Hi, Iím Jenny, from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. We love our forums at the Missouri
Star, and a lot of women get on there and talk about lots of different things. One of
those women was Shellscraps. She had been over to Cozy Quilt Designs and seen a tutorial
of something they called tube quilting. Well I went over there and watched that and was
pretty excited about it, and wanted to try it myself. Her question was, could it be done
with a regular ruler? So, hereís what we did.
So, the first thing weíre going to do on this project, is cut two strips of contrasting
fabric 2 Ωî wide. So, this would be a great project for a Jelly Roll as well. So, weíve
done that, and then weíre going to sew them together using a ºî seam. OK, so weíre
going to sew these two strips together using a ºî, and weíll sew all the way down. OK,
so now we have your two strips all sewn together. You set your seam and then you press to the
dark side, always to the dark side. Open that up and these are cut the width of the fabric
by the way, 2 Ωî, width of the fabric, sewn end to end. OK, so now that we have these
ironed, and pressed, and open, weíre going to measure them and see how wide they are.
They should come out to be 4 Ωî if youíve sewn a ºî and these do! So, what we want
to do now is weíre going to cut an additional strip of fabric thatís 4 Ωî wide and this
will also be the width of the fabric. It should be a lighter contrasting color, you can see
that ours is beige, and it will pick up the red and green. So, when we put this together
youíre just going to be amazed at what happens.
So, now weíre going to lay this on top of eachother and we are going to sew both sides
of this ºî seam and make a tube. OK, so we place these right sides together and weíre
going to sew a ºî seam all the way down to enclose it. I know this sounds kind of
strange but we are doing is weíre making a tube. When you sew long seams like this
you want to be sure to change directions often so that your fabric doesnít bow. This is
only two seams so it wonít be bad at all, but if you sewed all your seams going in one
direction it would create a bow in the pattern. So, weíre just going to turn these around
and sew back down the other direction, with our sides matched up, ºî. So, here we are
at the end of our tube, letís just finish this up. There we go, all done. Now over to
the cutting table. So, you can see that this is a tube and weíll lay it out here. Weíre
going to use this Omnigrid ruler which is a 9 Ωî square I imagine you could do anyone
that has the fourty-five degree line on it, and thatís the line that will give us our
angles. So, you lay that line on your ºî seam, so, that we can make a cut here that
will give us the top point of our first cut. Now Iím left handed, so, Iím doing this
left handed and we will bring Natalie in to show you how to make a right handed cut, a
little bit down. So, the next thing we want to do is we want to slide this down here and
put it on the bottom seam line. See how easy that was? It makes a point and we make a cut.
Weíre going to slide it up, weíll move this out of here, see this is the block that you
get. Put it right along the seam line and we make another cut. This is going to be so
amazing when you see what happens when we open these up. Weíll finish cutting these
and really all we need is four for our demonstration. So, this will be the last one weíll cut,
before the magic begins! Alright, now we have four of these blocks and you can get four
more out of this tube. When you open them up this is what you get a little piece of
magic! Look at that. Now, whatís fun about this is because of the way theyíre cut the
entire center will be opposites and so what youíre making is a double hourglass, set
on point! How cool is that! Letís go over and iron
these so you can get an even better look. So, we set our seams and then weíll lift
them up, and press them over to make this lay flat.
I think if you had three of these blocks it would make the most darling table runner.
OK, so here we are back at the cutting table with our nice pressed block, and we lay them
out, and you can see once again that this is a double hour glass, set on point. Three
of these blocks with a little 3î sashing around them would make the most darling table
runner ever. Now weíre going to have Natalie show how to cut it from the right handed side,
because itís basically the same idea it just takes a little bit different angle. So, weíll
have her come over and show that.
Alright, the only difference between a left-handed and a right-handed cut is which side you start
on. So weíre going to do this from this side. Just the same as she did this before. Lining
the fourty-five degree angle line up with your seam, and making your cuts.
OK, so now that youíve seen the left-handed and the right-handed way. Letís see what
else we can do with these blocks besides the double hour glass. So, we figure we can put
them together, and make the double square. We could do something wild and crazy, and
line them up so they make a kind of chevron thing. We just never, I guess we can do all
kinds of things! So this is really a fun technique, and itís something youíll enjoy thatís
quick! So, out of three strips of fabric weíve been able to make two and a half blocks. And
it takes very little fabric to make this, and youíll have a table runner in no time
with this tube technique. We hope youíve enjoyed this from the Missouri Star Quilt
Company. Happy sewing!