Often quilts are all about the perfect fabric choice. That’s right this basic basket weave
with these ombre fabrics. I don’t think could be more attractive. I’m going to show
you how to do this super simple quilt. Let’s get started.
Vanessa and Co. added some confetti dots to their already fantastic palette of ombre fabrics
for Moda recently. And so that’s what we’re using today. I have an entire one of these
2 ½ inch jelly roll strips which features two strips of each of the 20 colors. I love
it, love it, love it. But I also am going to use the little honey bun, the 1 ½ inch
strip. And I used 1 ½ of these packets because I’m simply going to lay in strip set fashion
a skinny strip in between every wide strip. That’s all we need to do, right? So I’ve
got skinny, wide, skinny, wide, skinny. And it’s going to be super simple. But there’s
a couple of fun design engineering choices. Why don’t you join me at the design wall
and I’ll show you where we’re really heading today, right? So as you can see here at the
design wall I have gotten a head start on making our samples for today’s project.
But I just wanted to remind you what you’re looking at here, there are two of each and
every strip up on the wall already. And what I really did is I”ve unpacked them in the
order in which they were sent to me. So starting from the black all the way down to the yellow
strips that I have built. Maybe you can see them down here. We’re going to come back
to that in a second. What we’re going to do to make our first strip set rows is I want
to go ahead and take and make with both the exact same fabric. So these are the same piece
of fabric. I”m going to make a strip set row here. Again skinny, wide, skinny, wide
and so forth. And then I’m going to match this in its row to its companion fabric. So
we’re going to work on both of these colors right now. I”m going to grab these to head
over to the sewing machine to get started.
Now one of the things I often do is I like to organize myself. And I’m going to sew
all of our strips all in one direction. So what I really want you to be listening for
right now are some of the hopefully new tips and techniques I can be giving you which will
give you the ability to sew your strips all in one direction and end up with a fantastic
piece when you’re all done. My first thing I actually do when I start is I’m always
looking at the second piece of fabric so I’m grabbing the two of them as I’m going to
sew them in order. I’m always looking at my add on piece so right now, yes my larger
piece is on top of my smaller piece. But that’s ok because later on they’re going to add
up. I’m going to backstitch here. And I’m just going to go ahead and I’m going to
sew these at a nice medium pace. And then I stop and I reorganize. I’m constantly
making sure my fabrics are down here in a nice fashion. I often like to keep the weight
up here on the table. And I’ve also set my seam allowance to a shorter stitch length.
So a lot of times we have a digital machines that have a number like a 2.5, I would be
doing a 2.0. What I’m looking at is my edge guide and I have the peaks for the little
pinked edges, the tops of those are hitting right up against the edge guide which is giving
me a nice consistent seam allowance. And every time I need to readjust my hands I’m stopping
the machine to adjust. I’m stopping to adjust. And the reason I like to do this is if I start
with all my fabrics on one side and if I sew proper I’m not going to get a veer or a
curve. I’ve heard people recently call it a smile in my fabric. And what it does allow
me to is it maximizes the amount of fabric I’m using. So I should have pointed out
I’ve actually even left my selvedges on as I’m sewing. Now as I come to my ironing
station that’s the next key we’re going to need to do is as I prepare to press, the
piece that I was just looking at is still in the up position. And I”m going to take
and make sure my iron is nice and hot. And I”ve got kind of a steam function going
in here too. And now what I’m doing is I’m setting the iron and you can kind of see how
it’s kind of bulging right over that thread. So that’s actually setting that seam. And
then I’m just going to flatten that over and hit again like this. And then I’ve got
a little bit of a shorter ironing surface for myself so that I’ve got a nice cutting
space. So I’m just going to go ahead and move this down and do it again. And so far,
so good. I”ve got both pieces looking sharp.
Now we’re going to go ahead and this piece was sitting right here in my assembly. So
now as I line those selvedges up at the top again, as I was stating I’m now looking
at the add-on piece. I’m actually looking at the new piece. And the reason that’s
so important is I believe that as we build our quilt squares the weight to that square
or the weight of the strip sets or whatever we’re doing, it needs to ride on your feed
dogs, your feed teeth. So the heavier piece just like when you’re going through the
airport and your luggage, the heavier piece should be below and your lighter piece of
fabric should be on the top. And I know I broke my rules in the first seam but those
were just two pieces coming together. Let’s go ahead and stop and reorganize a little
bit making sure. Another fun thing I like to do is in this hand I’ll have both of
my fingers kind of splitting over the fabrics and that allows them to be traveling together
without a stretch in this back area here. . Ok so I’m going to speed up the camera
work for you but not speed up my pace. We’re going to jump into caffeinated mode but that
doesn’t mean I’m going any faster. It just means it will look faster and I’ll
be back with all of this put together for you. Show you how nice it turned out. Ok so
let’s slow it down a little bit here. And I just again really wanted you to have the
confidence to know that you can sew all of your strips in one direction if you just take
a little bit of time and a little bit of fabric management. You’re going to get a really
nice crisp strip set row.
Now I want to explain the rest of the construction. So let’s go to the quilt first so you can
really see what we’re doing here. We’re going to be making squares. And with the squares
in this quilt here I just want you to see as we’re going across I’m actually using
both color families in like this yellow or in the peach or in the pink colorways. So
I’m going to have to make a whole other strip set to fill in here. And I’m also
really trying to focus on the dark fabrics generating the dark from the center out. And
having the lighter on the edges and the dark in the middle which is kind of unlike what
I normally do. So in order to do that we’re going to need to cut squares. And in cutting
the squares as I looked at my fabric here because I wanted the dark focus, I wanted
the ability to use the wonderful confetti dots which are more on the edges, I’m going
to cut each strip starting at the selvedge. Now what you need to do is you need to measure
your strips from bottom to top in whatever this distance is is the size you’re going
to make your squares. Now mine are all measured at 7 ¾ and yours should be pretty darn close
as well. And the next thing I’ve done, I”m not even sure if you can see it here. But
with a dry erase marker I’ve already marked just on the other side of my 7 ¾ line so
that while I’m using that line later on I continually make the same cuts because I
do not have extra fabric the way I made my strips so if I make a mistake in my cutting
size it’s going to be an issue. So I’m going to slow down and focus. I”m going
to trim off this first edge right there. Now that that’s been trimmed I”m going to
rotate it over. And then now I’ve got my line that is just past the 7 ¾ because I’m
cutting 7 ¾. And I’m also looking at the lines here in my strip sets to make a really
nice and square cut. So I’m going to cut one here. And because of that dark coloring
format is important I’m going to keep them in the same order. I’m going to slide that
down. I’m using that same line for my success there. Making sure everything is lined up.
And I’m going to cut again. And just to reiterate, what we need to be able to do later
on is rotate those and have them be the same size. So this is a dark, dark edge over there,
dark edge over here. I’m going to now slide my strip set down. I want to trim this edge.
And again I’m just taking those selvedges off. So trimming that edge there. And then
I’m going to go ahead and spin this and I”m going to cut two more squares and I’m
going to talk about what happens in the center. And this is why I love having that line because
you’re going to make 20 strip sets, right? So you’re going to have a lot of pieces.
Still laying my dark on that far side. Ok.
Now the last little design element I want to talk about for you is something that you
can do but I didn’t do it in my quilt so this is where your creativity can go wild.
Look what you have here. You have one more square that’s a possibility but to make
it symmetrical I’m going to want to somehow find that square out of the center. So you
could trim off either side and create a fifth square out of each strip set. But for the
quilt I have behind, and I’m just going to cheat and check my notes, yes I’m correct.
It’s 58 by 74 inches. I’ve used four squares from each strip set. So I have this left over
for later for other projects or if you wanted to use borders or something like that. But
I just wanted two nice dark squares from each one stacked up here. And as a matter of fact
I’m going to run over to my design wall. And while I”m here I’m going to grab that
other strip set I made which was actually the lighter of the two families. And remember
the lightness and the darkness is really important in my work in this particular project. So
I”m going to come on back over here. And I going to go ahead and ask you to grab yourself
a quick cup of coffee while I take my time and cut down these squares proper. And I”ll
be back with everything to show you how to arrange them.
Oh boy that coffee is smelling good. I certainly hope you brought me a cup. That’s alright,
I won’t need it. It won’t take us long to get through the rest of the steps for construction.
Actually what I really want you to do is make all of your strip set rows first. Then cut
them all into squares. And keep them stacked up. And remember we’re using two different
pieces of fabric as a family. So I”m even keeping in my stack my lights on top of my
darks. But as I get ready to build a row I’m going to use four blocks from the lighter
version and the darker version of those families. And I’m going to show you, I’ve actually
already built this yellow row that you see across the top in the quilt so that you can
understand the way we’re going to manipulate. So please do all of your layout first before
you do any of your construction. So your design wall will just have these blocks all separate
still. Now what I was talking about earlier is I want the darkest fabrics in the middle
of my rows. And therefore I’m going to try to kind of keep all my lightest pieces of
each family on the edges. So this one here was my lightest of the families and the lightest
of that group. So now I’m going to bring it over here and I’m going to rotate it
into position so that my stripes are heading in opposite directions, right? And so here’s
my darker edge of the fabric pushing toward the light that way. And then I just kind of
work in a family. So this one is pointing up. This one was pointing up. So I”m going
to take this one here and I’m going to rotate it so it’s also going sideways.And here
this is the dark because it’s pointing towards the middle. And then on the opposite side
I”m going to do the same but now the dark is pointing back. So this is kind of the middle
here in the project. And then I move this one out to the edge but not to the far corner.
I don’t know if I should maybe move this if this will help us a little bit to see here
like that. So now as I get ready to drop in the next pieces of these families I come in
here and I look. And I can see oh my goodness, this is much lighter than this one. So I”m
going to bring it over here. And now it is running in opposite directions here and opposite
directions here. And that’s how we get our basket weave happening. . Drop this in. Dark
at the bottom. And then I”m going to take this one here, whoops that one goes out at
the further edge because it was the lighter of the two. And then this one goes in here.
So the darks in the bottom row. And again just build your entire design on your design
wall that way.
And it’s very simple assembly where I’ll just go ahead and take each and go ahead and
do a quarter inch seam allowance. Now be careful. You’re going to have you know your seams
heading one direction on one side. And then you have your nice flat pieces. But just keep
sewing block by block by block until you’ve created a row. Once your rows are all built
you’re going to sew your rows together to form up the quilt. And once the quilt is all
done as a quilt top at that point it’s a fantastic place for you to practice some of
your free motion machine quilting or if you’re like me and you were planning on the super
fast and easy side of the quilt project today, I actually shipped mine out to the MSQC and
I had them use their longarm quilting service. And they did this really fun champagne bubbles
all over it. And again you know I love the circular motifs on the straight line quilts.
Just to add a little more character and texture in the thing we love called textiles. Now
I hope you love the simplicity and the fun in this basic basket weave. You know me, I’m
always trying to stay one step ahead of you in the creative side right here at Man Sewing.
Thanks for being a Man Sewing fan. It’s great to have you out there encouraging me
to create fantastic new content. If you’ve missed any of the videos we’ve got links
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