Sulky, makers of decorative threads, stabilizers, and books. Sulky. Express yourself; fabriquilt. The fabric of inspiration; omnigrid. Providing quilters with specialty rulers and accessories for over twentyfive years; Quilters Club of america, offering patterns and videos to the passionate quilter. Hello, thanks for watching love of quilting. This is the 2100 series and we have a dynamic, exceptional quilt today. Lets take a look. Yes. This is beautiful for many reasons. We love it for all kinds of reasons. Its all flannel, so its a perfect guy quilt because guys love their flannel plaid shirts. They love flannel quilts. Were going to have to watch the cameramen today so that someone doesnt run off with it. They all commented on it. Part of the reason they liked it is the flannel. But to everyones eye its very appealing. All of those chevrons taking flight, going north with all the hexagons nestled together real tight like that. I think its unusual and it grabs your attention in a way that is really unique. Its got great graphic impact. It was made by kim cairns. Also, the quilter is nancy stovall. We always want to credit people because toppers like us really love our longarmers. Absolutely. Beautiful job. Lets take a look at a single block. Absolutely. Here it is. Unless you really were told, you would think it was a true hexagon, but its slightly elongated. It is. This block is perfect for paper piecing for a number of reasons. The special shape lends itself well to doing it in a paper piecing style. So very tidy and neat. They dont look that neat when theyre pieced, but then you trim it down and it looks great. Theres one thing i want to point out about the block thats very important. Part of the reason this design is so successful is because kim chose to keep a few things consistent. She kept the center of that chevron, that inverted triangle as youre looking at it triangle its supposed to be a triangle. I dont know why that came out that way. Its a little pyramid. The little guy always stays the same fabric. It always stays red and its consistent throughout all the chevrons she made. Whats also consistent is the brown that surrounds that center of the chevron. It is also always brown. So those three triangles, which actually start as squares, are consistent. Exactly. Then also, the very edge of the block is always red. Kim did vary the different red flannel prints that she used, but it is always red. Its those inner stripes that change a little bit. Everyone does have the lightest fabric goes after that little pyramid. Then theres randomness and theres unity. These are great design qualities that make a quilt from being ordinary to really outstanding. If you didnt keep a few things consistent like the center of these blocks, your eye would have no place to land. It would be very scrappy and probably be very beautiful and be well loved by anyone who got it, im sure but if youd really like to make a dynamic impact in your quilt, keeping the chaos organized is a really smart its almost a rule in certain ways. The eye needs a place to rest. So heres our pattern on lightweight. We printed it on our printer, lightweight paper. Before we get started piecing, were going to do some things that help us out. Im going to fold along these lines that are our first seams to help me when i position that number one piece. These pieces are numbered as any paper piecing pattern would be, in the order that you would add. This is number 1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. So were going around that first part, and then its back and forth side to side. One more thing i know we want to get going. As youre looking at your hexagon, you might notice it looks like thats one length of flannel. Thats another. Youve got a lot of different lengths of flannels, but in fact 5 and 6 7 and 8, 9 and 10 and 11 and 12 are all the same length. The same length strip just for easy cutting. We dont want to have you cutting 50 million different lengths of strips. Theyd be so close that wed mix them up. This is all in the pattern, which you can find at fonsandporter. Com, all the supplies youll need for any project we do on tv and all kinds of goodies are at fonsandporter. Com. It will tell you where to get the pattern. Im sorry i interrupted. No no, thats great. Its important to let people know where they can find stuff because its a lot more fun for everybody to watch the show knowing that they can find more information rather than trying to write it down. If i write something down i miss the next five things people say. Ive made these crease lines around my number one piece. That helps me know where to position. Im going to take this. If you will open our nifty glue stick. Sure thing. Done. That was easy. It went pretty fast. Im going to put a little dab of glue there. Can you close that for me now . Yes, i was able to do that. I dont know what id do without you. Youd have to open a glue stick yourself. I would. Im sure more than that. Now ive got this piece positioned and im going to add number two piece. Im going to fold this back on that fold line. Youre going to cut for me now . Yep. Ill position the ruler. You need your little glove, honey. Thanks. You need this over closer to you. Were going to trim that piece off. It was easy to cut it as a square, and now were customizing that piece so that we can add our patchwork really well. Our number two piece is the brown, so now i put them right sides together. Paper piecing, youre always putting right sides together. If you dont do a lot of paper piecing we dont do a ton of it either one of us it depends on the pattern. It depends on the pattern. Sometimes it feels like im learning paper piecing every time i do it because i dont do it that often. Just like in piecing, youre always putting right sides together. I dont know how else i would do this pattern. This is the way to do this pattern. I agree. I like how you talked about building it from the back. Once i put pieces right sides together then im going to sew it from the back. Im going to join the common seam, like our guest judy talked about our common seam between the two pieces. Im just going to reiterate so everybody is really clear while you are sewing. When youre paper piecing you shorten your stitch because youre going to be sewing through fabric and paper and you want to make sure it is Strong Enough so when you tear your paper away you wont tear your stitch or loosen your stitch. When we Start Talking about quilting the flannel thats what you would think. Well get to that later. Im going to open this out. Ive added piece number two. You turn this over. Now were going to trim this. Well, actually i want to do number three next. I want to fold between number 1 and number 3 because these are sidebyside. Trim that off. Im leaving my glove on. Youre my assistant. Theres so much trimming to be done. You have lots of scraps. I need the next little brown piece, 1, 2, 3. Thats really nice flannel. Were going to put a little dab of glue on this one, just because sometimes these pieces we dont something to flip around and wind up sewing one corner to the other. There are a lot of pieces in this block. You dont need to do that to every piece, right . Just down there. Now im going to sew this common seam thats between 1 and 3. I go just a couple stitches outside. I use my button to lower my presser foot. It just seems easier for me to use my hand on the lever to kind of fine tune the place where i want to be. I go a little bit past, cut my thread. If youve got an automatic thread cutter on your machine thats kind of the problem with some paper piecing you have all this thread management to deal with. Once you have a machine with a thread cutter its hard to go back. Now weve gotten 1, 2, 3, so number 4 is next. I want to fold here. Im going to add a couple more. Once we get to the point where its all the same after that, then we wont demonstrate the whole block. Im sure Everyone Wants to know how these blocks go together. Some of them might be frightened. We should have a drum roll. Setting. In. Setting in seams. A sort of Alfred Hitchcock suspense movie. Thats right. Youre good. Im ready. Here you go. Were also going to talk about some tips for working with flannel because flannel doesnt behave exactly the way cotton broadcloth behaves. So were going to give some great tips for that that will also be available at fonsandporter. Com. This is the next one. I panicked for a minute because i was thinking ahead to my first long piece. Thats what i always do when i paper piece. I panic that ive sewn something to the wrong side. You know what would happen if i did . Id take it out and redo it. It would not be that big of a deal. Unless you start slicing things apart. So there we go. Its great. It looks like that little warning symbol. The hazmat sign. Yeah, the hazmat sign. Now were ready for number 5. This is the way i like to do this. Just fold it back. I might have to pull out a little stitch or two. I just want to show these strips. All pretty low contrast within reason. Trim that off. You get to trim. Im behind. You were thinking ahead too. Because youre using your ruler and rotary cutter, youre cutting really accurate 1 4inch seams. The measuring has been done. Its not critical but it does keep things neat. Now you can put this piece on right sides together. I can see under there. Its not a bad idea to audition the piece. Flannel really clings nicely with those right sides together. We said the word audition at the exact same time, mom. We do more and more. Im turning into her and we have a mind meld. Youre so much better than i am. Not true. I love seeing you grow as a quilter. I think the thing it doesnt get much better than this to have your kid, you next of kin, your daughter become a quilter. I think what really ive got to cut that first. What really was the deciding factor was when you started working with designing your own quilts i had to make my quilts my own. Thats when i really caught the quilting bug. Thats when i made the quilts that i liked not the ones you necessarily liked. I think everybody thats a quilter wants to make their own quilt. So you add these pieces. Our next piece would be number 6. We would come over here and fold just like we have get rid of that stuff especially with this flannel. You dont want this extra thick material under there. When paper piecing first started we hadnt learned these little tricks. So carol doak and others who are experts in paper piecing have come up with ways to streamline the method, streamline the cutting, make the result better. So lets pull in that stack that shows the progression. So youre trimming duties are over for the moment, but not completely. Im ready to jump back in. Do we want to go through just to kind of review because it never hurts to make a review. Heres piece 1 and 2. Then we have that little pyramid. Then we put the gray. This is the last piece i added and this would be the next one. This is called the tepee stage. The chevron begins to sort of show. This was the next piece and then the next one. This would get trimmed off before the next piece went on. Its just building, building until we get to here. Now we want to take these away because the block is finished. This i think is probably the magic moment with a paper piece block because you finish it and youre not really that excited about it. It doesnt look so great. Its going to in, like, 30 seconds. If youve ever made a string quilt thats usually foundation pieced or paper pieced then you have this monster of scraps and it doesnt look like anything. But when you trim it, its like the voila reveal moment. Its really easy to trim a block like this because in our case you have a colored pattern. Mary, youre going to trim 1 4 inch away. What you want to do is 1 4 inch from that colored line. I think im about there. Youre just going to trim fabric off in that case. Sometimes youre trimming through paper and sometimes paper and fabric. Im going to give you plenty of room. This is a good time to mention we were talking about one of the tips for flannel that well get to is talking about your needle how you should begin a flannel project with a new needle because flannel is thicker and your needle will need to be nice and sharp. I was saying for this project you might want to make sure you have needles on hand to change out. Youll see when we start joining these blocks together there are times when youll be sewing through two layers of flannel and two layers of paper. Two layers of paper. That paper is really every block we could count how many pieces of theres 12 pieces of fabric, so theres going to be a seam every time you add. So youre sewing through paper all the time. Ive heard some piecers change their needle out every four or five hours of sewing. Im not that good. I think i change my needle more than you do. I get paranoid. I change it for a new project. What were going to do were going to join two. Im going to keep the paper on take it to the machine, and actually start sewing, not at that corner because we want to leave the seams open. So im going to start a little ways away sew into the corner pivot on the corner go back over here, stop on the corner and sew out. How far do you start in . Half an inch . Less than half an inch. So presser foot down, fine tune the positioning get my hands out of the way so our camera can see. Im going to sew into that corner, stop. Raise my presser foot down, keep my needle down, turn it around, presser foot down. So im making a really secure corner. I can go a little faster. Youre right, lots of layers. Its neat that line is there to help you to know exactly where youre supposed to sew. I turned around at that corner and come out a little bit. You could backstitch too, right . You could but its easier to drive. Its like backing up a car. So now ive joined these two but my seams are open. If you are making this quilt like kims, i think we counted theres like ten or so blocks in a line alternated with 11 because you chop off the half blocks. You make full blocks and chop them off later. Because weve left these seams open, what im going to do is i want to join this seam and this seam and it would go on in a quilt. Im going to put these together, and im going to do the same thing i did before. Youre not pinning. Im not pinning. With all this paper under here, its not whooshing around. Thats a technical term. Im going to sew to the corner, raise my presser foot. I can see how once you get a whole big patch going its kind of hard to handle. You could do it in sections. I think i would. Ultimately youre going to have im not going to say yes. Id have to examine that. Im going to ask our floor producer. Shes nodding her head saying you probably could work in sections. One more stitch raise the presser foot, come around, lower the presser for a couple more stitches. Youre going to be amazed everybody, at this. So now ive joined that. Now i can bend this over and join this. Im going to join this one; i think weve got time. Setin seams really arent scary. You just have to do a few. Im kind of digging this. Stitch, stitch, stitch into the corner. Presser foot up. Making the quilt, you have a lot to run around under the free arm. Thats why im saying working in smaller sections and then joining those might be a good idea. Read the instructions. Read the instructions and follow the pattern and maybe youll find you like another way. As soon as i reach the magic moment we just have enough time to go over those flannel tips. I could do this all on the front of my machine. Look how easy that was. Now the next one do i have time to do the next one. Why dont you talk about flannel tips while i sew this last one. This next one im going to do the same thing. Ill try to talk too while i finish this last seam. Theres lots of tips for working with flannel effectively. One of the first things you should know this is a great debate among quilters is whether or not you prewash fabric in general. Some quilters are in the camp that they prewash everything before they begin cutting and piecing. Some never do and they all have their reasons for that. I do not. You do not and i do not either. Youve been primarily my teacher and you usually do what your teachers taught you. But when it comes to flannel, there are more quilters who might be in the camp of yes, you should prewash. That doesnt mean that everybody does. When youre working with high quality fabric whether its cotton or flannel, you probably dont have to. If its really great quality flannel you may not need to. But flannel does tend to shrink quite a bit if its a lesser quality, and it does tend to fray when you are working with it. So some quilters do like to prewash. Thats one tip. Ive got this done. We have a cheat sheet because we wanted to be sure to remember everything. If you do prewash you might need extra fabric because flannel is stretchy. Its going to shrink more. Its more loosely woven really is what it is. Also, you might notice that the flannels in this project by kim cairns kim kerns. I think its cairns. Kim cairns. Its all kind of low contrast. Theres not really any strong stripes. Flannel is stretchy and when you cut that flannel and theres a real dark line against a real light fabric its going to be really wavy. Another good tip for working with flannel is to pick patterns and projects that use quicker cutting and piecing techniques. Paper piecing is great. Using lots of templates and lots of marking, that can be tricky because youre handling that flannel a lot and it will stretch out more. Especially a diamond or something. If you were marking around a template, your pencil would drag on it. Another thing you might want to do is use a lowloft batting once your quilt is made because flannel is thick already. Getting back to my little booboo earlier is that if youre machine quilting flannel thats when you might want a little larger stitch because that stitch will embed into the flannel and might just disappear into the nap. Into the nap of it. So really utility quilting with pearl cotton is a great way to go. For the rest of these tips, theyll be online. Before we go, lets take one more look at kims quilt, chasing chevrons. Those setting pieces on the side that brown just really frames the whole thing nicely. I think she did a wonderful job with this quilt. It might be for a man in your life and it might just be for you. Its a truly great quilt. Grab a pencil. Tips and other useful information coming up next. My first tip is from elaine davis from fairmount, illinois. She sent this so we could show it. This is to keep her sewing machine needles organized in pocket pages. These pages fit in a folder or three ring binder a report cover like this. The information she has punched in the back about know your needles. Then shes got little pieces of synthetic felt so that so you can see the needle package. Its great. I want her to come organize my closet shes probably a professional organizer, at least of needles. Very, very cool. This is a tip from tami whitehead. She lives in keokuk, iowa. She makes her own fussy cut templates using clear template material and colored card stock or an index card, if its large enough. She makes the cut size of the piece from the clear template material and cuts a frame from the card stock and glues them together. Shes got sturdy templates so she can see the design minus the seam allowance right through the template. Thats a great idea. This idea is great. This is from lisa von sneidern i may have it wrong; im sorry, lisa from tucson,