Hey, it’s a cuddly, cozy day here at Man Sewing. I’m going to teach you how to make
this awesome Chenille and kind of rag quilt combo we’ve been playing with. We want to
do it for you in a couple of different ways and before I show you how to put the two different
kinds of blocks together, let me give you the rundown of supplies. So I started with
two of these awesome layer cakes. This is a Fairy Frost. It’s kind of a basic from
Michael Miller. This particular one is called It’s a Girl Thing. You can see by the colors
behind me, I think that’s a nice title. I also have backing on all of the blocks as
we go. So I used this smaller fairy. It’s a flower fairy print. And this one I used
two and a half yards of. And then for the variety of these, a, for the front I used
about ¾ of a yard of each of them. A couple of notions you’re going to need. Now, a
fun little, this is a plastic wire brush. I’m going to use this to tease the chenille.
I have a spray bottle handy. This ultra cool rotary cutter that’s made for chenille.
And the reason I say it’s made for chenille, it has this pad on the bottom. And with that
pad on the bottom, it’s going to allow me to slide it through the layers. A wash-a-way
marking pen. You may want to have some scissors in case you decide to do this manually but
after one block, you’ll decide to go out and get yourself a chenille cutter. I promise
you, I did. And then of course your basic sewing supplies. The machine, the iron, the
ruler and another cutter which I stashed back here in the SewMando Vest. Beautiful. Now
I’m ready to go.
Ok, so to get started, the first series of the blocks we’re going to make are the batted
blocks. And the batted blocks are just like a rag quilt. If you’ve done a rag quilt,
you know exactly what you’re doing here. And this is one of my final samples. Actually
it’s such a final sample that I ran out of fabric to show you on the sample in just
a second but you’ll be able to follow along, no problem. So I used my Flower Fairies as
the backing all of the blocks that you see on the quilt here. Let me see if I can get
you a nice show off there. However, I do think I forgot to tell you about the batting you’re
going to need to go inside. So if you’re using your scraps, just figure about 10 inches
for every block. They’re truly going to be cut down to about 9 ½ square though. Because
the fabrics are 10 inches. If you want to go out and grab a bag of batting, a baby bat
would be plenty to do the quilt the size of the one behind me.
So let’s get ourselves started. Like I said, we’re going to make one of these batted
blocks here. But I’m going to use, on my background, one of the larger flower fairies
as well. And so with that flower fairy, I’m going to set it down, and this is a directional
fabric so I want to really pay attention to which way the heads of all the fairies are
facing. Then I’m going to drop my batting in there. And then I’m going to lay on top
the next block just like yay. So that both of the heads of the fairies are facing up.
The easy way to do this is to pull out your ruler and make yourself a mark. But I’ll
tell you, I kind of cheated and I got to the point where I felt pretty comfortable to just
sew. So I’ll try to show you that trick. But if, if you’re not feeling confident
in your sewing today, just go ahead and make your marks. You’re going to want one going
in both directions. And I’m making them nice and light. And please, please, please,
test your wash-a-way tools and markers on anything you plan to use. I would hate to
tell you to use something that didn’t wash out. And every now and again, that can happen.
So just be real cautious. Once my markings are from corner to corner though, it’s real
easy. I’m just going to run over to my sewing machine here. And now this is my trick. My
needle is actually set in my center of my needle position. Or the center of the foot
position, however you want to say that. Then I grab my corner that I have and I basically
have it in my thumb and my finger, and I’m just kind of pointing my thumb at my needle.
And I’m just going to let the machine start to do the work. And I’m basically just steering
from the backseat like I always do when my wife’s driving anyways. So I just run it
right through. Easy as can be. And then I’m just going to do a quick rotation and do the
same thing on the other side for us.
You’re probably already doing the layout math behind me. So I have basically a checkerboard
quilt or every other block is going to be one of these batted blocks. And every other
block is going to be one of the chenille blocks. So in my 30 block quilt, I have 15 of these
and 15 of the chenille blocks, ok? And this is going to create a little bit of loft and
a little bit of pucker. This quilt here has already spent a little time in the washer
and dryer. So it’s already got some of the loft that’s starting to show through. We
want that to happen because there’s going to be no additional quilting that happens
in this project. So this is a quilt as you go, rag quilt. This is a done, finished piece,
basically already. So what I did to get myself warmed up is made all 15 of these, set them
aside. And got ready to start doing the chenille. Are you ready to do the chenille because this
is really cool. I’m telling you what.
These ones you may have not seen before so I’m going to try to slow it down a little
bit and make it easy. I’ve got my layer cakes. And remember I had two of these and
with these Michael Miller Fairy Frost layer cakes, you actually end up with, I think there’s
eight or ten different colors but there’s 42 pieces so there’s not an even count.
So what I first started doing was I just unpacked the layer cake and I laid them all across
a nice big design table and started seeing all the different colors I had developing.
And then as I saw that, then I started stacking them back up. And I’m going to make five
stacks of the Fairy Frost, excuse me, five fabrics in a stack of the Fairy Frost. You
need one stack for every block that you choose to make. And as I start stacking these back
up, it’s really important that you keep all of the print sides up as you go, right?
We’re going to keep all of the print up. And then as I put this in here, I’m going
to flip it over really quick and then on the back side, I’m actually going to put my
Flower Fairies again. So the Flower Fairies are on the back and they are now print side
down. So backing down. All my other prints are up. And there’s no batting whatsoever
in this. This is a finished piece as well. This is all quilt as you go. So you’re not
missing the batting at all. And then once you have this the way you’re going to do
it, we’re going to do our diagonal markings the same. But you only need one this time.
We’re just going from one corner. And then the stitch line becomes the marking for the
rest of the stitches.
Oh, it looks like that’s a little hard for us to see so let me show you another trick.
Let’s say you’re trying to mark some of your squares and your marking tool is not
working for you or the shades are just not right. You can take your piece of fabric,
you’ll only need to do it to the top one. Bring it right over here to your ironing board,
and then we’re going to give this a nice crease like yay. I’m just going to let that
sit and cool for a minute. I’ll, I’ll teach you this real quick trick because I
am stalling. Fabric has memory, so you want to let it sit in its place until it becomes
cool again and that way it will bond or stay in that position. Because if not, it will
go back to its last state. So fabric has memory meaning that it will go to the state it was
last cool. Now you can see that awesome stitch line. Makes life so easy there. And now we’re
just going to get into the machine for the stitching, right?
Just like I did before, I’ve got my needle at the corner. I’ve got that nice creased
or drawn line to follow. And I’m just going to go from tip to tip. Now this particular
set of sewing here, I’m going to do one stitch line and then what I chose to do, is
I kind found myself doing was kind of rotating the block or spinning the block 180 degrees.
And then I just put the stitch line along the edge of the presser foot here and I’m
going to make another series of stitch lines. So my stitch lines here. And I work, I’m
going to say, maybe seven, eight, long stitch lines on either side of the center and then
I just stayed on one side. It didn’t really matter. I didn’t see any real shifting.
These are going to be waffly, cuddly, curly blocks anyways so it is ok if we get little
bits of pucker or loft in our stitching. But basically I’m just going to sit here and
sew and sew and sew. You know this is one of those wonderful projects to have on hand,
as a matter of fact, if you like to just have something going in your studio at all times.
You could walk in a maybe stitch a block or two and then come back to it later. You don’t
have to stay too organized mentally for this project. You just kind of, it’s a lot of
little leg work here.
Ok, we’ve edited out all the commercials, but while we were on commercial break I did
all the stitching for you. And brought back a finished sample so you could see what happened.
Now this here has all the stitching. And I’ve actually already made a cut. Actually the
truth of the matter is when you see it in the blooper reel at the end, you’ll see
what really happened here. But we’re going to cut you a nice smooth cut here in a second.
But I want to show you, thinking backwards, get your mind really ready for this. This
is one of the blocks that I’ve been playing with a little bit. And you can start to see
through the layers here, let me see if I tip it and fold it like this. You can see in all
of those layers that I did not cut the bottom layer of Fairy Frost. And I certainly did
not cut through the backing fabric at all. So when I start to slide in my rotary tool,
here to make all of these nice cut lines as you see. I am sliding it through but I am
leaving it on top of the bottom two layers, the Flower Fairies and one Fairy Frost layer.
Now this cutting tool is really cool. It’s a little bit difficult to get it in motion
and once it’s in motion to keep it in motion is what I have found. But these are the tricks
I’ve found so far. The blade doesn’t seem to rotate like a normally rotary cutter does.
It’s got numbers on it so it’s adjustable. And I think that’s in case it starts to
get a dull spot. It has a two-part trigger for safety so I’m going to pull up and press
the little button in to help. And there’s different widths of feet for this. And you
want the width of foot that’s going to fit right in between your stitching lines here.
So basically I’m going to start by really carefully sliding this in between two layers
just like that’s what I want you to do. So slide it in there between those layers.
Make sure you’ve got the bottom two layers unattacked and then just slide. And so I’m
getting a lot of nice pressure here through my finger and I can kind of feel it in my
forearm. And that’s helping me make those cuts. So I’m going to try one more just
to show you it’s a lot easier than I made it look. And then we’ll move on. See just
like that. Whew! Ha ha! Now one of the keys to this is though, like I said earlier, this
has been washed and dried. But let’s say you don’t want to put it in the wash for
some reason. Or you want to kind of pre-curl or pre-chenille these blocks, the next thing
you can do, this is why we had our spray bottle handy. Is you can just basically just take
a little mist, not too much because you’re going to get everything wet around it. But
just a little misting. And then you can get one of these nice, now this is plastic, be
careful not to get one or use a wire version. And then what I do, is I just kind of go across
the grain of my chenille or my strips. And I’m just going to kind of tease it like
this. This also helps pull some of the fuzzy, fuzzies off. So after doing this to the entire
quilt that’s behind me, I had kind of fuzz everywhere which was kind of really fun. So
I’m just going to tease, and that moisture really helps. So we just tease and tease and
that starts to do its thing. A little more moisture going that way. And you’ll also
notice, I’m not teasing a ton around the outside edges because in just a moment, when
all your blocks are done and created, all you’re going to simply do, like I said,
this is quilt as you go. You are done, once it’s assembled.
So you would take your batted blocks like yay. And you’d take your chenille blocks.
Here we’ll just pretend here for a little bit longer. Slide this up. Slide that like
that. And this like this. So therefore, that’s going to be your layout. So let’s talk about
what this is going to happen here. Next thing I do is I check for my orientation of my ladies
or my fairies in there. I want to make sure that everyone’s head is up that way. I’m
going to go every other block is going to be a chenille, then a batted, then a chenille,
then a batted so to speak. And then when I go to sew these together, instead of sewing
them right sides together like that, I’m actually going to sew them backings together.
So when I stitch my backings together like that, that brings all of my seam allowances
up into the front of the quilt like a rag quilt would be.
Ok so just as an example, I’ve got them in my hand, let me take a moment and show
you how we’re going to sew these together. Just to reiterate, backing to backing. I’m
making sure my orientation is correct. And there’s one other thing I kind of want to
point out here. I’m going to keep the chenille on the up portion of the presser foot. And
some machines, if the foot gets too high, it starts to open up your tension and you
start to have poor tension or no tension at all which causes thread jams. So just make
sure that when your foot is down, you have tension on your thread. And here’s the test
for that. I’m going to go ahead and lower my presser foot, I’m grabbing the thread
from my needle and I still have full tension. So I’m very happy there. And now I just
going to begin doing basically a quarter inch seam allowance. Trying to keep my chenilles
laying flat as possible at that seam allowance. There we go. And then I’m just going to
start to assemble these as I go. Basically row by row. So the next stitch would be here.
Backings together. I can rotate this. Go to the machine. So it becomes just like chain
piecing all over again. So the last question you’re probably thinking to yourself right
now is, gosh, I wonder if he’s going to take the time and the soreness in his hand
to clip all of the those like he would if he was making a rag quilt. And the answer
is, absolutely not. We did not take the time to do that. We didn’t see where that would
be a real benefit. We can finish this on another time. So when we got into these sections here,
we found that there was so much curling and things going on, we did not find it necessary
to go ahead and clip like you did a rag quilt because you’re already getting the texture
from in the chenille. One of the last steps I like to do with this kind of thing is I’ll
just take my little scissors out, they didn’t give me a tension in cutting the chenille,
and I’ll go through and I’ll kind of get the clumps of thread and I’ll trim those
out. And one of the major reasons you’ll do that, is let’s say you’re going to
put this in with a baby or an infant, you know, we want to make sure we don’t have
a bunch of loose threads that can get things caught, wrapped around their fingers or what-not.
So do be careful if you’re thinking of that.
I got to tell you though. So fun. So easy. This chenille technique works for all kinds
of different projects. So you can take that method and carry it into your own creativity.
Make a real simple easy cuddly quilt like that. And then of course, we want to know
what you’re doing with your chenille. So enjoy the blooper reel. Send us your comments
and your photos of your chenille. And we’ll see you next time at Man Sewing.