Sara introduces her special brand of creative chaos to a quilt called Quiet Reflection.

This quilt features Dresden plates, which we'll show with fusible appliqué as well as the traditional method, and Carolina Lilies, which get simplified with the quick fusible treatment.

From tips on applique placement to decoratively stitched embellishment.

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[Upbeat music] Hi.

You're watching the 48 season of Love of Quilting.

I'm Angela Huffman.

- And I'm Sara Gallegos.

Sara, you have brought a wall hanging that is just gorgeous.

Thank you.

- I can't wait to see how this goes together.

Yes, this is kind of one of my little, like, creative mess episodes where we've got a whole bunch of different pieces.

The quilt is called Quiet Reflection.

- It's beautiful.

And it's by Jenny K. Parks.

Yeah, she did a really nice job, and it's a lot of fusable templates.

So we've got a lot of like gluing and fusing and pasting and fun things to do.

So it felt a little bit more like an art project than just a regular - Yeah.

- sewing project.

And then of course, along the way I had to add a couple of little like improvisations.

- Nice.

Yeah.

So Jenny had used this really soft palette of like a modeled solid.

They're not totally solid fabrics, really pretty.

And I decided to make it a little bit more modern, so I stuck with a similar color palette, but I did like some really bold prints.

It's kind of fun to play with.

So what I've got here are just like it was.

It was just, a bundle of pre cuts and I needed four greens, four pinks, four blues.

So I just kind of went with like, what did I think looked nice kind of shading from light to dark.

So a few little rejects here that didn't quite make the cuts.

But it was a lot of fun.

And I've got lots of other things to do with these.

Right.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

So you just need your 12 fabrics, and then it's a lot of, fusing and trimming.

So the first thing that we're going to work on are the Dresdens.

And that is what drew me to this project, because I just love Dresden.

Yeah you're a dresden fan.

- I think they're so pretty.

Yeah.

They're just one of my favorites.

So a couple of different ways that we can attack all of those.

Dresden.

So the way that the instructions kind of have you do it is to take this little template and make sure that it is a one by one.

This page of the instructions did measure that, but I did have to resize the other.

And then I like to use just a little light box underneath.

And we're going to just trace that Dresden shape right onto our double sided fusible.

So this is a double sided paper.

So there's two two sheets of paper and then fusible in between okay.

And you're just using a permanent marker.

Yeah.

- So don't use a ballpoint pen or something like that.

You need a permanent marker to trace that sheet.

You definitely don't want to use a fuse A heat away either.

Right.

- Yeah.

Right.

You know, it would be a problem, right?

And I'm always looking for the pen that writes just the smoothest with the cleanest line.

And skinny.

- And skinny.

- Yeah.

A fine tip, because that's what's going to give me the most precise, results.

Now we're ready to.

We could cut this down a little bit.

And this light box has a cutting mat right on top of it, which is very, very helpful.

So I'm just going to kind of cut that down a bit.

And then I'm going to peel off the one side of paper.

And I want to make sure that I only get the paper and not the fusible.

There is a right in the wrong side, but it's still kind of shifts sometimes.

So I just make sure my sticky is staying with my marked line.

There we go.

And then we're going to press to our fabric.

So real simple.

And this is where if you had a heat away pen, your markings would disappear.

- You'd mark it and then be Right now.

- Where is the template again?

Then you would cry.

Just kidding.

You wouldn't cry.

Now we can cut that.

And this is where the cutting mat is helpful.

And you're just going to go around all four edges of that shape, trimming away the excess fabric.

And I've got a bunch already cut here.

So let's move ahead to those.

These are going to go on to a background square.

But there is a little something we need to keep in mind here.

So we're going to be fusing all of these Dresden's on and then stitching them later.

And then we've also got a piece of the quilt together.

And we want to make sure that they're not getting caught in the edges of the seam allowance.

So we want to position our Dresden so that they are leaving a gap of one quarter inch of the background fabric.

So one way that we can kind of do that is just to angle this right on the ruler.

So I'm going to line that up with a straight edge right.

Oh on the grid.

Yeah.

And we're going to shade them from dark to light.

So I can kind of see where that quarter inch line is.

So quarter inch would be there.

- Yeah.

And line up that first guy.

And then I'm going to jump ahead to my lightest and line that up if I can peel.

There we go.

So same concept I'm going to find the quarter inch.

And you can adjust the lighting on a lot of these cutting boards or excuse me these light boxes also to help you be able to really see it but see that.

So we've got a quarter of an inch on either side.

Then we can fill in our other two Dresdens.

I like how you positioned the lines on that fabric so that they're extending through the blade.

I tried to get them all going in the same direction.

Did you?

So they were all sort of vertical and not horizontal.

And so tell them why you repressed that.

Because that was important.

When I tried to peel this off.

The glue was sticking with the paper.

It was not coming with the fabric that one I can I can feel that sticky in there.

If you have that happen and it does sometimes just refuse it.

Maybe you didn't hold the iron down long enough when it was fused on in the first place.

This is also reposition-able.

So I've kind of like I've got a little lip there.

Do you see that.

So I'm just going to peel that off.

When I put this on I was looking down here.

What I really want to look at is the points of the Dresdens to kind of try to get a nice little V-shape there.

That's better.

So it's reposition-able.

It's sticky.

You can peel it back up until you iron it.

- Right.

Then youre stuck.

- Then its done.

- Then it's done.

Oh, the last one's going to fight me.

There we go.

And did you keep all of these in the same order each time?

As you did.

I did, I went kind of from light to dark.

And I did sort of have a little battle in my mind over my two blue shades.

Which one was darker and which one was lighter, and what I didn't want was the same print touching each other.

So I decided, even though you might feel that's a little bit darker, what do you think?

I don't know, you have a good eye.

- It is right on the edge.

Right?

- Yeah.

That was the hardest decision.

- Id probably have to get out my phone and take a picture.

- Yeah.

And in this case, I was like, you know what?

As long as we keep it consistent, it's fine.

- Yeah.

- Because they're so darn close.

So that's how I kind of made that choice.

They didn't have the matching prints touching.

So now that I'm satisfied with my positioning, I can fuse that in place.

And so depending on what fusible product you're using, there's going to be instructions on that product to tell you how long to heat it if it needs, some kind of damp cloth with it - Right.

In order to get it to set.

Yep.

- All that information is going to be on the product.

And those are, those are the that is the information I use when making my choices.

I want the one that's the easiest to work with.

Okay.

So there we have that.

Now we've got to make sets of eight.

So this is four little Dresdens that go in the corners.

But we're also going to have sets of eight that go on the sides.

And I decided to this is where I had one of my improvisations.

Okay.

- Okay.

- I like making Dresdens.

I would prefer to piece them than to cut and fuse all of them in this entire quilt.

So I decided for the next segment of this that I was going to create a template so that I could just sew the dresdens the more traditional way you can do it however you like, but I just really enjoy this process, so I wanted to do it this way.

So what I've done is I need to create a template.

This is a wedge shape.

So if you just extend the lines of that sort of short edge of the Dresden and then draw a straight line, you are creating the wedge that you need to be able to cut those out.

We also need to add a quarter of an inch seam allowance.

So you're also going to add a quarter inch on the side here.

So what I did was I took that exact measurement and I cut a piece of template plastic.

And on my template plastic I labeled the name of the quilt.

And I put just some fancy tape around the edges.

It's a quarter of an inch wide, so it gave me that extra quarter inch, and it helps me find it when it's laying on my table.

That's true.

Yeah.

- It's a really important step.

Yeah.

- Another option would be if you have a ruler, which because I love Dresdens, of course I do.

- You've got I have a ruler that gives me that exact size that I need.

Also, let's just get the lines out from behind us.

So you can really see here you can make Dresden wedges of all different sizes.

This is the size that we needed per the pattern in the template.

So that is the size that I cut my strips.

And then out of strips of fabric I just cut a whole bunch of these wedges.

Make sense.

- Yeah.

Make sense.

- Yeah.

And you only have to do it with the blues.

It's only at the blues that have Dresdens.

Okay.

So we'll put that back.

And then once you've got all of your little pieces and I'm going to leave this here because we are going to use it again in a little bit.

You take your little wedges and this is super duper easy.

Just fold it over itself, right sides together and stitch with a quick quarter inch seam.

Okay.

Down the short only.

- The short edge.

- Yeah.

And of course the the type of if you're going to use a ruler, it's a it's the right angle.

Right.

It's the right degree of the circle you're making.

- Yes.

With the blades of the Dresden plate is what you need.

And - This is a 22.5 degree.

Right.

- What a crazy number.

So this is where geometry comes into our quilting.

You're going to find 18 degree.

You're going to find 33 degree.

Anything that's you know 360 degrees is divisible by.

But 22.5 is what we got here.

Now that we've sewn that, we're going to turn it over itself to get our little point.

And I like to use a little tool.

You could use a skewer or a chopstick or a little stiletto, whatever works for you.

And that gives us our nice little point, nice and crisp.

And then we want to iron that.

When we iron this, we want to make sure, let's see here.

Can we see okay, now let's put the white behind it when we iron it, we want to make sure that that seam line is straight if it's crooked.

Do you see how I have kind of a wonky Dresden?

This side comes up a lot higher than this side.

Right.

- That's going to be really visible when we try to pieces together.

So you do want to try to make sure that you're keeping that fairly straight.

Try to keep my fingers out of the way there so that you've got a pretty even height for those two little points.

And that's going to make it really precise when you sew it together.

And are you opening those seams or trying to get those.

Seems to go to one side on the interior of that little tiny You can't.

Actually open it because of the tip.

Because the tip.

So you're just kind of like massaging it whichever way it wants to go.

Okay.

And you didn't trim that little tip down either?

No, I did not.

- Just flipped it right.

- No.

Did not need to see And then we get this really nice little Dresden wedge.

So pretty.

I love these.

- I know they're sweet.

These just make me really happy.

Okay, so then you need all of your shades of blue.

And it's this is where that little point comes in.

We need to make sure that we line up those edges.

And then hopefully if I sewed these pretty straight, it's also going to match along the bottom.

Oh goodness.

Sigh of relief it matches.

So then just a quarter inch seam.

- Okay.

And so you I do need to be careful about having them stacked together.

So that they - You do want them stacked together and keep those little peaks together.

Because it is going to show when you open it up.

If one is higher than the other, you will see that especially with this bright white background.

So I just saw them together in sets of two, and this was like a speed piecing thing while sitting at my machines.

Two by two.

- Yeah and after you do, if you do pick up speed, don't you.

For sure.

Okay.

So if you sew that one too this is where I do press the seams open.

So I'm going to press this seam open now.

Is there a particular foot when you're dealing with little pieces like this that you would prefer or like if you have a integrated foot of a dual feet or something like that?

I still really like a quarter inch foot.

I don't typically prefer the type with the guide.

Personally, I know a lot of people like that, and sort of a blasphemous thing to say to quilters, right?

But I feel that sometimes my fabric bunches up against that guide and then I'm not exactly accurate.

And on this project, it's kind of important with these little with the angles that we have, you know, an eighth of an inch on all of these angles makes a big difference.

So I like to use the foot without the guide and just really keep an eye on the edge of that fabric.

And if my machine has got a an integrated walking foot, then by golly, I am using it.

Especially with machines that have nine millimeter wide stitches.

You kind of need that extra little helper in between the feed dogs to pull those fabrics through.

So then we would sew those together.

But again, I've pressed the seams open and we're going to do two sets of four so that we have.

This.

- Half of a circle.

- Half of a circle.

There you go.

Here comes the Which is why it's that 22.5 The geometry again.

Yes.

- Yeah.

Then we can position this on to our background.

Very helpful to just find the center of that triangle.

So I'm just going to kind of lay it over itself and really finger press.

And I could use this ruler underneath of it to put that fold right on one of the straight edges.

Just like so.

We're still a quarter of an inch inside the edge as well.

I'm not actually going to be because then I'll have a raw edge showing.

Okay.

So I'm going to align that right along the very edge.

And I've got my center seam going right up the center of that triangle.

And then I'll have a really nicely positioned, Dresden wedge.

And for this I would use like a nice flat pin that I can easily take out when it comes time to sew it into position.

So just a real nice flat pin.

And you're going to do several of these and then set them aside to sew them later.

So cool.

There's our dresdens.

- So pretty.

And now I just I love these little Dresdens.

Going to put these somewhere pretty because they're cute together.

Little bunnies.

- Yep.

Okay, so now we've got a lot more fusible appliqué to do.

There are two, other styles of blocks.

We have this guy which you'll see several times throughout the quilt.

Isn't that fun?

That's on my bucket list Sara is to do the Carolina lily.

That's what that would be called right?

The Carolina Lily.

That's a Carolina Lily.

You got it.

- Yeah.

So pretty.

Yeah, I actually did a quilt.

Gosh, forever ago, like ten years ago.

Cabins of Carolina, and it was log cabins and Carolina lilies where they were pieced.

This is the first time that I have done them Fusible method.

So that was a little bit different for me.

So for that we have to trace a lot of pieces.

And this is the one that I had to resize because in the instructions it was a little bit smaller than this one inch square.

So definitely check.

And even though one page was the right size to fit it into the instructions, the other was not.

So you want to double check?

And I left myself some notes.

You know that I need to do four of these total.

Okay, so just in that means I need three sets of leaves for each of the four blocks.

So just keep yourself some notes.

Then we're going to trace it all off.

Okay.

And these I found were a little bit easier to cut with the rotary cutter, just like I did with the Dresden templates.

But when it comes to the leaves and the trimming of the branches and such, these are going to be easier with a pair of scissors.

And I highly recommend a scissor that has a serrated edge.

So it's just a little bit textured.

There's a groove there.

- You can feel it with your nail - Yeah.

- Like a serrated knife.

Almost.

Yes, exactly.

And that's going to allow me to kind of go around that curve.

And I'm actually just sort of bending the fabric around as I'm closing the scissors within my hand to get a nice gentle curve.

Now, my markings are not perfect on my my tracing, but I'm not super worried about that because I can make it look more smooth when I cut it.

So I get a nice, nice, leaf there.

And talk about these dashed lines and how important those little dash lines are.

These refer to places where your, one fabric is going to go behind the other.

So we're actually overlapping.

So if we look at this, you'll see that the little tips here are behind the stems.

And on this one it's on top.

So just kind of pay attention to the orientation of that.

And then like if you don't get it perfect.

It's nature.

It's fine.

- Right.

Now the instructions do have you find the center points of the block to help you with positioning.

But what I like to do, because I have this light box is to just leave the template underneath of my fabric, and then I'm going to position my fabric over top of it, and I can see where to position my pieces.

I'm just going to give myself a center point.

And do you cut this background block the size it says.

Or do you oversize the background block and cut it down later?

I believe that I cut them to the exact same size.

However, if I were to do it again, I'd probably make it bigger because when we come in and add decorative stitching, you might find that it shrinks up a little bit.

So it's not a bad idea.

I just kind of cut it all out before I started sewing it.

So hindsight.

Yeah.

Good idea.

Okay, so we've got a little center line there.

That's where I'm putting the center of my fabric.

And then I can just scoot that over and I've got a nice way to line things up.

And then it's just like putting together a puzzle kind of.

Here.

You want to help me peel?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

And we're just going to make sure that our, glue stays on the fabric, so see that I can see my lines.

So you'd want to put the pieces that are behind other pieces obviously down first.

Correct.

Yeah.

So you could do your lilies first.

But actually it doesn't matter because it's reposition-able.

We're not actually going to iron yet.

We're just going to fuse stuff.

We're going to lay stuff down, make sure we're satisfied with our placement and then iron it so you you can but you don't have to.

So I can't remember which goes on top.

It looks like the petals go on top of the stem.

I have your left side.

- Beautiful.

And if yours are not exactly the same shape, like maybe you traced or cut a little bit differently, it doesn't matter because we're going to be taking that template out.

You're never going to see it, right?

So then you're just going to kind of keep adding your pieces on, okay, we got our little buds.

There you go.

- Okay.

Yeah.

- And I'll talk about this - If you can't get the paper off You can also score it.

- Score it with a little pin.

with the tip of a pin, a pin, not a pen.

- Or just hand it to your bestie.

- Or just just draw another one because you, like.

Okay.

He's not friends with me today.

- Oh, I love it.

So for these pieces here we have these four little diamond shapes.

And they need to be all four shades of pink.

So instead of trying to cut each of those diamond shapes and do them individually on the pink four shapes, four shades, I left it as a whole.

And then when I come in and cut this out, I'm getting enough for each of those little blades at the same time.

So there's one for that petal.

- Oh that's so smart.

Do you want me to peel it?

- Sure.

And here comes one for the second petal Oh and I can't remember the order.

So there's that guy.

- Of the pinks.

I have one to show you.

So we can just kind of pretend.

Okay.

- So.

Yeah.

So then you're going to do that for all four of your pinks and add your little green triangle base.

But we have one that's already done that.

Ta-da.

There it is.

Okay.

- Yeah.

- So pretty easy.

Then you're going to do the exact same thing for the secondary black and again, if you didn't get your, flowers in exactly the right angles, like, I can see here that my petals are not in the exact same angle.

Do we know?

No.

- We don't necessarily know.

- We don't know.

And is mine as perfect as Jenny Kay's?

No.

Hers is much more precise.

Her trimming all of her pieces are a little bit more precise.

I had an art teacher in high school that talked about how in nature, no two petals are uniform.

Occasionally we get repeats like you and your triplets, right?

Yeah.

- Like that's natural.

So if you have a repeat, it's okay, but it's not the norm, so it doesn't have to all be perfect, right?

So then for the secondary block again we've got little petals kind of going around.

I've got a couple more to add there, but we're going to let that go.

I have a very difficult time cutting circles.

- Yeah.

I think that's the hardest thing to cut.

So my die cutting machine had a circle templates.

This outer circle is larger than what it called for.

I just let it go.

Do you think it's a problem Angela?

I don't and circles are very very because the eye sees symmetry so well.

- Right.

Exactly.

As long as they're kind of centered on each other.

Now, I will say that the smaller size is too big because there are four stacked circles.

So I just used a little spool of thread.

Right.

Easy.

Trace a smaller size and that I feel more confident if I just need to go in and cut like one circle down.

I'm fine with that.

But I don't feel great about cutting all of the circles.

Okay.

And then that's just going to fuse right down into the same set of circles.

And you could window this so you could take out some of the excess, fusible.

If you didn't want those four stacked on top of each other.

Yeah.

Exactly.

All right.

So now that we've got all of our pieces fused and there's a little bit more sewing, we've got, you know, like those beautiful flying geese to put around the edges in the economy block in the corners.

But we're going to skip ahead to some stitching.

What do you think of that?

- All right.

Let's do it.

Okay.

So we'll just fuse that last little circle on.

And we are ready for some stitching.

All right.

So now we get to play with stitching.

You have a lot of different options.

You could do this by hand.

They even suggested needle turn.

But you know me I need to use a fun stitch on the machine and a cool foot.

So we've got actually a different foot on the machine now that has an open toe, so you wouldn't want to use your quarter inch foot for this.

And we've selected a blanket stitch, which is just a real traditional appliqué stitch.

So I was thinking maybe if you want to blanket stitch some of that stem.

But I do like with decorative stitching to always use just a little bit of stabilizer behind the fabric.

You will find this will stop a lot of puckering and make your blocks look a lot better.

This actually tears right off in the end so we can tear it off.

To get the stiffness out of it.

There are other versions that fuse on that could just live in the project and work really well too.

But there you go.

And you want me to do the stem?

You said.

- Sure.

- Okay.

And so the little, little beam of light will tell me where that needle is going to drop down.

It follows the needle position - Okay.

- As you stitch, and it is going to start in the spine of the blanket stitch.

Okay.

- Yeah.

And we have mirror imaged to blanket stitch so that the spine is on the right side.

And that way it's just going to stitch right down the edge of that little stem and then have that little bite into the stem.

And you could turn your machine speed down.

If you find that, as you travel down, it's just gone too darn fast.

Yeah, definitely.

Adjustable speed because you want to be able to stop quickly if you need to pivot.

So I've got the machine set so that every time Angela stops, that needle drops down.

The foot lifts up ever so slightly she can pivot around a curve.

I like to always try to get to know the stitch so that I'm pivoting on the spine of the stitch.

Not that little bite in because that can give you like a little V-shape, I guess.

And I'm also using a very, very small narrow blanket stitch.

So I adjusted it to about 2.5 ish both in the length and the width.

And that gives you just a smaller stitch and a little bit more control because you stop more frequently.

And I think I would have picked, a bright green thread Ooh.

That would be pretty.

and then changed out to the pink thread for the decorative stitching on the lily part.

That would be very pretty.

Okay, so I'm approaching where these two are on top of each other.

So would I go and come back up and come around?

You sure can.

You could if you can get that that straight spine to land right in that V, you could then pivot and head up the other direction.

All right.

Let's see.

- Bingo.

You got it.

- I think I did it.

All right.

- Nice.

- All right.

We get very excited for each other.

Look at that.

Yes.

And then turn it?

- Now turn it.

Yeah.

Look at.

That.

Good job.

Now would I be able to do that on the next block?

I don't know.

- I think you could.

You just did it once.

You're professional, you know.

And if you really get into it you can always like make a little adjustments to your stitch length as you go too to kind of cheat those corners.

That's like next level advanced appliqué stitching.

- Nice.

And I saw you, I put a nonstick needle in here as well to help it if it's going through that.

- Yeah.

Going through all that glue, it can kind of gum up.

So they do make a really nice nonstick or anti-glue needles.

And every once in a while you just get like this little cluster on the tip of the needle.

So I'll just take a little alcohol swab and run it down the needle.

Yeah.

- Oh my gosh.

So pretty.

- Yeah.

Very nice.

So this is where you get to play.

You could use a satin stitch or a straight stitch.

You could even get out a fun little thread that matches and do a little hand stitching if you like.

Sky's the limit.

- Sky's the limit.

Grab a pencil, tips and other useful information.

Coming up next.

Drucilla Pisarek of Cassidy, Michigan, has sent us a tip for no Y seam tumbling blocks.

- Oh I'm all about it.

because usually you've got a kno Right.

No Y seams.

Great.

- No Y seams, she says.

Cut out a triangle template half the size of the diamond with a quarter inch seam allowance added.

Use this triangle template to cut two white triangles for each block from the lightest fabric.

Then sew the triangles to the medium diamonds and the dark diamonds.

Creating rows is shown.

- Okay.

And then when you sew the rows together, you have created tumbling blocks with the no Y seams.

There it is.

- Isn't that pretty cool?

- That's very cool.

So.

- Keep adding more rows.

- Oh like that.

Yes.

- Rows and rows and rows and the rows make the tumbling blocks.

- Exactly.

Smart cookie.

This is from Mary, Bernauer from Maximo, Ohio.

She says, love, love, love your show.

Thank you.

Mary.

That's sweet.

After getting my leg twisted on the cord of the foot pedal.

Oh, no.

One time too many.

I put a hook on the cabinet to direct the cord away from my leg.

- Good.

Safety first.

- Make sense.

- Good idea.

Okay.

Another friend from Michigan here, Cindy Francisco of Goebbels, Michigan, sent this in and she said, hello quilting friends.

I came across these dental brushes and they worked perfectly.

And I love this for cleaning the lint and loose threads from her bobbin area.

She always keeps a couple in her sewing supplies and she says happy sewing to all!

I love that idea because you got it.

It's hard to get in between those feed dogs sometimes.

It is.

It is.

Very nice.

Please share your good ideas and quilting tips.

Send them to the address on your screen.

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The Bernina 990.

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Electric quilt making every quilt are a designer since 1991.

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