Tumbling Leaf Table Runner with the Little Rebel from Grace Co.

Hey, everyone. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Nikki Lafoy and in this video, I'm going to be working on the little Rebel sewing and quilting machine by the Grace Company. And you can tell already that this machine is equipped for sewing large projects. We have this nice large area under the arm and we even have built in lights under the arm which is so cool. But in this video, I'm going to be um demoing a little bit of a smaller project. We're going to be making this tumbling leaf table runner. So it's a really fun project for Fall. It's fun to piece together these um different fabrics in reds, yellows and oranges to create this beautiful runner. Now, this uh table runner, it doesn't have a traditional binding. The backing is going to be wrapped around the front to create kind of a faux binding. And um all of my instructions that are available for you are for a three block table runner. So if you are going to be expanding this to make it longer for your table, you'll just have to adjust your materials accordingly. But there is um full instructions available for you to download. Um The link is going to be below this video so you can download that PDF if you haven't already and have that for reference later. Like I said, there's uh supplies list and full instructions and some in progress photos for you to reference. So make sure you download that and we can dive in and if you're watching live and if you have any questions type those into the comment box and I'll see those and I'll get any questions answered for you. And if you just want to say hi, um let me know what you think about the project. Tell me where you're watching from. Love to hear from you. So let's dive in and we're going to start by um walking through what we need uh the dimensions for our, our pieces for one block. So let's pull in these little pieces. So I used six or seven different um fabrics for my blocks. You can of course make yours a little bit more monochromatic if you want. But I liked kind of branching out and doing lots of different colors. So you will need um a backing fabric. So mine is white for a around the leaf and of your backing fabric, you are going to need 32 inch squares, 22 by 3.5 inch rectangles and three, 2.5 inch squares. And then you will also need a four inch square. You'll need, um, 28 by 1.5 inch rectangles for each block. So that's for the top and the bottom of the block. And then for our sing strips, you'll need 1.5 by 10 inch rectangles. And for our three block table runner, three block, table runner, you'll need four of those. So that's our sing strips go on the beginning and end of the runner and then between each block. So if you're adding blocks, just add a sing strip um for each block that you add. And then, so that's our backing or our background fabric rather. Um And then for your leaf fabrics, you will need 2, 2.5, uh sorry, 22 by 3.5, rectangles, three, 2.5 inch squares and then 62 inch rectangles and or sorry, 62 inch squares. And when I was making my table runners, I was kind of chain piecing a lot of my pieces together for all, all of my blocks. So I just cut out a whole bunch of two inch squares out of all of my different fabrics. And then when I was putting the blocks together, I could kind of pull different um fabrics in and kind of, you know, it's kind of like a, a puzzle you can pull in the, the different fabrics to complete your puzzle. So that is what you'll need for one block. Um Also, I forgot to mention, you'll need a 5.5 by one inch strip and this is for your stem. So I used a brown for my stem fabric, but that's for the stem of the leaf. And then of course, you'll need something for the back of your table runner. And for my three block table runner, I only needed about half a yard for that. But again, if you are adding blocks on to create something longer, you might need more fabric. So to get started, we are going to take our 2.5 inch blocks. So 2.5 inch squares of our background fabric and our leaf fabric and on the back of your 2.5 inch background squares, you'll want to um draw a line, a diagonal line from corner to corner and I've already done it on mine and then we're going to right sides together, align our background fabrics with our leaf squares. And then we're not going to stitch on this diagonal line. We're going to stitch to the side to each side of our diagonal line. We're creating our half square triangles and we're using a scant quarter inch seam allowance for the whole project, which just means we're going just inside of our quarter inch line and on my little rebel machine um on my presser foot here, it's nice because I have little like hash marks on the toe of the presser foot. So I can align the, the drawn diagonal line with my scant quarter inch line. And then, so we're sewing on each side of this bagna line. So we saw on one side and then we're going to flip it around and do the same thing. So you're aligning that diagonal line with your scant quarter inch. So there's, we're, we've sewn on each side of that center line and then we're going to cut that apart on the line we drew and that's going to create two of our half square triangles. So we're going to press this and we've got some hellos coming in. Oh, we've got from the Netherlands, from Colorado, from Boise, Idaho. Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much for watching. So we're going to press our steam allowances and you can press your steam allowances open, you can press them to one side if you press your steam allowances open. It does kind of mitigate the bulk for when our steam allowances start crossing each other, but either way is fine. So we're just going to press and I like to press my seam allowances away from the background fabric when I can because my background fabric is a lighter color. Sometimes the seam allowances can kind of show through. All right. So there's two of my half square triangles. Now we want to trim these down to two inches square and we want our seam line to stay in the center. So if you have a smaller square ruler. This works really well. I just have my large ruler, but I'm going to align my two inches, my first two inches on the corner of my ruler with my square here. And I want the seam to align with the lower corner of my two inch square and the upper corner of my two inch square and hold that down. And then I'm going to trim two sides. So I'm gonna trim that side and the top and then I'm going to spin this twice. So spin, spin and then we're gonna do the same thing. But this time we can align the cut edges, the edges that we just cut with our two inch, mine's on our ruler. So again, I wanna make sure the corners of my seam are at the corners of my two inch marks on my ruler. So there's my trimmed up two inch square and we're gonna do the same thing to this guy. And then you're gonna do the same thing to the remainder of your 2.5 inch squares. So spin, spin. No, that one didn't quite come off. There we go. All right. So you're gonna do the same thing to your other. So you're gonna end up with six of these blocks and then we are going to pull in. There we go. We're gonna pull in. Our rectangles are too two by 3.5 inch um leaf fabric rectangles and two of our two inch background squares, two of the 32 inch background squares. I'm getting hellos from New York from Vermont Diane from Chicago, from Wisconsin. That's awesome. We're getting viewers from all over the world. So we're going to take uh on the wrong side again of our two inch background squares, we're gonna draw a diagonal line and I've already done that on mine. So I have a diagonal line drawn from corner to corner and we're going to again, right sides together, place that square on one side of the rectangle. And so I've got my diagonal line going this way on this one and on the other one, we want to have the diagonal line going in the opposite direction. So we're creating mirror images of these pieces and on these ones, we are going to sew directly on our diagonal line. So we're going to stitch right from corner to corner. So there's one and then you'll do the same thing on the other and we're going to trim off the excess leaving about a quarter inch and then you're going to press that peace open. So same thing on both of those and that gets us these two pieces. So mirror images and I've got those pressed and I've actually, I pressed the seam allowances toward the background fabric on this one just so that our, our raw edges on the sides here all align. So there's our two pieces there. Now, we can bring in some of some more of our pieces and start arranging this. Actually got ahead of myself a little bit. We have to make our stem block first and then we can put our puzzle pieces together. So our stem block is made of our four inch square and our stem piece. And so we're going to cut our four inch square in half from corner to corner and we want to mark the center of this line. So I'm just going to fold that and just kind of finger press a mark in the center on both of those sides. And then our stem piece, we want to do the same thing. We're going to fold that in half, mark the center and then with right sides together, we want to align the centers and we're going to do the same thing on the other side. And I like to sew this seam with the background fabric up just so that I can make sure my fabric doesn't get kind of uh if this piece was facing the throat plate, sometimes it can kind of fold up on you. So I like to have this up and we're still using our scant quarter inch seam allowance. So we're going just inside of quarter inch and I like to hold on to my threads behind the foot as I start these seams just because if you're starting right at the edge of the fabric, sometimes that fabric can get pushed down under the throat plate or it can get bunched up. So that's the case. Whenever I start a sea right at the edge of the fabric, I like to hold on to those thread tails. So we're doing the same thing to the other side. All right. So there I have my stem block and I'm going to press my seam allowances again, you can press them open or you can press them to one side. So for this one, I'm going to press, I'm just gonna press them in and then we're going to trim this square two, inches square. So kind of the same way. We trimmed our half square triangles. We still, we want to center our stem. So we want to align the corner of your ruler, kind of eyeball it in the center of that stem and then at your 3.5 inch mark on your ruler, you want to make sure that that is also centered on the stem and then trim two sides a spin and then do the same thing. So we're aligning 3.5 inches at our cut edges here. So there we have our stem piece. So now this is my favorite part. We get to bring our pieces in and arrange our fabrics. So we've got our rectangles here and then can bring in our third uh that remaining two inch square of our background fabric and all of our two inch square pieces of our leaf fabric. So sometimes I have to look at my block to make sure I'm arranging things correctly. So, and then we've got our to our, our rectangles of our background fabric that get arranged down there. So I'm looking at you can look at the reference photos in the PDF to see what goes where. So we're gonna go put that one there. So I'm gonna bring this one. There we go. That looks good to me and then we can pull in some color here for our leaf and I like to kind of spread out the colors. There we go. I like that. We got some red, some orange and some darker fabrics in there. So you wanna make sure that the um the seams on your half square triangles are just going in the right direction. So I had to look at a finished one to make sure everything was going in the right direction and then we can start piecing this together. Good morning Marilyn watching from Canada da, watching from Washington. And if you have any questions, you want me to repeat something, just go ahead and type that in and I'm happy to answer any questions. So we're gonna start piecing this together. So it's gonna be our block. So I'm going to start up here in this section and you want to start with the shortest seam. So we're gonna start with this seam right here and then these two pieces together, the seam is going to match with this seam, then we'll stitch that and then that seam is going to match this length. So we're going to start right here. So we're going to flip this right sides together and we're stitching this seam again with our scant quarter inch. And once you get the hang of how all of these pieces come together, like I said, I was chain piecing a lot, but I would recommend making a block first so that you can see how everything goes together before you start chain piecing just so you don't get some seams mixed up. All right. So there is that and you can see how these seams now are going to match. So I'm going to press the seam and I'm just going to press this in one direction before I go on to the next scene. So then we're going to flip and make sure this is the right sides together. We're going to flip these pieces right sides together and I'm going to stitch that scene, my scant quarter inch. There's that. And again, we want to press that before we move on to the next seam. Uh And then we're going to flip this right sides together and stitch that seam. And once you know how to make one of these blocks, you can take this and make a quilt, you can make a table runner of any size, you need whether that's for like a side table or for your Thanksgiving table, but it's a really pretty block. So there is my upper left section and your lower right section is the same thing. Just a mirror image of this. You're gonna do the same thing down here. And then we want to trim this block so that it measures 3.5 by five. So if there were any seams that kind of got, you know, squished one way or another, we wanna trim those off and we wanna make sure it measures 3.5 by five. So I'm just squaring this up, evening out those seams and that side looks pretty good. Let's take off that little bit right there. Ok. So that is all squared up. You're gonna do the same thing down in that lower portion and then the upper right portion that's got all of these two inch squares. We're just going to start piecing these together and we're going to piece them together to create three strips and then piece those strips together along those long seams to get that all in one. And here we have a little bit of matching that we wanna do because we wanna match these seams together. So you'll stitch, you know, your short seams on all of these strips and then when you start matching them together, you want to match those corners as much as you can. And if it's not perfect it doesn't matter. There's so much detail happening in this block that if something is a little bit off, it does not matter. But I like to try to. So when I flip these right sides together, I like to try to get these seams matching. And so you can see, I haven't really been using pins so far, but for these seams, I like to use pins just so that I can get those points matching. So then you'll sew that with your scant quarter inch, press that open and then you'll have your quadrants, stitch together and then you can stitch the upper sections together, the lower sections together and then stitch the top and the bottom together along that seam. So again, pressing every seam open before you move on to the next and then you will have a beautiful block. So we've got every all of our quadrants stitched together pressed open and then just like how I squared up that one section of the block to 3.5 by five, you want to square this up to eight inches. So if at the end of any of these seams, one bit of fabric has kind of shifted forward a little bit. You want to take your ruler and just kind of trim all of that off and square it up so that it is eight inches square. And then let me move all my little pieces away. Marsha's watching from South Florida. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. So then we're going to bring in our eight inch strips, so eight by 1.5 inch strips and we're going to sew that on the top and the bottom of the block. Now, what is the top and the bottom of the block is going to change because I have sort of flipped the direction of the block for each along the length of the table runner to make it look like it's a leaf tumbling in the wind. So the top and the bottom of this block, I have my eight inch strip stitched there and then the top and the bottom of this block stitch that there. So for each block, you might spin that so that the, then the top and the bottom becomes this. So for each block stitch your eight inch strip onto the top and the bottom, whatever that is. And then you can take your sing strips, which are your 10 inch by 1.5 inch strips and stitch that onto each remaining edge of your leaf block. So we'll have a sing strip at the start right here. So there's my 10 inch strip and then in between each block and then at the end. So then once you get all of those pieces, all of your puzzle pieces stitched together, let me bring in my finished top. So there's my finish top and I already have it pinned on to my quilt sandwich. We're gonna talk about that in a second. So I've got my, my block here kind of encased in my, my uh background fabric and I've got this. So once you get all of your, your, your sing strips all stitched on, if there's any final squaring up that you need to do before you attach it to your quilt sandwich and start quilting. You wanna do that. So again, if any seams have kind of Scooched a little bit trim that off. So it's nice and square and then you're going to make your quilt sandwich. So on my quilt sandwich, we have our are backing fabric wrong side up. We have our batting layered down on top of it and you want your backing fabric in your batting to be a couple of inches larger on all sides as your uh your table runner. And that's to give you space to hang on to that as you are quilting. So you want a little bit extra there um as that buffer. So then I've got my, my table runner top centered over my batting and my backing. So I've got my, my lines here square. So I have about two inches straight all the way down on each side and I put a couple of pins in here just to kind of tack that down. And then for quilting of your table runner, um there's a lot of creativity that you can bring in there as well so you can use whatever quilting lines you dream up for this. So it would be fun to do. You know, you could do some uh lines within just the leaf to, to kind of look like the veins of the leaf and then you could quilt in the background, fabric, whatever you wanted. But for me, I wanted to do just kind of some straight lines along the length of the table runner to kind of look like, um, like the wind blowing these leaves. So you can kind of see, I used a thread that was sort of a middle value. It's not white, but it's not like a dark like my leaf fabrics. Um So it, you can kind of see it in the background fabric and you can kind of see it on the leaf as well, but it's just kind of some squiggly lines and some loop de loops to kind of look like the wind blowing, blowing those leaves. So I figured out that I wanted to have seven lines of quilting along the length of my table runner. So you can take a removable fabric marker or marking method of your choice and mark exactly all of the lines that you want to quilt over. That is certainly a method. But for me, I just marked my beginning and end points on the short ends because I'm going to go from short end to short end with my quilting. And so I just needed to have a way point to know where to stop and then where to finish. And I figured I could kind of keep it straight along the length of the table runner doing my waves and my loop de loops. So I started in the center just marking because this is 10 inches. I marked my center point and then it's about an inch and a quarter away um to mark three on each side of the center to get my seven lines of quilting. And then when we do our, our binding faux binding wrapping, our backing around to the front, that's going to come a half inch on top of the top of the table runner. So I wanted to make sure my last line of quilting didn't get too close to that. So you wanna make, keep that in mind if you're doing something like this because you'll have a half inch taken up here with your binding. So I marked my quilting lines and then this part is super fun with the, the little rebel machine because it's so easy to swap over from sewing to quilting and back again. And you know, you can do it all on one machine, which is so great. So I'm going to remove my regular sewing foot. I'm gonna pop the bobbin out just for a second just so that we can get the magnetic throat plate on. So that covers up the feed dogs so that we can do our free motion quilting and it tells the machine that we're going into quilting mode. So there's a little cue button up at the top here that's lit up. And when that's lit up, that means that the stitch regulator is engaged. And the stitch regulator is this little sensor right here that tells the needle how fast to move. Uh based on how fast it senses that you are moving the fabric so you can move the fabric along just like in free motion. Like you would normally in free motion quilting and the stitch regulator senses how fast it needs to move the needle so that you get even stitches, which is pretty cool and you can toggle it off if you'd rather do your uh free motion quilting and, and control the stitch length with just with your hands so you can toggle that off and, and kind of bypass that. But I like using that. So I brought my, my bob and thread up. I'm going to put my presser foot bar down and get my hopping foot on. So I'm going to screw that on just lightly and I want to make sure I get my foot at the right height. So I'm just going to put the needle down and then I wanna make sure the foot is pushing down into my quilt sandwich before I tighten that screw. And all of these steps are in the instruction manual and one thing I will say about the, the little Rebel is it comes with a physical bound manual, which is so great. A lot of machines you get and you get a QR code or a link for a PDF to download your manual, which is fine. That works just fine for most people. But there's something to be said about having a physical manual. I really appreciated that when I got this machine, it came with a physical manual. So I'm all set for quilting. And so I'm just going to get my, my foot aligned with my first marking. And I want to bring my thread, I want to bring my bob and thread up from the wrong side. Make sure my bobbin is pushed in correctly here. So we want to bring the bob and thread up from the wrong side to the top of the table runner so that you can keep track of it. So it doesn't accidentally get um kind of bunched up on the wrong side of your project. Make sure my foot is at the right height here. All right. Oops, here we go. OK. Try that again. All right. Gonna leave my bob and thread, but I can keep track of it because I can see where it is. Remove that pin. Now, my quilting the, and the, the little rebel does come with an extension table for when you're working on larger projects because this one is so small. I didn't attach it. But um it's nice, you can slide that extension table on and kind of extend your working space. So I'm just going to kind of go slowly and I'm stopping to adjust my hands, but I'm just kind of following my heart here with my s my swirls and you can kind of hear the faster I move the fabric, the faster the needle goes. So that's to keep my stitches even. So that's the stitch regulator at work. So I'm just going to go all the way down. And as I'm coming down to the end of my, my quilting line, I want to line that up with my mark and then I'm just going to spin that and I'm going to move over to my next quilting line, make sure my fabric is flat. There we go. And then I'm just going to keep driving my fabric. All right. And then we, we would just do the same thing all the way across or quilt however you desire, I'm going to jump over to my finished. So I would just do the same thing all the way across, doing my, my swirls in my loops to create that blowing wind effect that I was going for. So here is my finished top. Now before you go and press your binding, you need to do a little trimming. So you want to trim the uh the batting to the edge of your table runner top. So taking your scissors and just trimming the batting and be careful at this step that you don't accidentally cut through your backing because we need that. That is our faux binding. So you'll just trim your batting off at the edges and then trim your backing to one inch from this table runner, top edge one inch all the way around and that gets you this look. So my, my batting is trimmed to right there and my backing, I trimmed to one inch and then we can start folding this over. Kathy asks what fabric line are you using for the leaf runner? Um These fabrics were a lot of scraps. So aside from, you know, a half yard of this background fabric and a half yard chunk for your your backing fabric, all of these little leaf fabrics can just be scraps. So you really need just very small amounts. So our two inch square, our 2.5 inch square are two by 3.5 inch rectangles. I just use scraps from a bunch of different things. So it's not one fabric like cohesive line. But if you find um a fabric line that is sort of autumnal colored, that would be a great way to um to coordinate your fabrics is by using um a certain fabric collection. So I have my backing fabric folded and pressed. So we want to fold this raw edge in to meet the table runner edge or just shy of it because then we're going to fold it again so that it folds over and we're encasing all of the raw edges. So you're going to fold that over and press and pin all the way down. And then when you get to a corner, this is where this little technique comes in. So let me start on this corner. So I have this line folded down and folded down again all the way across to this other raw edge. And then to get my mitered corner, I'm going to fold this corner down at a 90 degree and then I'm going to fold this adjacent edge in. So I'm folding the raw edge in to meet that table runner, top raw edge and then we're going to fold it in again and that results in a nice mitered corner. So if you have to kind of fuss with it a little bit, but that corner should, should meet at our nice 90 degree angle and then you can finish this in whatever way you want. Uh You can of course, hand sew this, I'm going to just top stitch it right on the binding. But let's look at that corner again. Let me do that for you one more time. So I've got my raw edges folded in and then fold it in again all the way across and then we're going to fold the corner down. So we have a 90 degree right here and then we're folding this long raw edge in half an inch and then fold that over the table runner edges and then you get this nice, beautiful corner. So I mean, you could uh still trim your, your backing right to the table runner edges and bind this um in the traditional way. But this technique is kind of fun to know how to do. And this is one area where I like to use lots of pins. Carol says, thank you liking that pin cushion too. Thank you very much. I made that very handy to have. All right now for my top stitching, I'm going to swap back over to sewing mode. So again, it's really easy to do on the little rebel machine, gonna take my hopping foot off, take my magnetic throat plate off. So that just pops right up and when that pops off, it tells the machine, OK, we're back in regular sewing mode and then I'm going to put my regular sewing foot back on and then we're going to stitch right on the edge of our binding. So I'm just going right on the edge. And then when we get to the corner, we're going to pivot around our miter. So right here at this corner, going to stitch up so that my needle goes down right in the corner and then lift the presser foot and pivot that around. And it is super easy to do your edges with this method. Once you learn how to do it. So you're gonna do that all the way around. So you'll have you nice corners all the way around and then you are left with, you're a beautiful table runner, your edges are bound. You have a nice miter in all of your corners and your, your faux binding is top stitched all the way around. So it really, if you do some chain piecing on your blocks, it can come together pretty quickly. And it looks so beautiful when it is all stitched together. And I actually really love this method of doing the binding. It just seems like, you know, it's one less fabric that you need to have to deal with with your binding strips and you just fold those, those edges over to create your nice corners. So there is your tumbling leaf table runner. So if you have any questions now is the time to ask because we are all finished with our project. And like I said, if you don't wanna use this block for a table runner, take it and use your creativity and create a quilt, create whatever else you wanna create with it. But once you know how to make this block, it is just a great building block and it is so perfect for the season for decorating for Fall for Thanksgiving for Halloween even. Um I just love getting all of these fabrics together and kind of combining them in, in different ways. Um it just, it looks so beautiful when it all comes together and it is super easy with the little rebel machine from the Grace company to do the sewing, to do your exact piecing and to do your quilting all in one machine. So thank you so much for watching. Let me check and see if we have any questions. Kathy says, I love the red in the fabrics. That is a really nice pop to get some of that red in there with our yellows and our oranges. So thank you so much and thanks again for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope you enjoy the project and Happy Sewing.