3D Quilting Session 5: 3D Flower Block

All right, now we've got our last 3D quilt top. And this one's a lot of fun. This is what I'm gonna call some fabric origami, 'cause it really starts with a lot of folding, and that is what's gonna create the pedals on our flower here. So you can see I've done it in a couple different sizes. We have our really little flowers, they have tiny little pedals, but they're still, they're just really perfect and precise there. And then we have a much larger one, and still it has the same folded effect. You can see, you can sort of pull it out and make these pedals pop out as much as you want. And they're just a really nice 3D element, a fun thing to add to a quilt top. So I'm gonna show you how to make this, these flowers anyway, and we're going to start with a square of fabric. What I'm gonna do... Get my iron over here ready. And we're going to start by making a couple folds to just sort of give us some fold lines that we will use to line up other things. And that'll make sense in just a sec. So what I'm gonna do is fold it in half this way, and I want to make sure that I am folding as precise as possible. I mean, I don't even want to be off just the slightest bit. I want to make sure I am trying to be absolutely perfect with this fold. And that of course starts with making sure you cut an absolutely perfect square. So make sure you're measuring, using your ruler, rotary cutter, cutting a nice perfect square, 'cause that's sort of where everything starts from and that will sort of set you up for success as we continue folding. So now I've just creased there and I have a line. I'm gonna open it up like this, and I can see my crease in there, and that's what I want. I'm going to rotate my square, fold it in half the other way. Again, making sure everything is nice and lined up, and I'm gonna press again. Now, I don't want to undo what I just pressed. So you can see I'm bringing my iron right up to that line, 'cause I don't want to press that flat, and then go on the other side and press there. Open it up, and I should have perfectly marked four quadrants. I can see my pressed lines. And now I'm ready to do some more folding. So what we have to do is fold all of our corners in, and our raw edges should be right along our folded marked lines, and our point should come right to the center. And I'm gonna give this a press. Okay, I have the steam on on this iron because I really want to get a nice, crisp fold on here. If you're afraid that the steam is going to burn your fingers, or you have an iron that just really puts out a bunch of steam, you can go ahead and turn that off. You really just want to make sure you're getting a nice, crisp fold and press on each of these sections. So I'm gonna go around and I am folding up all of my points, like so, all the way around. Getting everything lined up. Okay. Last one. And that one fits in there perfect. Okay, give that a press. And then I like to go ahead and just flip it over and press it one more time from this side too, making sure everything is nice and crisp around the edges. And see why it's starting to be a little bit like some origami with all the folding. I can't really crease it like we could paper, but we can still make sure everything is nice with our pressed iron. Now I can still see my lines right here. And what I really am looking for is where my center is, because what I want to do is fold these, this edge, this is a folded edge. So I have it turned over. This is, there are no raw edges on this side. This is the right side of our fabric. You can see we have our folded edges on the back. That's how you want this laid out. And we're going to fold up our edges just to the center. So my middle is matched up at the center. My edges are lined up along the edges. And I'm gonna press this. Undo it, and now you can see I have a line, my guideline right there. I'm gonna do the same thing with the top, bring it down right to the center. I have my edges marked up right along the edge. Gonna press. Open it up. I'm gonna rotate it, and do the exact same thing in the other direction. Now you might be thinking, well, why don't I just use a ruler, and I could just draw on here and make these lines and I wouldn't have to do all this folding and pressing? And you could do that if you were sure that your fabric marker or whatever you're using could come out and that what you were making is something that could be washed, because all of the raw edges will be enclosed. You shouldn't have to worry about anything coming undone, but I think that this sort of looks really like heirloomy when you're done and something that just looks nice and delicate. And so I didn't necessarily want to throw mine in the wash. So I'm making all of my marks with my iron versus drawing them on there. And when we get to the final folding step, which we're about to, it makes it a little bit easier to fold along a pressed crease than it does on just a drawn line. So I can set my iron away right now, because I have all the marks that I need. What I am going to need is a hand sewing needle and thread. And this is just, we're going to do some little tiny stitches to hold our little flower pedals in place. I'm gonna rotate this a little bit, because I'm gonna work on this section up here first. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take and bring both of these sides in at the same time towards the center, right like this. And you can see they meet up down here where my fingers are. And what I need to do is stitch these two sides of this fold together. So the easy way I think to do that is I'm going to pinch, I'm going to pinch right here, right like this, put this hand underneath and use my middle finger and thumb. So I have my middle finger on the back holding, just holding all my fabric layers, and I have my thumb. My thumbnail is holding down these two sections that I brought in to stitch. And I want to just do a couple little whip stitches to hold those in place. I have a knot in the end of this that I do want to go ahead and just hide on the back. And since this is a quilt block that will then be layered with batting and backing fabric, I don't care if my knot is on the back 'cause it will be covered up. So I'm gonna bring my needle up right by my thumb. And you can see I got my needle right between those two folded sections. I'm gonna bring it up. And all I'm gonna do is I'm going to stitch through both of them. So if you can see, I brought my needle right through just the very edge of both those folded pieces. Do a little whip stitch. And I'm gonna go ahead and just do one more, make sure it's nice and secure. If I was doing this for my final project, I would be using a color of thread that better matches the fabric. 'Cause, I mean, you might see this tiny little bit, you could play it off as that's just the center of your flower and you wanted it a different color, or you could use a color of thread that matched your fabric, so it blended in, you didn't see it. So I have that one done. I'm gonna do the exact same thing with these next two. So I'm folding it in. They come to the center. I have my two folded edges. I'm going to pinch it, pick it up, and use my middle finger to hold it in the back and my thumbnail to hold it here in the front. Now, what I want to do is take a little stitch to get over there, to get right in front of those pedals, so I'm lined up where I need to be. And I can put my thumbnail back right where it was to hold those in place and do the same thing. I'm gonna do a couple little stitches to hold those two folded edges together right like that. And move over to the next one. Same thing, bring our last side in. And you can see how with that one, it's almost like folding up a little wanton or something. We're gonna fold that side up, it even just lays right there, and now we just need to stitch the last two sections together. So, again, I can pinch it. Use my middle finger and thumb, hold it in place. Take a little stitch to move over to where I need to be. Make sure my two edges are lined up like that and take my little whip stitches. So you can see how having those folded creases in there made it much easier to fold along than if I had just drawn those lines in. There really wouldn't be anything for me to fold on. It would have been a little bit harder. So you can see I have my last one ready to go. Take a little stitch to get over where I need to be. And two more little stitches and we are done with this. One more. Op. See, now you don't want that to happen. See, when I was, I went too far into my folded edge. I want to be right along that edge right there. So you can see I took too big of a stitch. I didn't want to see that much of the thread, so I took it back. Now I need to just tie a knot in this to finish it off. So I'm gonna take it to the backside, and I'm just going to tie a knot. Again, I don't care if the knot's back here, because this, you won't be able to see it at all. So I just take a tiny little stitch in the fabric, and I have a loop here, bring my needle through the loop and pull tight. And I like to do that twice, then I know it's just nice and secure. I can make a loop, needle goes through the loop, and we have our knot. Go ahead and cut our thread. And let's get this back laying down. So you can see that this is what we sort of have when we're done. And this really doesn't look anything like a flower yet, but it will. So now this needs to be stitched into something else. So what I did was I put my flowers into a nine patch. It's all around the edge. I have a little flower in the middle, and you can see all my squares around the outside edge, and that's a nine patch. I then made a flower that was much larger, so it could be the centerpiece, and then that was just by itself. And then I made the nine patch around that. So you see the flowers kind of have to be stitched onto a surrounding block to form the pedal. And you'll see what I mean in just a sec. So this is what we have once we've got our little hand stitches done. And if we fold out all of those edges, our initial folded in points, you can see that, not taking into account all of our little flappy pedals here, we have just a block that can be stitched into a nine patch or whatever you want to use it for. So to make this a little bit easier to work with and how you want to position the pedals in order to stitch this onto something, you want to just fold the pedal back down on itself like this. And if they're just sitting up by this, if you kind of just push down on the top, you'll see that's kinda how they naturally want to go anyway. And this is how you want to fold your pedals in before you stitch this to anything else, because you would run a line of stitching right along here and that will help secure the edges of your pedal. So what I have done is made, went ahead and made the smaller version. And you can see this is very tiny compared to that. So that's why I made, again this is just a much larger flower. I just wanted you to be able to see the folding on a large scale where it would have been a little bit tricky to see this. But this is the size that I made for our finished project here. So I folded it the exact same way. Again, I made all of my crease lines. That's what I folded along. I created my pedals in the exact same way. And then I simply took and made my nine patch. So I had my flower in the center, and I just laid out all of my pieces. I stitched my three rows of three, and then I am left with this right here. Now you might be thinking this still doesn't really look like a flower, but this is where the fun part comes in. This is where you get to actually see the pedals come to life. So, again, I've already stitched everything. You can see what it looks like on the back. We've stitched across our folded edges here. Everything is nice and secure. So what I'm gonna do is take and peel back and fold over this little pedal, just like that. And you can see our little pedal is formed, and it's not gonna go anywhere, because it is secured, one, in a lot of folds, two, by all those little hand stitches we put in, and even, three, it's secured by that line of stitching that's holding our nine patch and all of our blocks together. So you just fold it, essentially we're turning it right side out. You can kind of fold under those sides. If you really want to make the pedal pop out a little more, give it a little tug and you see we have a nice, fun, little flower. Now with these little sized pedals, that's really all the more depth and dimension I can give them 'cause they're just so tiny that once I pull out on the pedal, it just sort of lays where it is, and I can't do a whole lot with that. If I bring this one back in, our much larger pedals, you can see how you have a lot more fabric there and a lot more give to how you want to design your pedal. So you could really pull this out and make really long pedals like this. You could even, you know, using your hand sewing needle, tack that down, maybe even applique some pedals or something that sink into the background and these just stand out on top. So the much larger your folded flower is the more give your pedals will have. And you can do a little bit extra when it comes to how you want those to sit on your fabric. But, as you can see, it's just a little bit of, people call it precision folding, 'cause you want to make sure you have all of your lines marked perfectly. And if you just take the time to do that, then when it comes to actually folding out your pedals, you can see how easy it was to form these really fun little folded flowers that I think look great in a piece like this, or you can add them to really any quilts you want and really just make something have a nice, fun a three-dimensional look. So I really hope you give these folded flowers a try. They're a lot of fun.