3-D Bow Tie Tutorial

I do hope you can follow these instructions. It's not a hard block to make and there is only the initial cutting of squares to do. The rest is sewing and ironing.

Start with the size of square you want. Don't make them too small. These are 4 inch squares but you could use 3 inches or whatever. Cut two out of your background fabric and three out of your bow tie fabric.

Take one of your bow tie squares and fold it in half with the wrong sides together.

Position it on a background square matching the long side - with right sides facing.

 Now lay a bow tie fabric on top of both of them, with right sides facing...

so that you have sandwiched the folded square.

 And now pin and sew down the seam at 1/4". I sewed with white thread so if you cannot see it, please click on the photo to make it bigger.

One third of the stitching is now done. Take this to the ironing board...

and fold back the two squares to iron the seam. It's not important to iron the folded square flat but if this happens, don't worry about it.

Now take the two other squares and sandwich the other side of the folded square between them but...

reversing the sides but keeping right sides facing each other.

As you can see, the background piece that already got sewn is folded back and now...

sew the seam once again with 1/4". Now two thirds of your sewing is done.

 This is what your block should look like so far. Iron it once again as before. Someone once said it looks like a pair of pants. Notice that one side shows the background fabric and the other one shows the bow tie fabric.

Now take the middle square and open it up.

Match the two seams...

making sure that one seam goes one way while the other seam goes the opposite way. Pin them in place and then...

pull out the edges of the folded square.

Pin the folded square too. This helps to keep all the edges together.

One side being pinned.

Now do the same to the other side.

 Pinning really does help.

Now it's ready to be sewn. Just remember to take out the pins before you sew. It does look wonky but have no fear...

it will work out. Just iron it and you're done.

 Some assembly line work.

If you have any questions, just email me. This one started out with 4 inch cut squares and so it ends up 7.5 inches.

Update on quilting

The quilt boards got new fabric put on and the quilt went on the frame.

I have spent a few hours each day quilting it. I can't overdo it since the fingers under the frame get raw and sore. Sitting hunched over the frame is not good for the back either. I'm not in that much of a hurry to finish it.

I've rolled it a couple of times from both sides.

I decided to quilt an X through all the yellow rectangles.

This is my helpful lamp for those times when I need more illumination on the quilt to see exactly what I'm doing.

It takes a regular light bulb so it doesn't get overly hot and it has a fairly long reach.

I've had it for years and still managed to keep the original box.

For those of you curious about how a quilt gets put on a frame and how it is quilted, I did two posts in 2010 about it and you can see them here.

http://truebluecanadian.blogspot.ca/2010/09/how-to-quilt-old-fashioned-way-or.html

http://truebluecanadian.blogspot.ca/2010/11/how-to-quilt-old-fashioned-way-part-2.html

How to quilt the old fashioned way Part 2

Sorry it's taken so long to get to the end of my little demo.

 So, here's the quilt and this is as far as I could reach comfortably to quilt. As you can see, I have decided to just echo quilt the nine patch in the lower right corner. Now, I have to start rolling.

Before I can roll the quilt, I have to take out the pins along the side. The ones on the end (that hold the quilt to the board) stay put.

Both sets of pins have to come out but only as far as you are going to roll. By both sets I mean the pins holding the backing and the pins holding the top - and also from both sides.

All pins have been taken out.

Now the C-clamps have to come off the side you are about to roll.

When you are working on a bigger, full-sized quilt, it helps to have an extra pair of hands. This was not difficult because it really was a small quilt.

Now start to roll the board under - keeping the tension as even as you can.

Keep rolling.

This is as far as I can roll.

Put the C-clamps back on and keep on quilting. Normally, I would work from both ends and would therefore, roll the quilt from both ends toward the middle.

I didn't use any templates or rulers for the lines. I just eyeballed them. I didn't take any stitches out if they were too big, I just carried on.

And here it is all completed. Gee's Bend Revisited has been renamed Freedom. There was total freedom in putting all the pieces together and total freedom in the quilting. Once I took it off the frame, I couldn't believe the amount of quilting that was in it. Kind of overkill I thought.

And now on to the Champagne Quilters.

This is half of one of the plain blocks quilted. I wanted to wait to show you all the whole block quilted but since this is as far as Marg could reach to quilt and it now has to be turned. Therefore, the whole block will not be shown fully quilted - yet.

This is the little filler pattern that will be going into those odd spots that just need some quilting.

Here's the whole of one side totally channel quilted. Next week the other side should be finished. We have already taken two turns on both ends of the quilt so it seems to be going along nicely.


And lastly, not quilt related BUT, if you want to enter a wonderful giveaway, head on over to my very good friend at Soggibottom. It's a birthday celebration but I'm not saying for who/what and how old. Find out for yourself. Become a follower too, you won't be disappointed.

How to quilt the old fashioned way or Little Ron learns how to quilt

It was a question a while ago that has led to this post. Myra had seen a quilt that I showed here. She had not seen how a quilt on a frame gets quilted in the middle. With all the machine quilting being done these days, some of the new quilters may not realize that hand quilting a big quilt was, and is, easy. Some people who hand quilt prefer a hoop and I have used a hoop but I have also just basted a quilt (with lots of basting) and not used a hoop at all. Here, I will try to show just how easy it is to hand quilt on a frame. All you really need is 4 C-clamps and 4 boards 1" X 3". Two of the boards have to be longer than the length of your quilt and the other two have to be longer than the width. Oh yes, a staple gun is needed too along with some fabric strips.

Little Ron wanted to know what these boards were for since they were just lying in the corner of the computer/dining room. I told him they were quilt frame boards and that I wanted to put a quilt on a frame but I needed to see if I had the boards to fit. I hadn't realized that I had so many boards of various lengths. Here he is sitting on a couple of the boards. You can see that there is fabric stapled to the boards. The quilt backing and (hopefully) the quilt top too gets pinned to the fabric. Since it has to take a lot of pulling and tugging, the fabric should be doubled and should be a fairly tight weave. The floral fabric here is not necessarily a tight weave but it is a sturdy fabric and this particular board is not big.

While I am lucky enough to own a set of 'legs' for my quilt boards, you don't necessarily NEED them. You could sit the frame over the backs of 4 chairs. These particular legs were made by a wonderful man whose wife was a quilter and he used to sell the legs and oval frames (both with a stand and without) at quilt shows. I used to attend quilt shows with my friend Marg and she is the one who first got a set of these. They are fully adjustable. I am short and so I like the frame to sit shorter than other people like it.

Here are the boards sitting on the legs. There are grooves on the legs that doesn't show up in these photos. If anyone is interested, I can take a better photo.

A shot of the C-clamps holding the boards together so they don't slip away when pinning the backing on. The boards that sit on the top are the boards that get rolled in once you have quilted as far as you can reach. Most often, the ends that get rolled in are the top and bottom of the quilt.

Pin the backing fabric to the strips on the boards. Marg likes to make sure that the top fabric is pinned to the boards too so when pinning the backing on, pin it fairly close to the boards. Little Ron was testing the tautness of it.

Next, lay the batting on top. The quilt I decided to put on the frame is the "Gees Bend Revisited" and since it is fairly small and not going to be entered into a show, I pieced the batting. 

Then of course, comes the top. Here you can see that the quilt top is pinned to the fabric that is attached to the quilt frame. Once everything is pinned (from the middle outward) with quite a few pins, then you undo the C-clamps and tighten everything both ways - making sure you don't tear the fabric. 

And now it's ready to quilt. Normally, with a full-sized quilt, it would be quilted from the middle outward, but I had this idea in mind when I thought about how I was going to quilt this and so I started in the corner. You should leave about a quarter of an inch from the edge since the binding will be going on it after. I chose not to border this and I was going to use masking tape to keep the lines straight but then I figured I would just go for it and eyeball the lines.

And here's my mascot. He's better on the quilt than a cat would be. I just hope he isn't jumping on it when I'm not around. Once I have completed quilting across as far as I can reach, I will show you how to "take a turn."

PART TWO: http://truebluecanadian.blogspot.ca/2010/11/how-to-quilt-old-fashioned-way-part-2.html