14-Day Learn to Sew Series - Patchwork

Let's take a look at a whole style of sewing: patchwork. Now, I'm sure many of you are familiar with what a quilt looks like, or have seen pictures of quilts and things. And maybe that's even why you're taking this class because you would like to make some quilts for yourself. That's awesome, 'cause everything that we learn in class in terms of basic sewing, of course, is going to apply to patchwork, or piecework, depending on what you want to call it. Quilting. But this is just going to focus just a little bit more specifically on doing piecework for quilt. So now, again, you're probably familiar with what a quilt looks like, but what's really fun about piecework because some of you may think, "Well, I'm not really interested in quilts." Well, you can even use piecework to create details on garments, so it's not just for quilting. And you can sew with any fabric you want. Now of course, there's a whole world of fabric that has been designed just for doing piecework. We call it quilting cotton, and quilting cotton is a basic cotton broadcloth. It's a plain weave. So it's just over/under. And it has a lot of structure to it. It's fairly easy to sew, easy to press. It's pretty sturdy, and of course, needless to say, it works really well for quilting. And it comes in a bazillion different prints and colors, so. When you buy quilting fabric for piecing, there's several different ways you can buy this. So one, of course, is just your standard one yard at a time. And here's a one yard piece. It was designed by a friend of mine, actually. One of her fabric designs. It's pretty wild. She does amazing stuff, but anyhow. You can buy it by the yard, or you can buy what's called a fat quarter. So these are literally... It's a quarter of a yard. So it's not a quarter yard, where you buy a quarter yard, and it's all the way across. This is a yard cut in four pieces. So it's 18 by 21 inches. So you can buy these already precut and ready to go. And this really is a nice way to go because sometimes you want to make a really colorful quilt and you just need small chunks of a whole bunch of different kinds. So it's really wonderful that you can just buy it that way and then cut them up the way you want. But there's also a lot of designs that use what we call strip piecing, and you can buy entire packs of the strips already precut. These are 2 and 1/2 inches wide by the width of the fabric. So there about 42-44 inches long. That would be technically the crosswise grain, but that's how long they are. But they're 2 and 1/2 inches wide. And there's a lot of designs that you can do to create piecework with these precut strips, and that's just a really convenient way to buy them. Sometimes they're in a package like this, and sometimes they're in what we call a jelly roll, which is a big circle. So either way, that's a really handy way to buy quilt fabric, and it's already chosen. I am not... Color isn't necessarily my personal thing, so I like being able to just choose a color selection that appeals to me. So that's really nice. But let's go ahead and just learn a little bit about how to do piecework. Now, when we do piecing for quilting, traditionally we use a quarter inch seem. Now of course we have a special foot for that. This is a quarter inch foot. And if I lower the foot, you can see... I moved my little visual marker over to the quarter inch mark. And you can see how the edge of the foot right here, this little blade, the edge of the foot lines up with that quarter inch mark. So it makes it easy to see what you're doing to stitch a quarter of an inch. Now, it does only have a straight stitch hole, so you have to be careful not to break a needle. Make sure that you are in center needle position. It also has markings here on the foot that tell you where the quarter inch is in case you need to pivot or stop a quarter inch from the edge. So it has all these handy markings on it, and you can use it in a variety of ways. But it's designed to be able to help you stitch a perfect quarter inch. One thing that really differentiates piecing or quilting from say sewing apparel or home dec is that when you're doing piecework, you have to be very precise. Not always. There are always exceptions. But for the most part, we want to stitch very accurately. So here I have a little sample piece here, and of course you wanna sew right sides together. And I'm just making sure that my edges are aligned. Of course, you can pin. And you notice I didn't cut both these pieces precisely to match. I like to go ahead and stitch and then square up afterward. So that's pretty common for me, but some people like to cut everything exactly to match right from the start, and that's a personal choice. So I'm just gonna line this up with the edge of my fabric. Now, usually when we quilt, oftentimes we can use just standard stich length of 2.5. You may choose to shorten it up a a little bit. Some people like to stitch with a shorter stitch length. I use just regular. Also, we don't necessarily backstitch at the beginning and end of each piece because that can make a little bit of a bulky spot. We tend to just use regular stitching, and again if you're worried about the stitching coming undone, you could use shorter stitches, especially at the beginning and end to make it less likely to come undone. But we use our foot, and we're just going to stitch quarter inch, using our guides. So I stitched just a little bit past each side. So, of course, when you quit or piece, you're going to be always pressing as you sew, just like when you sew other apparel or home decor. But one thing when you press a quilted seem, you don't press it open. You press it to one side. And when you press to one side, you want to press toward the darker fabric. If one fabric is obviously darker than the other, we press toward that side. Now again, I prefer to set my stitches first, and then I'm going to go ahead and press it. Press my quarter inch seem towards the darker fabric, and I do kind of pull on this fabric just a tiny bit to try to make sure that seem is open. I could use a seem stick to make it even more flat. But I just want to make sure to press toward that dark fabric. If I press towards the white fabric, you would see a dark line where the seem was, so you want to press toward the darker side. Now, as I mentioned, I like to go ahead and square up my piecework as I work. So I take it over to my cutting mat, after I've pressed it. I'm gonna use my rulers. Line up my rulers, and use a rotary cutter to just ensure... This mat's really fun because it pivots. It turns. So I'm going to use my mat and my guidelines to make sure that I'm staying nice and square. And I just find for myself this is a little more accurate than trying to cut everything the perfect size and stich it to match. I like to go ahead and square as I go. Now if this was a design like what we call a log cabin... Quilting has all these great names. Flying geese and rail fence and log cabin to just name a few. But... You of course are going to follow your diagram. If this was a log cabin, I would go ahead and set my next strip in place. Make sure those edges are lined up, and again, you can pin if you like. So once again I would take this to my ironing board and give it a press. And again pressing toward that darker side, away from that white center. And take it to my cutting mat. Align it with my grid and my ruler and square it up. Double check that I'm actually inline. So if this was a log cabin block, then my next piece would be here and then here. So we would keep moving around, basically in a circle. And you can go clockwise or counterclockwise, but of course, it all just depends on what design it is that you're creating. But that's just the basics of patchwork or piecework or quilting. And it's all about just sewing those accurate seams, so make sure to use a seam guide, whether it's a special foot or you can make a marking on your machine, and just practice sewing really accurate seams. And of course practice cutting accurately as well. And that's really the basis. Of course, the world of quilting is huge. There's so much more to explore, but in terms of the basic skills, that's really what you need to know. How to sew a basic quarter inch seam accurately and to cut accurately as well. So I hope you'll do some exploring, and try a little bit of patchwork for yourself.