Pre-Cuts Session 6: Bonus Project: Red Hot Hearts Quilt

Now that we've got all the theory out of the way, let's put it into practice. Let's have some fun, let's make a quilt. Today's project is called red hot hearts quilt. As you can tell, it's got red hot hearts on it. This was a little quilt that I designed for a kids quilting class that actually taught children how to sew. And we had so much fun with it. The kids were between eight and 12 years old and they actually, every child in the class completed this quilt in a day. So if they can do it, you can do it, garen-dara-nteed. This one was made with fat quarters and yardage. And it was quite simple to do. I had one, two, three, four, five strips that were two and a half inches wide and they actually were 10 and a half inches long is what I cut them to because I wanted to have a 10 inch finished block. By now you know the math, you know that the two and a half inch strips are going to work perfectly with your jelly rolls, but it's not gonna marry up with your layer cakes because the layer cake is only 10 inches. So we're going to use some of those math skills that we learned and do some modification to make this quilt work. So keep in mind, that with the original quilt, we just simply strip pieced five equivalents of a jelly roll. So we had five strips that were jelly roll size that were pieced together. Let me show you how I modified this. This is a drawing, one of my scratched out ones that I did a couple of minutes ago, of the pieced block using the jelly roll size strips. So if it was two and a half inch wide strips, once that block is pieced together, before it is sewn with the next block, your end strips would be two and a quarter inches wide because you don't have a seam here yet. The interior blocks or patches were two inches finished. So the finished block before it goes into the quilt is going to be 10 and a half inches wide. That is too big for our layer cake, which is 10. You're half an inch too big. So here's how I modified it. Well, before I show you that, let me show you two other options. You could take a half inch off your center one. It's gonna look shorter. It's gonna look like you didn't sew something right. It's gonna be noticeable enough if you take a half inch off one of these blocks when all the others are the same size. If you cut a quarter of an inch off the sides, it's gonna look like you cut a quarter of an inch off the sides, trust me. So that's not a good suggestion. You could take an eighth of an inch or less off of each one, but now you're making more work for yourself. I don't want using pre-cuts to be a lot of work. So here's what I did to keep the integrity of the design, but give it some possess and make it pre-cut friendly. I modified it so that we have two strips that will finish at two inches. The outer ones finish the same. And all I'm doing is taking one strip and cutting it into three pieces that will finish at half of an inch wide. If you do that, two and a quarter, two and a quarter, two, two, plus a half inch, half inch and a half inch, equals 10 inches. And then you would cut your length of your strips 10 inches. Let me show you how it looks. It really actually adds a lot of interest to the block. Now, the fun thing about this little quilt that we're gonna make today is that my granddaughters actually picked out all the fabric. They are four years old and two and a half, and they were up on my quilting table with all of my jelly rolls and scraps and whatever, picking out fabric and having a blast. So this is definitely kid-friendly here. And then I kind of helped them with arranging the colors together. Actually, I lied on that last or misspoke on that last portion there. I actually took one jelly roll strip and cut it into two pieces that we'll finish out at a half an inch. And then I took a different one for the center, which gave it even more interest. So you can see how this will finish out. It'll be very interesting. It's going to have the same feel, just a little more interest with the different size and with two more fabrics in there. And I think you'll see that this will work out, but I still am now able to use jelly rolls and now it will match up with the 10 inch layer cake. So give me just a second to get my machine set up and we'll be back and get this sewed and show you how this block is gonna look. As you recall, our pre-cuts, our precision cut, and what gives them that precision is the fact that they're done with computerated machinery. I want to have as perfectly pieced quilting as I can. So having pre-cuts is not enough, you need to take a few more steps. Even though these are 10 inch strips and I could probably sew them just fine, I tend to be old school. I find if I go ahead and take the extra couple seconds to pin, everything will finish nicely. Sometimes if you don't pin, you will find that your strips drift a little, or you are tending to tug on them, or just little things that happen. And then you have a block that is stretched or it doesn't match, and it's probably because you aren't taking the time to pin. I've got this pinned. Another tip that you can do that actually will help with your piecing is to take your iron and just give a quick press to the two pieces before you sew. And believe it or not, it kind of helps them stay together. They aren't gonna shift as much. I also wanna show you, today I'm working with a PFAFF performance icon machine. It's a lovely sewing machine. And to get the feet on and off, and this is pretty much true for most machines today, sometimes there's a little button that you press to release the foot, or you may just have to pop it off just like that. This was the basic sewing foot. And a PFAFF machine has a feature called integrated dual technology. The IDT system has been around for years. PFAFF is the one that invented it. And the patent is recently a few years ago expired. So we're starting to see similar designs on other machines. So if you have that, one thing you need to do is look at your foot. If it's straight across the back, you cannot engage the IDT. It won't go on. It'll keep hitting the back of the foot and it won't work. And when you aren't sewing with IDT engaged, then these are the type of feet that you wanna use. When you are sewing with the IDT, you're going to want to use the foot that has a cutout in the back. In this case, I'm using a quarter inch foot. The quarter inch foot, when I put it on, I want to put the edge of the foot against the edge of my fabric. So it will be riding along here, just like this. And there's the edge of my foot. And the distance between the edge of the foot and the needle, which is that center hole, is exactly a quarter of an inch. Now you may want to verify this on your machine, do a test seam and make sure it is a quarter of an inch. What can throw it off, maybe the thickness of your thread. If you using a thicker thread, the lower the number, the thicker the thread, if you're using say a 30 or 40 weight thread, you might find that it's throwing off that quarter of an inch. In that case, what I recommend people sew with is a 50 weight thread. It's a little bit finer, it's gonna help you maintain that perfect seam, believe it or not. And it will still be very strong. The inside of the foot right here, the inside of the right toe, if you will, is an eighth of an inch from the center where the needle is. So if for whatever reason you ever need to do an eighth of an inch, or do some top stitching, that's the ticket for nice even stitching there. All right, so I'm going to put this on. I simply come over here. And it just clips up just like that. Just step into position. Now, another reason why I like to use the IDT, it's similar to a walking foot, but it's actually better. With this engage on the bottom of this little lever there are some teeth, just like there's teeth on your feed dog. So now the layers are going through evenly, where before, they're going through kind of like this, they aren't even. The bottom one's being pulled the top one isn't. With IDT, the layers go through together. So you should start at the same place on your piecing. And when you get to the end, your edges should line up if everything goes right here, which it should. That's why that technology is nice. The other thing is as you're sewing do not pull as you go through the machine. Let the machine do the work, because if you start pulling, you're distorting your fabric, you're gonna get rippling, and again, you're losing your precision. Lots of little things to keep in mind, but they do make a difference in your quilting. So let's go ahead and I've got to get used to this machine. It doesn't have a lever on the back, everything is now electronic. So there's my foot down and we're ready to go. Notice I take my pins out before I come to them. That's something I harp on, but if you sew over your pins, there's a good chance that you will break a needle at the best case. At the worst case, you can throw off the timing, which is a rather expensive fix, or you could get injured with a needle flying back. So don't sew over pins. I know we've all done it, I'm as guilty as the next, but it really isn't worth it. And this machine has the joy of thread snips, where it actually will cut the thread for me, lift the presser foot and I don't have to do it. But believe me, any machine is going to do a beautiful job, a straight stitch machine, a fancy machine, they're all going to do just fine. So don't let the fact that you may have a different machine throw you off from quilting. Now, as soon as you're done with this piece, you know that we're gonna be putting on other pieces. It's tempting to want to do all of them at once and then press, but you're not gonna be as precise. Take your iron set the seam. It's an up and down movement. And when you press like that, it actually helps sync those stitches into the fabric so that it locks the seam, if you will. Then you're going to come and press to one side, pick side, any side in this case, it just doesn't matter. And then we're doing that kind of up and down movement and we're pressing from the top side. So now you've got this nicely pressed seam and we're gonna go to our next piece here. Again, we're gonna pin it. And make sure as you're pinning that your edges are lining up and even. I'm a professional long-arm quilter, and I can't tell you how many quilts I see from clients where the pinning has been off and the seam looks like this, so that you're barely getting one edge of fabric caught. This is not a good thing. It will pull out, you will have problems. Your front of your quilt won't have a nice even look and your precision is lost. So please take your time, make sure everything's lining up, give it that little quick press and then it's time to sew. If you have jelly rolls that have the zigzags to them like this one does, technically you want to sew to the outside edge of the zigzag, the farthest edge of it is where you wanna go for your quarter of an inch. There's no need to cut them off. Just use it as is. It actually will help prevent some of the raveling. So as you can see, the seams are coming out even top and bottom. We're going to give it a quick set. And let's see, we pressed it going in this direction. Like I said, everything's lining up nice and neatly so far. Give me a couple minutes to finish this up and we'll be right back. So here's our piece block. All the strips are sewed. I also wanted to point out to you that when I was stitching, I used a gray thread. I tend to use gray thread for all of my piecing. If I'm working with light fabrics, I use a lighter gray, if I'm working with dark fabrics, even black, I will use a dark gray. Gray blends in, and when you see the edges of your seam, it really doesn't show as much as other colors do. And it's very forgiving. You do not have to change thread to match what you're sewing by any means when it comes to quilting if it's within the seam. So just a little tip there for you. There's another way to do these blocks. You don't necessarily have to piece individual pieces. If you chose for your design, let's say that you wanted all four of the blocks that are pieced to look alike, you could certainly use your jelly roll strips and piece the length of the jelly roll, and then cut to size. If you're going to do that, I'm going to give you a couple of tips. First of all, you're going to want to lay pressure jelly roll strips, because they do tend to have some wrinkles being rolled up. Press them first, and then make sure they're the same length. Cut them all. Please just go with 40 inches, it's just so easy. The reason being is at the end here, you have selvages. A selvage is this tightly woven edge of the fabric. It doesn't ravel, it's very, very tight. And that's how we're able to accurately measure lengths of yardage. It also contains information in the selvage about the manufacturer, about this particular piece of fabric. There's codes in there for the manufacturer, as far as what colors were processed within the fabric, all kinds of stuff. You do not want to have that in your piecing because it's woven more tightly than the rest of the fabric, it will pull and distort. So regardless, you're gonna need to cut those off. So just go ahead and cut right to that 40 inch length for all of them. When you do, you're going to pin up the top, pin in the middle, pin at the other end, make sure you've got your ends matching first, pin the center, and then pin as needed throughout the strip. Press it just like we did the little one, sew it, come back and press your seam. When you get ready to do the next one, you're going to repeat the same way, but instead of sewing all the pieces from top to bottom, rotate your stitching direction, flip your piece and also so literally from what would have been the original bottom to the original top. So you're gonna go down one side, the next one you come up, the next one you're going down. What that does, is it prevents it from curving and distorting. It's a little trick, but it really makes the difference. Then when you're done and everything is pressed, go ahead and you can cut your jelly rolls strip pieced segment, your unit there into individual blocks that would then be the 10 inches in length. So that makes it a little bit easier for you. It will make sure that you've got good looking blocks. And by doing it that way, it is a little bit faster than piecing individual pieces. So if you're trying to make a real fast baby quilt, this is an option. If you'd rather do this when you make your quilt, feel free. It is your quilt and you need to be in control of your design choices. Now I wanna show you a little bit about applique. This is for the red heart blocks. I like to use Steam-A-Seam for applique. It's just so easy to work with. This is the Lite version. I like the Lite version because it will still be flexible and have a soft feel for your quilt. Some of the heavier ones it almost fuses like cardboard. So I really like Steam-A-Seam Lite. The Steam-A-Seam, and you wanna make sure that you are getting the two sided version. And I also like the pressure sensitive fusible web, and I'll show you why in a few minutes, it just makes it easy for placement. This is what the Steam-A-Seam looks like in the package. This is the reverse side. This is the side you're going to be working from. As you can see, it has a grid and this is where you're going to be drawing your design on. Let me show you how we do all that. So I've cut a piece out and you can use whatever you want for your applique pattern. If you want, you can cut free form hearts. You can use a pattern from a book. You can download clip art. I found a good old fashioned cookie cutter, makes a wonderful applique pattern. So just put it on your Steam-A-Seam. In fact, let me move this over so I have a hard surface. We're going to press down and just simply trace around it. You can use a pen, you can use a pencil. It really doesn't matter. Whatever makes you happy. Whatever's easiest for you to see. And I'm drawing this on the gridded size. And it looks like I missed a little bit there so I can put it back on and retrace that little area. Then you need to go make sugar cookies. So now that I've got that on, what I need to do is on the opposite side, I'm going to remove the backing. And this is the thing I really love about Steam-A-Seam, it is so easy to get this backing off. Some of them are a little bit harder. As you can see now that the backing's off, this is a fused web. It's literally just a web of fibers in there. And this has some sticky glue to it. When I say you can finger press, that's exactly what we're gonna do. We're gonna take our five inch square here, this is from our little charm pack, and we're gonna put it on here. Now, I like to line it up fairly even. In fact, for your hearts, you may even wanna cut this a little smaller than five inches so that you are sure that you're within the confines of the fabric. There is glue on this, and if it gets on your iron, it can be a little nasty. So I have finger pressed this to the back. It's not going anywhere for the moment. It's a temporary press. And then I just simply cut out on the lines with a sharp pair of scissors, my heart. Now this method is called raw edge applique. That's because we're leaving the edges raw. In traditional applique, you would be turning the edges underneath and then hand stitching the applique to your patch and then putting it into your quilt. And if you need to trim up the edge of your heart a little bit, 'cause it's a little too pointy or whatever, feel free. Just do whatever you need to do with your heart. So once we have the heart cut out, take your five inch charm background piece. What I like to do for centering purposes, you can either draw lines or you can just cheat like I do. Fold it in half and give it a press. Fold it in half and give it a press. And this'll come in handy for later. Now you have a center line for lining up your heart. You can actually kind of eyeball your heart and do the same thing. It's gonna be close. So at this point in time, now you're going to take off the other side of the backing. And you gotta be careful here because we need to make sure that the glue part stays with the fabric. See, sometimes you have to use your fingernails just a little bit there. So now you wanna make sure you've got glue on your fabric and you're just simply peeling that paper away. And now you're all set with your applique piece. We're going to line up our center marks, the center of the heart. Now the nice thing with this press to stick is that you can pull it up and reposition it if you need to. So I've got my centers lined up, and then you wanna smooth it out and finger press it. Now, make sure it's just how you want, because now we're going to press it down. And once it's pressed on, it's permanent. You can use either a press cloth or an applique sheet like I have here. You can use a piece of cheese cloth. Technically, you wanna get it just slightly damp. Obviously, you don't get this damp. And you're going to hold and steam, use some steam on this, and hold it for about eight to 10 seconds. Maybe even 10 to 15. It depends on the manufacturer. They're all different. So just because I'm doing it this way with the Steam-A-Seam, doesn't mean that's the proper method for a different brand. So be sure you read the instructions and follow them. And just like that, we've got our heart all fused. Now, I can still see my marks there, which is good. So this is my 10 inch layer cake. We're going to do the same little trick with that. You can mark it with an invisible or a disappearing ink marking pen, you can use chalk, you can use pins, whatever methods you like. I just find that doing the quick press is fast and easy. So this is ready to go. Now I have another piece in here that is already cut. And once again, we are going to remove our backing on the opposite side of the grid. Make sure that the material is staying on the gridded side. We're gonna line that up. Finger press down to the back of our red hot heart. Peel off the opposite backing. Once again, line it up. Finger press it on. If you're happy with it, leave it. If you're not go ahead and move it. You see the little strings, go ahead and trim those because you don't want those getting caught in your applique. It just won't look as professional. Got a little one in there. And it's easier to trim them now. And once you're happy with it, use your press sheet, cover it up and go ahead and steam it for five to 15 seconds. It may look like I'm running the iron over this. I'm actually just barely lifting it. It doesn't take much. And there you go, and we're all ready to applique. So give me a minute to change out the thread on my machine. We'll be right back and I'll give you some tips on appliqueing by machine. All right, now we're ready to applique our block. The first thing you need to do is take off your quarter inch foot. The quarter inch foot has a round hole for the needle. And so it can only accommodate a straight stitch. If you try and do an applique stitch with this on the first thing you will do is break a needle. You need to put on an applique foot. This particular machine because of the IDT has two different applique feet. Again, the IDT has the groove or the opening in the back and the applique foot is recognizable that it is a raised center. And that is so that the machine can go over the thicker thread smoothly and accommodate it while it is stitching. So you definitely want to put this on. There are different type of applique feet. My favorite, I don't have it here today. I should have brought it, and I didn't, is what they call an open toe applique foot. It looks just like this, except this plastic portion is out. It is completely open and you can really see what you're doing. This one has some marks which are nice for lining things up. I find it's a great foot for beginners, but once you feel comfortable, I think you'll find when you switch to that open toe applique foot, you'll really, really like it. And I use it for a lot of other things in my stitching. In fact, I use it a lot of times when I'm doing my binding by machine rather than hand stitching so I can see where I'm going. So that said, let's get our foot on. Engage the IDT. The reason I like to engage IDT, it just makes it that your applique will not pucker. It just keeps everything nice and neat. I normally would use a matching thread to do this, but so that you can see it better. I've put in a bright green thread. You won't be able to miss it. The other thing is, you don't have to use matching applique thread. If you want to make your applique stitches, part of your design element, and you're comfortable with your abilities, go ahead and use a contrasting thread. It'll really add a little bit of interest to your quilt. As far as stitches, there are several different ones that you can use. I'm going to quickly demonstrate the traditional one for you, which is a zigzag stitch. On mine, I used a blanket stitch. In fact, let me show you that. I tend to really like this blanket stitch. It does a straight stitch along the outside edge of the block or the patch, and then it comes in and just takes a little bite in there. It is a thicker stitch because it stitches over a couple of times. So it is visible and becomes another design element. If you want to have something that's not as noticeable, but a similar look use the blind hem stitch. To make it even less visible use clear monopoly thread. Not monofilament, monofilament tends to break. But monopoly is a soft thread and it appliques beautifully. I love to use it and it would give... Monopoly thread coupled with a blind hem stitch will actually make it look like your applique has been hand appliqued as opposed to machine. So those are the three stitches that are probably the most popular. When you do your applique, when you're doing your preparation with your fusible web, go ahead and make up just a little test piece. I just put the block on top of the outer fabric and then just put a couple of strips down. I wanted to mimic what the machine is going to have to sew on. And as you can see, I did a lot of test stitching here on several of these until I got exactly the stitch I wanted, the density I wanted and the length that I wanted. The length being how far in between the tips of the stitches, and the density being how close together they are. So let's just do a quick test here. Go ahead and adjust until you get that machine just where you want it. So you understand where your edge is. You want the needle to be at the edge of the piece being appliqued. Make sure it's being covered. Go ahead and feel free to adjust up or down however you need to. When you adjust the width, you will have to adjust where your needle is. The other option you have rather than adjusting the fabric under the needle, is simply to move that needle left or right as need be. With a zigzag stitch, you don't want it to be so tight that it's on top of each other. It is a satin stitch, but in a good applique, you wanna have a little bit of space between it like you have here. That will also help it not to pucker. If you get the stitches too tight, it is definitely gonna draw up and be very tight. It also won't have a nice drape to it when it's finished. So leave just a little bit of a gap, not too much, but just a little bit. On your piece, go ahead and get it where you want it. And then we're going to start stitching. What you're doing, especially with the round piece, you just kind of gently keep that fabric moving. You're guiding it, you're not pulling it. And I just gently, gently, gently move it around. You can go as slow or as fast as you like. I Find that I tend to go with a moderate rate at least till I get to the straightaways. You don't wanna go too fast or you won't be able to make your curves. Your stitches will get really wonky. That's another reason why I like the button hole stitch or the blind hem stitch better is because it's a little more forgiving. You don't see any blips in it like you might with the zigzag stitch. When you get to the tip of the heart at the top and the bottom, you are gonna have to kind of play with it to get it to go around just as you wish. Just play with it, it will come. If it's not perfect, it gives kind of a folksy look to it. At the end, you want to go ahead and tie it off and then go ahead and trim it. As you can see, that's fairly good. If you've got some places like this, where the fabric is showing through, and I did that on purpose so you can see what to do, you can very, very gently and you're gonna have to be real careful, pull it back and get a real sharp pair of scissors and get under there and just gently trim it. This is where if you use matching thread, it's a little more forgiving. The other option is instead of pressing it at this point and time, just leave this finger pressed until you get your stitching done, because then you can roll this back a little bit easier. So then you just go ahead and trim that up till you're happy. Again with a matching thread, it's a little more forgiving. It's also a little more forgiving with the other stitches. I find this one, even though it's the traditional one and the one that we typically use is beginners, I find it's a little more hard to work with and have it come out nicely. I wanna show you a couple tips here for doing the outer square. We're gonna start at the edge. We're gonna sew down. And when you get to the edge, stop it at the outer point, lift your needle up, pivot to 90 degrees, and then go ahead and you wanna make sure that it's coming the other way all the way across the corner to make a nice square, and then you'll continue on. I'm gonna take this out so you can see it. So you wanna get a nice pivot, a nice 90 degree corner. Don't cut your corner short when you pivot, make sure you're a full 90. All right, let me get my applique pieces together, and we're gonna put this quilt together, get the rows going and show you how cute this is gonna be. We'll be back in just one minute. For this particular row, it's the top row, I have a strip pieced block in the center with the two applique blocks on the outside. So I have it pinned and ready to go and we're just going to very quickly seam this up. Again, we have our quarter inch foot on and I've pinned it and pressed it and we are removing the pins as we sew. This is where it really starts getting fun and where this quilt starts flying together. Now, before I told you on your strip piece block that you had to press between each strip and that's because it was so close together for each of those seams. On this one, because the block seam is farther apart, I can go ahead and do two blocks before I have to go to the ironing board. In this case, it's not as big of a deal because my pressing block is right here. But if I didn't have a pressing pad and I had to go back and forth to the iron, it's always nicer to be a little efficient, be able to do more than one at a time. In fact, I could probably go ahead and do all three rows before I went to press. So we set the seam just like before. The nice part with this quilt is there are no seams to match. So you aren't gonna have any cross seams that you have to worry about. So you can literally press the seams in whatever direction you prefer. It honestly doesn't matter. I am just going ahead and pressing toward the darker fabric in this case. All right, once you have this together, you want to measure from edge to edge and see how long your unit is. At that point, you will cut a piece of sashing. And this will be from a a jelly roll strip. You will go ahead and cut it to that particular length. I've already done that. So now I simply have to pin my sashing on. And I am going to pin it so that my seams are facing up. So I start at one end, match the ends, start at the other end, match those. If it's a long piece, I usually will find the middle and put a pin there on each of them and then match the centers. On a short piece like this, and it's cut to size, it's just laying down nice and neatly for me so I don't have to do that. But I'll still pin in the center anyway. I like to pin where my seams are definitely so they don't flop back on me. There's quite a few seams here. I won't pin every one, but normally, I would look closely at which ones. On the plain block, I'm probably gonna have two pins in there. I know it seems like a lot of pinning, but you know, I'd rather pin than rip. If my sewing doesn't look right or it's coming out puckery, then that's what I'm gonna be doing. So I'd rather just take that extra minute and pin it and not have to worry about it. With the sashing, I can still go ahead and give it that little press just to set the two pieces of fabric together. Now, the reason I didn't give you a dimension for cutting your sashing is because everybody's piecing comes out just a touch differently, just slightly differently. So it's best to go ahead and measure and cut to that. If you have a difference between your rows, if all three blocks come out just a little bit differently, take the average and go ahead and adjust as long as it's not off by very much. That will help you get a more square quilt. So now it's time to sew this on. Don't sew over those pins even though you're in a hurry. You can, where your seams are, use a little pin and kind of hold it down. Another good tool, which I didn't bring with me today is a stiletto. A stiletto is a metal pick that is a little bit longer and works better than a pin. But in a pinch a pin will do. It is a very wonderful tool to have for that very reason. We're going to, as usual set the seam. And in this case, I tend to like to press toward the sashing. You won't get as much bulk where your seams are on your pieced blocks. However, that said, if you were going to be quilting this and doing any kind of ditch stitching on your sashing, it would be easier to ditch stitch in the sashing. In that case, I would press the opposite way. Ditch stitching is where you come along the edge of the seam line, right along here, and you stitch right next to it. It's a traditional way of quilting. And you want it to be in the ditch on the low side. This would be the high side, because you have the three layers of fabric, your two layers of seam, and then your block fabric or your sashing fabric and that makes the high side. For the best top stitching, again, you wanna go to the low side. So in this case, I would be ditch stitching the block, as opposed to the sashing. Little details, but you always have to be thinking ahead with quilting. So give me just a minute, I'm gonna go ahead and attach the rest of the quilt to this, and when I come back, I'm gonna show you how to do your borders. We basically have our quilt together. The body is all pieced we're down to the borders. I haven't turned this way because I'm going to do my side borders first. But I think you can see just how fun this little quilt is and how interesting it is, where the extra little strips put in there instead of just all the wide ones of the same width and how perfectly it fit with our layer cakes. So here we are, it's a jelly roll layer cake, charm cake quilt, and I think it's coming out fun. So the next step is going to be our borders. Start with your side borders, and you're going to measure from edge to edge. I've already done this. On my quilt it was 33 and a quarter. So I went ahead and cut two borders to that size. What I want you to do after you cut your borders, is take pin, bring the two ends together so that you can determine the middle of the border and then put a pin in there. And this is really what you would have done on your sashings too. I just wanna go ahead and really demonstrate this for you. After you do that, do the same thing with your piece top. Find the center, and you're just putting a pin right there to hold it. I like to put my flat pieces on the bottom. So I'm going to have my piece top going on top of the border. And that's because that way, I can see which direction my seams are going. First thing you do is match the two center pins, match them up. I don't take those pins out until I've got the other pin in there and I know for sure, it's good. Then you go down to your ends. If you have a very, very long quilt, especially if you're working with a queen or a king, I not only pin the center of the border and the quilt, I do several mid points on the quilt and on the border, and then match those so that I have a good even distribution. I don't want all my fabric ending up at one end of the quilt or the other, where it can again, distort and pull. It's a little things like that, that will make a huge difference in your quilt. Never, ever, ever just take a strip of fabric, sew it on, and whack it off. That is the surest recipe for wavy borders. And a quilt that is going like this, it looks like ocean waves on the side, that quilt will never, ever, ever lay flat. And that is a technique that a lot of people do and believe me, as a long arm quilter I see it quite a bit and I'm always encouraging my clients, please don't do this. Here's how you want to put on those borders. If you don't, you will never have a square quilt and it won't hang right. The other thing, is when you're cutting your borders, especially if it's going to be, oh, say I prefer it with all borders, but especially if the borders are gonna be more than about two and a half inches wide, three inches and above for sure, do not cut it on the cross screen and piece it. Buy the extra yardage and cut it on the length of the grain, parallel with the selvage, because that is the area of least stretch is your selvage edge. It does not stretch as much, and you will have straighter truer borders, and again, a quilt that hangs better. If you do have to piece it, and one reason you would is if you're using a directional print and you're coming down the sides, you may have to piece it because it will be longer than the 40 inch which with the fabric, please don't butt piece it where it's like this, where it's flat to each other. I want you to do the diagonal piece like this, like you do when you do binding. The reason is, it distributes the weight of the fabric along there and the sewing, and honest to Pete, it won't ripple as much. If it's a butt quilt, if you butt the pieces, there's always a little hump there where if you go on the diagonal it lessens it. Little trick of the trade, but it's gonna make a huge difference in making your quilts look that much more professional. All right, let me take a minute and sew on this border, and we'll be right back and I've got some tips for you on your next border. We're almost done. We're down to the last two borders, the top and bottom border. So this time now that our side borders are on and pressed, we're going to measure through the center all the way to the end of the borders, the side borders to get our measurement, and we will cut two borders to that measurement. In this case for mine, it was 35 and a quarter inches. You want to measure at the top and at the bottom, and also in the center. Sometimes quilts will tend to bow in a little bit at the center. Take the longest measurement, as long as it's only off by maybe a quarter of an inch, maybe just a touch more and fit the quilt to the borders. There's a little bit of given fabric and you can cheater it. And that's how you can get your quilt to be square. If your quilt is totally out of square, there's not a lot you can do. If you start trimming the quilt to make it square the top portion before you do the borders, it's going to affect your blocks and it may be very, very noticeable. About the only thing you can do at that time is either figure out why you got off so much and go back and try and fix it, or depending on your patience, your standards, your need for perfectionism, whatever, you may just choose to leave it. In that case, then go with the measurement at the top and the bottom, that's about all you can do. And hopefully, if you've taken the steps and taken your time all the way through, this should come out precisely at the tops and bottoms, and you'll have a nice square quilt. I did wanna mention that for all of the borders, I went ahead and used yardage and I cut these at three and a half inches. They'll finish at three inch wide borders. I did that because I wanted to give just a little more presence and weight to the borders without overpowering the quilt with my borders. I felt if I would've kept it the same width as the strips, it just wouldn't have had as much presence. It's kinda like a frame on a picture. However, you certainly can use a jelly roll strip and use those for your borders because this quilt is designed to be within that width of fabric. You should, it's going to be close, but you should be able to use the width of fabric for your backing, especially if you're quilting it under your own. If it's going to a long armor, we usually like four inches extra on either side and top and bottom in order to put it onto our machine, we need that extra space. In that case, you can take your with of fabric and just sew any leftover fabric to the ends, again, though, piece top and bottom and pin your middles or pin your top, bottom, and middles. And sew it so that it doesn't go wavy, but that at least gives your long armor just a little extra fabric to get it on the machine and still have enough to cover the quilt completely and have a little bit for the shrinkage. That was part of my idea in this design. Plus I just wanted it to be a nice small drag around quilt for children. I also wanted to say part of the reason why I went with the black was to pay homage to the first quilt that I did that had the black squares and it had the black sashing also. But in this case, I wanted to keep that because I had thought about doing all of the sashings and the borders the same, but I just honestly thought it was gonna be a little too busy. Sometimes our eye just needs a place to go, ah, and rest a little bit. It also is a nice place for some quilting to add interest and take center stage on the sides and top and bottom. All right, so let me go ahead. I'll get these borders on top and bottom. We'll come back and show you the product and give you a few last minute tips. I'll be right back. We're done. We've pieced our quilt top, and now it's ready for layering, quilting and binding, and you've still got a few hours in the day, so don't quit on me now. Here it is. It's cute as can be. Let me run it past so you can kinda see the whole quilt. And again, because of using pre-cuts, we were able to finish this in a very, very short amount of time. And it's cute as can be. Again, this is wonderful for a little baby quilt, for a wall hanging, a baby shower, drag around quilt for the preschooler or young school aged kid that they can have when they're in their reading corner. You name it, it's just a fun, little quilt, and I hope you'll enjoy making it. I'm going to go ahead on this quilt instead of binding with the black, I think, let me just play quilt here, if you will, I think I'm going to go ahead and put on a binding of the sashing material just to kinda pull it all together and give it a little bit of pop. Again, you can certainly use your jelly roll strips to make your binding and it would look really cute if you piece several different ones together and had the colors changing as you went around the quilt. You can do what you want, it's your quilt, that's the joy of quilting. Remember, I'm going to have some tips on the website for you. They will be tips for strip piecings that I think you'll enjoy a little more involved than what I gave you in this segment. And I'm also gonna have the pattern on the website for red hot hearts. So I hope you'll have fun making it and go enjoy those pre-cuts. They'll sure make your life easier.