could then put it up in the doorway of a closet, and she makes her baby quilts this way.

Thanks so much for sharing your tips!

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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.