Paper Piecing Tutorial from a Amateur

I have decided that I am going to learn paper piecing. To make sure I know it well enough to do it I am going to teach it.  I will even show you what not to do.  To start off you need a block.  If your a beginner you want to start with something pretty easy.  I created a block Star Bright Block which is the motivation for the quilt I am making.  It is pretty easy and well is what I started with.

Step 1 Pick you pattern.  Using the attached PDF this block should finish as 6 1/2 inch I believe.

One thing I realized when doing my block is the order of the block.  I let EQ7 pick its own order, but I quickly learned that it would be easier to work from the center of the block out.  So I will be renumbering it with the first 2 in the middle then the next 2 moving out.  and the last 2 being the outside.

Step 2 Line up your first 2 fabrics.  You will want them nice sides together.  Then you will want to align them with the first line you plan to stitch. You can see the shadow of your fabric if you hold your paper up to the light.

Step 3  Sewing down the line.  You will want to start and end your line just before and after the line.  I did not back stitch at all and with going a little over each direction prevented the need for that.  I held my fabric together, but it would be acceptable to pin it in place.

Step 4 Trimming your block.  You will first want to fold your pattern down the line you sewed.  With the sewing line as your guide.  You will then want to trim your excess fabric and paper using your ruler.

Step 5 Iron your first 2 fabrics flat.

Step 6 For this block we need to add 5 more fabric pieces.  Starting at step 2 again repeat the process.  I learned on my first block that some fabrics are hard to see though and some practice is needed to get the next ones lined up.  Continue steps 2-6 for the next 4 pieces.

Step 7  Hopefully if you made it this far you have a block that looks somewhat like the block above.  Now that is not how we want the finished block so we now flip out papers over and trim.  Make sure you put your ruler on the 1/4 inch line so that there is the seam allowance left on the block to sew them all together when the blocks are all completed.

Step 8 Align your blocks for your finished quilt.  Here are a few suggestions.

OK, now for things not to do.  To start with make sure you know where your fabric is going.  When picking fabric pieces, make sure they are long and wide enough to fit the spot they need to cover.  My first try I started from the outside edge and worked in and learned the hard way that fabric needs to fit the block.  Not the block fit the fabric.  It is hard to see from the pictures, but my fabric did not cover the tip of my block. Good thing was this was the first block that I tried and I learned from my mistakes.  For the 2 middle pieces I started with 9 inch strip that was 2 1/4 wide. The next 2 strips, I used 8 and 7 inch strips both with 2 3/4 width.  It wasted more fabric, but caused much less frustration in the end.

As I hate wasting fabric, I ended up using my scraps to make a piece of fabric, that I will use on a hot pad some time later this year.  If you like or hate or think something is missing in my tutorial let me know.  Also if you have a favorite tutorial, please put it in the comments and I will check it out.  It is a new adventure for me to paper piece.

Check out this post to see what my plans for these blocks are.  I will post more of the blocks as I get them done.

Making a Rag Quilt Tutorial & Giveaway

Making a rag quilt involves planning just like any patchwork quilt. It can be simple and involve two fabrics on the front, one fabric for back and a layer in between. If you are using more than 3 fabrics, it is generally more time consuming. Figure out the approximate size you would like your finished quilt. I generally start with 6 inch squares for baby or lap size quilts. This will make about a 5 inch square once sewn together, but before washing. For a baby rag quilt I like to do 8 squares wide by 8 squares long. This will give a finished size of 36-37 in both directions. This will vary slightly depending on your seam allowance and fabric shrinking. Flannel will shrink more than cotton. Planning for fabric varies some. I can get between 30 to 36 squares out of a yard of most fabric. I have lucked out a time or two and got 42. I used about 1 2/3 yards of fabric for each of front, center and back.

Choose your fabric. I like the softness of flannel, but cotton is more durable. I have been told homespun works great, but have not tried it yet. I personally didn't like putting minky in a rag quilt, it stretches a lot different than flannel or cotton. It is more difficult to use, but it also looks great. Decide what you are going to do for the batting. I have used a polyester (which I hated), cotton batting or cotton/polyester blend or a third layer of flannel. I personally find a layer of flannel the easiest to use. Some of it depends on what I have on hand. Batting in the center is a great way to use of up smaller scraps from other quilts or projects.

For this demonstration I am going to use three layers of flannel, two different fabrics on top, and one solid on the back. I will also show pictures of cotton batting being used. I am going to make a baby quilt 8 squares by 8 squares. This means I will need 64 squares for back, 32 of both fabrics for front and 64 squares of flannel for center or 64 5 in squares of batting.

Pre-cut all fabric and batting with rotary cutter. I guess you could use scissors, but a lot more time consuming. If you are using batting, plan for a ½ in seam allowance on each side. This means you would subtract one inch from each square. If you are using 6 inch blocks, your batting would be 5 inches, and an 8 inch block would be 7 in of batting.

Once your fabric is cut and stacked neatly in rows you will begin making your quilt sandwiches. When I first started, I pinned all them together like this. Over time I found that I could assemble as I go and just hold corners together. It is completely up to you. You will use a straight stitch on your sewing machine. A walking foot is useful, but not completely necessary. I don't use one. Sew from corner to corner diagonally. Sew many squares in one direction, and then cut apart squares and sew in the other direction to finish up x.

Once squares are assembled you will start sewing together squares into rows. If you have an extension table or your machine is even with your surface, it is easier to sew, but not necessary. Put two squares together with the back fabric touching. You will use a ½ inch seam allowance. If you do a little more you risk your batting showing on edge, a little less you won't have as fluffy of seams. The key is consistency. I have an issue with depth perception, and use a piece of tape on machine, to help line up. Continue sewing a square on the row until you reach your width. For my demonstration it is 8. Do this until all your rows are done.

Once rows are done sewing, you will start to pin rows together in two's, lining up the seams. You will sew each row to the next. For me it is easier to sew four sets of two rows together, just make sure you don't mess up your pattern and then combine into sets of four. I don't have a real powerful machine and end up feeling like I am wrestling an alligator. Once your rows are combined, you will sew around the outside edge at about ½ inch mark. I use a straight stitch, others have used a zig zag. You will probably want to give your machine a through cleaning at this point, especially if you used flannel.

Next comes the fun part, cutting up the seams. Warning, don't do this in clothes you are wearing out in public, unless you have a lint brush handy. You will get tons of threads/lint all over you. You want to cut close to seams without cutting them. I like to go between 2/3 and ¾ of the seam. You can fix cut seams, it just makes the process more difficult. Having proper scissors is really useful. I use Fiskars rag cutting scissors. They cost about 23 dollars at craft or fabric stores, a great item to use a 40% or 50% coupon on. The first rag quilt we made, we used regular scissors on, we cut many seams, over 6 on a twin and it took many hours to cut. The second one I bought a pair of scissors and they were spring loaded, but not strong enough to cut multiple layers of fabric. Then I decided to buy some heavy duty craft scissors, they work but you have to be careful and they take a lot more out of your hands. Anyway, I learned the hard way about having the proper tool. I cut all the seams in one direction and then start on the other direction. I save the outside edge for last. After it is cut you can shake it and then it is ready to wash. Many people take it to the laundromat, instead of the abuse your home washer and dryer will get. I have a front load washer, and make sure I clean out the seal after washing a rag quilt. I usually wash and dry on normal. After quilt is done washing, take it outside and shake off some of the lint, fabric, treads, etc., your dryer will thank you. Dry on low to medium heat and make sure to clean lint tray.

Good to use.

Not strong enough to cut through multiple layers.

Rag quilt are great for babies or kids that will get all sorts of stuff spilled on them. Washing just makes them more soft and cuddly.

If you would like to enter a drawing to win a pair of Fiskars rag cutting scissors leave a comment below telling me what your favorite unusual color combination is. This drawing will end 11/26/12.

How to link a button

I have been asked many times how to add a button to your blog or how to link a button.  I would like to share that with you today.  If you use blogger under layout you can add a Gadget to your site I like to use the HTML/JavaScript type because I then have a lot of control on how it displays.

If you add a new one or edit an existing one you will want to leave the title blank (Unless you really want a title on your button I do not like them) And you will past the code into content and hit save.

Now to go into some detail on what code to use. In my example I have

<center><a href="http://richardquilts.blogspot.com/p/civil-war-quilt-along.html"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBmUHzFTIYt5BYpu27HcDaP7Taj4UEANizBtUiYBY0vNTIS4g_94KjkxmuxXPh9Bfq9fP7eBiFTGBNARwj83J2_NxJzpcQBd6DjiOiuEzFTovcpcfRnvBpXwMAtHNO_-0E3AluJu9bTP0/s1600/button.png" width="125" /></a></center>

Let me explain some of the tags (us computer geeks call the blocks like <center> tags) the first one you will see says <center> all tags need a closing tag or at least you have to end it properly to make the browser happy you can end a tag in 2 ways the first is </center> with the slash at the start of a 2nd tag with the same name.  In my code you can see that center is wrapped around the outside of all my code.  That means that I want every thing between those tags centered.

Their are a ton of "Tags" that can be used in HTML (yes more geek talk. By the way that means "HyperText Markup Language" of course now I just showing off just pretend its a quilt) like all quilts you need a top and a bottom and you stuff stuff between that is what all these tags are.  See nothing scary.  For those adventures ones out their I suggest going to http://w3schools.com/html/default.asp to learn more about html you can do a lot of cool stuff to your blog with it like changing fonts and color etc but we will save those lessons for another day.

The next tag is a "A HREF" tag <a href="where to link">text or image to display</a>  Like the center their is a open and close of the tag.  This tag has a property href which tells the browser were to go when the text or image is clicked on.  between the open and close tag is what you want to be clickable it can be a single word or a whole page depending on what you want available to click.  there are extra properties that you can add to tags for the "A" tag the most useful is the target property. you can specify it like this <a href="where to link" target="_blank">text or image to display</a> what this does is the link when clicked instead of replacing the current page it opens the linking page in a new window.  This is helpful so people don't leave your site.

The last tag that I will talk about is the "IMG" tag.  <img src="url of picture" />  remember above I said their was 2 ways to end a tag the /> is the 2nd way to do it instead of having 2 separate tags your closing the same tag you opened in a single tag.  like the href tag you can add other properties to the img tag in my example i have width="125" this directive says resize the image to a width of 125px (more geek talk but its a good thing those px but not important for today)  when you have just a single width tag with out height tag the image will scale to the original image shape you can put both a height and width in but its not required.  if no height or width you will have the original image size which could be huge or small.

Last but not least you may want to make your code show up in a box that some one can copy and paste onto their site.

<textarea id="code-source" name="code-source" rows="4"> stuff in here </textarea>


How I use them Is I put one copy of the code on my page normally.  and then the code above and a copy of the same code that others can copy and past onto their site inside the text area.  Any way hope this was helpful.  Please feel free to email me any questions you might have.

<center><a href="http://richardquilts.blogspot.com/p/civil-war-quilt-along.html"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBmUHzFTIYt5BYpu27HcDaP7Taj4UEANizBtUiYBY0vNTIS4g_94KjkxmuxXPh9Bfq9fP7eBiFTGBNARwj83J2_NxJzpcQBd6DjiOiuEzFTovcpcfRnvBpXwMAtHNO_-0E3AluJu9bTP0/s1600/button.png" width="125" /></a></center>

Hope that this will be useful to some one out their.  By the way how do you like the color changes on the site.  My son was having fun let me know how you like the change.

Disappearing 16 Block Tutorial

 As any one that reads my blog knows when I have time I like to yack, and yack, and yack.  In one of my many conversations in blog land some one said something about Disappearing 16 Block. I love the Disappearing 9 block (used this on Dance of the Dragonfly) so I just had to figure out what this was.

Edit.  Originally this block came from http://happyquiltingmelissa.blogspot.com/ as part of a quilt along please follow that link for more details.

 Google being my friend I searched and Found a Tutorial from Sew We Quilt here is a link to her much better done tutorial but having the camera handy I took some pictures and you get a tutorial from me.  I decided to make my blocks 3 1/2 inches each (just got done doing a huge project in 2 1/2 and could not do that size again, or at least not for a while).

 My wife hates the Oranges, Bright Red's and Yellows I bought for my Last quilting project so while she is recovering from child birth, I went all out and I am making a bright orange quilt (or 3) I got a tad carried away cutting blocks.

 So being a good tutorial you need to figure out the proper number of blocks and cut out the proper amount of fabric.  This not being proper, I just kept cutting until Tanya walked into the room then I tried to hide the fabric while she just shrugged her shoulders.

 I do every thing in bulk so I took all of my fabric (have nearly 30 or so colors of fabricl).  I chain sewed every block to the one after (I shuffled kinda my fabric so that they are some what random)

 I then cut the pairs apart and sew those to each other to make rows of 4.

 I then Iron them flat and sewed 2 rows to each other.

 Then I sewed the sets of 2 rows to each other tell I now have blocks (lots of them) of 16 block's

 Then the trick to make things cool you simply take and cut the 16 block in half both directions to end up with 4 triangles.  At this point you can then mix and match the blocks.  You can sew them back together or you can sew them in other directions.

 I chose to take both 2 blocks (2 1/4 blocks) and sew them side to side to make a Diamond shaped block if turned right or left on the corners.

 But then my son Jared wandered by, so I got distracted and got Julia out to see if he could hold her again and show him how much she loves him.

 But as luck would have it Julia did not want to play my game and show her brother her love.  So she screamed instead.

More pictures of her here http://juliadawnhealey.blogspot.com/

 Distraction over here is 2 of the blocks I made.  You can see that I have yet to clipped the top left and bottom right corners.

 Now that my tutorial is over it was a beautiful day today out side and cleaned up the garden. (Well I made the kids clean the garden up they put all the dead plants from last year into the green waste trash can) And I got the Rototiller out of the garage and went to work tilling the garden.  To prove that I do more then just quilt I had Rebecca get a couple pictures of my work.  This is our garden and we try to plant between 20-40 tomato plants (we bottle the tomatoes) to make my fresh Spaghetti Sauce not that its time to start planting yet it should be back to 50 Sunday, its 80 today

 But we can plant some pea's and a few other things now.

 The Lawn Waste can was full (kids said they could not work any more lol) So I got Jared to help me out and pack it down some.

 It almost got hard to get him out.

 But he did finally get out.

 Dad though is now tired and had to take a short nap.  Here is Julia again trying to fall asleep before I could.

One last thing I got mail (after the nap). I was pleased to get this wonderful Pin Cushion that I won on the blog hop during st Patrick's' day.  It came from  Mary at http://www.hookedonneedles.com/  Now the wife and I are going for a short walk with Julia I wonder how far we will get before one of our neighbors come out and stop us to see the baby.