Fancy Folded Star Pot Holder

Hi again everyone! It’s Maria from Not Only Quilts and I’m so happy to be back here at Moda Bake Shop to share my third tutorial with you all. This time we’ll be making a really fancy pot holder!

“Just a pot holder?” you say. “How boring!”

Well, this pot holder is anything but boring; it’s fancy and fun to make. =)

And the folded star technique you learn here can be used for so many other things: make it bigger for a pillow cover or make it smaller for an adorable ornament!  It’s the perfect way to use a few spare fat quarters for a gift. I recommend you read the entire tutorial before beginning this project.

6 Fat Quarters (Flurry by Kate Spain)
Disappearing marker
Color matched thread
Cotton batting

Step 1 – Selecting fabrics
Choose 4 FQ’s (Fat Quarters) that coordinate nicely: these will be your star.

And choose 1 FQ for backing, and 1 FQ for drawing, and sewing on.

Step 2 – Cutting
* Cut (1) 10″ x 10″ square from your backing fabric and (1) 10 x 10″ of your drawing and sewing fabric. For one of these squares I substituted the drawing and sewing one with an ugly fabric from my scrap bin as it won’t be visible when we’re done). That’s all we need and the rest can be placed in your scrap bin.

* We will cut each of the 4 FQ’s we selected for the star into (16) 3″ x 4″ pieces.
First cut (3) 4″ strips from the 18″ long side of your FQ. We do it from this side to get as much leftover fabric as possible. Then sub-cut these strips in 3″ sections until you have 16 (you will get 18 from the strips through). Repeat this for all 4 FQ’s.

* From the fabric that you choose as your bottom fabric (see step 5), cut two 5″ squares. Split them in half diagonally so you end up with 4 triangles.

* Use the leftovers from one of the star FQ’s for binding.

Step 3 – Drawing
On your background square, with a ruler and a pen, draw lines from corner to corner, and then from middle to middle, like this.

Step 4 – Ironing
Bring your 64 rectangles over to your ironing board. On the 4″ long side, fold down about a 1/4 inch towards the wrong side of the fabric and iron it. Do this for all rectangles; it gets a little repetitive, yes…

Step 5 – Select layout
Now we’re going to select the layout of our star. Here are some of my test versions. You should have 8 pieces in the layout, 2 of each fabric. I ended up going with #1 because it felt nicely tied together when it started and ended with the same color and slowly faded to blue and back to green.

Step 6 – Creating the star base
Now we’re going to start making the star. First we need to get all the pieces in place, keep the test version you decided to go with next to you when doing this for reference, as it’s easy to accidentally get the fabric in the wrong order.

Start with the vertical line; place your centerpiece exactly by the horizontal line the fold at the line, right side up while still centered over the vertical line. A scant ½” down, place your next piece and pin in place, this distance has to be the same all around your star so it’s very important you keep it still.  In my photo below, you can see my reference pile next to it. =)

Place the rest of the pieces a scant 1/4″ down from each other’s edges and pin in place. Try to keep this measurement the same all around your star since your star will be wonky otherwise.

Repeat for the other side of the line until you have this. Make sure the top pieces on each side touch but don’t overlap. This is very important.

Draw a line in the middle of your pieces (5″ in from the edge) using a disappearing marker and sew along the line using your walking foot – otherwise you risk your pieces shifting. Choose a thread that blends in nicely with your bottom fabric (in my case, the solid green) because it will be most visible there.

Remove the pins from your first row so you can flip the fabric from side to side. Complete your second row using the exact same measurements, carefully folding away the already stitched in place row and keeping your top piece touching them, but not overlapping, like this.

Draw your centerline with the disappearing marker and sew in place. This time you have to first sew one side, and then the other so backstitch a few stitches in the center.

Now we’ve come to the diagonal rows. This is where it get’s a little bulky but as long as you take your time to make sure that the center of your top fabric really meet the others without overlapping, you will be able to get a beautiful star.

Do this for all 4 diagonal lines. Draw a centerline (you can draw it from the middle fold to the drawn line on your background fabric) and sew in place.  Voila! You’ve sewn all of your pieces in place. Now it is time for folding! =)

Step 7 – Folding your star
This step might seem complicated but it really isn’t, it just requires patience and maybe one or two practice folding rounds. So the first time, you might want to just pin in place and see where that leaves you because it can be a little tricky to get the folds even the first time.

Many of the written descriptions below can seem very confusing, however, just click the photo below them and enlarge it and it should become crystal clear what I’m trying to get across. =)

Separate two piles of fabric by flipping them to the sides, like this.

Starting on your right hand side, take the top piece, fold it over, wrong side towards wrong side so you get a triangle with a little leftover at the bottom. Enlarge the photo below and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Lie it down towards the scrap fabric like so.

And fold it back over towards the seam again, right side to right side and the first fold is done!

While holding onto your right side fold, do the same thing to the left one. Fold it wrong side towards wrong side.

Lie it down towards the scrap fabric and then fold it back over towards the seam on the left side.

And the first star center is complete! Now we only need to do the single folds for the rest of the pieces.

On the right side (always start from the same side), fold it down, wrong side to wrong side like we did with the first two pieces.

Then simply lay it over your already folded pieces.

Fold the left one the exact same way.

While holding the one’s you’ve already folded in place, fold the next layer too.

Pin in place.

And then sew a sort of V shaped row of stitches, high enough to secure all three layers but away from the parts that will be visible when folded, like this.

Fold two more and stitch again.

And repeat. Make sure you remove all pins after sewing because it will be very difficult to retrieve them afterward. =)

For the last fabric, only pin in place… don’t sew yet.

Repeat 8 times, until the star is ready. Admire your hard work a little before continuing.

Now you can add batting and backing, sew around the edges, and cut a circle to make a round potholder. I preferred a squared one so I’ll be attaching some corners to it.

Step 8 – Finish the front
Now we’re going to take the 4 triangles we’ve already cut and use them to make our piece square. I made them big so no matter how you’ve folded, they should cover your ends. I can’t give you exact measurements here as it depends a little on how far apart you’ve placed your pieces and how you’ve folded. So here we do a little trial and error. Place your triangles wrong side up far enough up to cover the folds of your star but low enough to cover the corners when folded down, again a couple of pictures are more explanatory I think:

Before stitching, flip over your pinned triangles to make sure they cover all they should, like so:

Stitch along your pinned rows to get them in the correct position. Trim off the triangle edges sticking out.

Step 8 – Back, batting and quilting
Add batting (I use just one layer of normal cotton batting, this potholder has so many layers of fabric, you really don’t need any extra protection from heat when using it) and backing to your little potholder. Baste and quilt as desired, I choose to do a simple echo of the star shape.

Step 9 – Binding
I know most of you already know how to do this, so then just skip this part and bind with your preferred method. But I remember from making my very own first potholders how difficult it was to get a decent looking edge and hanger on the darn thing, so in case there’s anyone else out there like me a few years back, this section is for you =)

Cut two  2″ long strips from your desired binding fabric from the 18″ end, join them to make one continuous binding strip.  We’re going to make single fold binding, so 2″ wide is wide enough.

Fold the strip in half, wrong sides together and iron it, then open it up and iron the edges towards the center fold, something like this. I know mine doesn’t match perfectly (I got lazy and made it with my bias band maker).

Start in one corner of your potholder. On the wrong side of your potholder, pin your binding wrong side up from the very end and start sewing from the top. Use a 1/4 inch seam allowance.

Sew until you’re a 1/4 inch away from the bottom edge. Backstitch and clip your thread.

At the corner, fold back your binding to a 45 degree angle, like so:

Fold it back at the right edge down towards the next side you’re about to sew. Again, this sounds more complicated then it is. Just look at the photo and then you start your stitching 1/4″ from the edge where the little arrow is, it will be exactly in line with your last row of stitching. Be careful not to catch your fold with your stitching when backstitching.

Continue around 3 corners but don’t do the last one, so you’ll end up with these flips on 3 corners.

When you come to the last corner, stop an inch or so before the end. Take the starting point binding and pin it in place around the front.

Sew the final inch or so all the way to the edge.

You should have a fairly long piece leftover at this point. You can now shorten it to 4″ sticking out over the edge.

Fold over your binding and pin in place, making sure you get pretty 45 degree corners as you go. I’m normally very lazy and never pin my bindings, but for this part of the tutorial I wanted to show the recommended way of doing it when you’re a beginner – to ensure an even and nice looking binding as it easily slips away from you when machine sewing it in place if you’re not used to it. =)

Before you sew it all in place, take the hanger piece sticking out and fold it back over itself, right sides together, and 1/8″ from the edge, sew a few stitches back and forth to close it.

Flip it back and into the fold with the seam like so.

Now start stitching at the end of the hanger, closing it off as you go and follow it all the way around. Stop a few inches from the end and flip the hanger underneath the end so you make the little loop with the same seam as you end the binding.

One ~10″ big, super fancy folded star potholder! A lovely but usable decoration for your own kitchen, or the perfect gift for the person who has everything!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this tutorial as much as I enjoyed making it! If you end up making one of these, I’d love to see it! Please send me an email {maria@idztech.com} with a picture, as I’d be so happy to  feature it on my blog =)

Maria Wallin

{Not Only Quilts}

Charming Rag Quilt

Hi everyone! I’m Maria Wallin from Not Only Quilts and I’m super excited to be sharing my second tutorial here on Moda Bakeshop! This time I’ll be showing you how to make my favorite kind of Rag Quilt. It’s made a little bit different from other rag quilt’s and it’s so much quicker to make as this quilt uses brushed cotton or flannel as batting as well as backing. Making it much easier to construct as it eliminates the need to sew precise squares of batting into each little quilt sandwich. It makes for a lovely, heavy, and super cozy type of Rag Quilt with extra full and fluffy raggy seams due to the extra layers of fabric in each seam.

4 Charm Packs (Northern Cardinal by Holly Taylor)
6 yards of coordinating brushed cotton (or flannel)

 

Step 1 – Cutting
Cut 42 strips 5″ x width of fabric of the brushed cotton.

Sub-cut each strip while still folded into (4) 5″ squares. Each strip will yield (8) 5″ squares. Your cutting mat will get very hairy from cutting this fabric, so every once in while I suggest you run a normal eraser over it to bring up the fibers quite easily and allow the mat to heal for easier cutting.

Step 2 – Making the little quilt sandwiches
Since you will be using the brushed cotton for both batting and backing, you don’t have to worry about cutting batting smaller then the fabric like you normally would. This way of making a rag quilt makes assembling your little quilt sandwich super easy and you just place one square of brushed cotton right side down, one square right side up and place your charm square on top, right side up.

If you want to “kick it up a notch” you can always use a contrasting fabric for your “batting fabric”, this can create some really fun effects as your rag seams then become two colored. If you wish to do that, just buy 3 yards of each color instead of 6 yards of one color for the brushed cotton or flannel you’re using.

Step 3 – Chain quilting your sandwiches
I’ve chosen to quilt my little sandwiches a simple cross. You can quilt as desired.


For my crosses, I chose a neutral light beige thread that blended quite nicely with most of the colors. Then I simply placed my pile of charm squares and pile of brushed cotton squares next to my sewing machine and made my little sandwiches there while sewing. And then I “chain quilt” them all by sewing first one diagonal seam from one corner to the next using a walking foot. No pinning or drawing required. Then clip the thread joining your pieces and chain piece the next diagonal seam for maximum efficiency.

You will end up with 168 of these:

Step 4 – Choosing your design
To help me get a design I was happy with, I choose to do a real layout instead of just randomly sewing blocks together. I piled my squares up in color-coordinated piles and laid out my desired pattern. In the end I went with a 14×12 blocks design, so not the one in the picture.

Step 5 – Sew your rows
To avoid messing up my design and avoid risking sewing my squares right sides together (when you’ve spent a life sewing right sides together, you’ll quickly notice how easily it is to forget oneself and do it here too), I quickly pin together my rows and sew all my rows together. Make sure you’re careful and sew wrong sides together so that your seams are on the front of the quilt. Keep the walking foot on for this work too.

I use a scant ½ inch seam allowance, which I think gives a nice rag feeling without cowering up too much of the squares or making the raggy seams fall to the sides instead of standing up. Use a very short stitch length to prevent the seams from unraveling.

Step 6 – Joining your rows
While a rag quilt is very forgiving when it comes to not matching up your seams perfectly on the front (the shaggy seams will cover it up), you’ll probably want a nice backside too. When joining your rows, you’ll want to nest your seams to avoid pinning. I find this very easy if you first have assembled your rows and just are piecing them together. You do this by carefully placing one seam allowance “up” and one “down” like in the photo below. Wiggle them a little until you feel them lock in place with each other.

This will become second nature very quickly even if you’ve always pressed your seams apart and pinned before. Your seams will lock very nicely and you’ll get a perfect intersection on each seam.

Now you’re probably wondering why I don’t press my seam allowances apart reduce bulk (because yes, it get’s very bulky ^^), it’s because I find that when one does that the raggy seams don’t stand up anywhere near as nice as they do otherwise, but instead lay to the sides. So for me, this kind of seam is the only way to go for the right “raggyness”.

When you’ve joined all your rows and your top is finished, you’ll want to do a final seam around the entire perimeter of the quilt to close it up.


Step 7 – Clipping your seams
Once you’ve finished your quilt top, you have the massive task of clipping each and every seam left. Be careful to not clip into the seam though! I clip somewhere in between every quarter inch/half inch and I leave about 1/8 inch from the seam. I fold my seams before clipping like you see in the photo below to not risk a nip in the squares, so no, that’s not the edge of the quilt but in the middle. This is finger killing job if don’t have spring loaded scissors. I highly recommend getting a set of those; I know I will as soon as I can. =)

Step 8 – Washing and Tumbling
This step is where the magic happens. When I wash my rag quilts the first time, I put them into an old pillow case and close it up with a running stitch because that first wash you’re going to get a lot of lint in your machine otherwise. I always toss in a large number of color catcher sheets (to prevent color runs) too into that pillow case, these sheets are an especially important quilt saver when you use a lot of red colored fabric like I did in this quilt.

When it’s time for the tumble drier, you might want to stop a couple of times during the cycle and clear out your filter because it sheds a LOT during the first few tumblings.

The best thing about Rag Quilts I think is that they just get prettier with each wash, more raggy and lovelier. In the photos it’s only been washed once, it’s so much prettier now after a few more washes.
 

You get one ~ 50″ x 60″ super snuggly, heavy, but simply Charming Rag Quilt!

Or in other colors and different layout, here using Kate Spain’s 12 Days of Christmas:

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this tutorial as much as I enjoyed making it! If you end up making one of these thanks to this tutorial – I’d love to see it! Please send me an email {maria@idztech.com} with a picture as I’d be so happy to get to feature it on my blog =)

Maria Wallin

{Not Only Quilts}

Summer Squares Quilt

Hi everyone! My name is Maria Wallin and I’m so excited about sharing my very first Moda Bake Shop tutorial with you all! =)

I still cannot believe I’m actually “one of the Bake Shop girls!” Ever since I first discovered the online quilting community, these fantastic ladies have inspired me and I’m so happy to be able to share something of my own in return. Please pop over to my blog Not Only Quilts to see more of my creations revolving around, but not limited to quilts – as you might have guessed from the name 😉

This quilt is something I’ve had roughly sketched and dreamed about making for some time but had not found the perfect fabric for until I saw the Sunkissed by Sweetwater line. I really hope you’ll like it as much as I do.

1  Charm Pack (Sunkissed by Sweetwater)
1  Jelly Roll (Sunkissed by Sweetwater)
1/2 yard of white “middle border” fabric (SKU# 9900 98 white)
1/4 yard of “border” fabric (SKU#5443 23 orange stripes)
3/4 yard of green fabric for binding and applique (SKU#5447 11 green)
3 1/2 yards of backing (SKU# 5441 26 swirls)

Thread matching the colors of your fabric for applique
Invisible thread for trapunto
Choice of your favourite applique tools/fusible web, in my case I used “Steam A Seam” fusible web
Scrap pieces of batting for trapunto

Step 1 – Cutting 
* First, cut each still folded jelly roll strips from the selvage side, leaving one continuous folded piece left once you’re done cutting, save that scrap for later. Cut one 5″ section and one 9″ section from each strip (so you’ll end up with two of each piece).

* Then cut two extra “jelly roll strips” (2.5″ Width Of Fabric strips, will from here on out be referred to as “WOF”), one from the green yardage and one from the backing. The jelly roll only has 40 strips and we need 42 for this project. Cut them up the same way as the others above.

* Cut 7 strips of 2 1/4″ WOF strips of the green yardage for binding right away (if you’re using anything but a low loft cotton batting, you might want to increase that to 2 1/2″), the rest can then safely be used for applique.

* Cut your white yardage to two 9″ WOF strips, cut one in half at the fold (you’ll only use one of the halves, the other is a scrap).

* Cut your orange striped yardage into 3 2.5″ WOF strips. Split one of them in half at the fold like with the white fabric, but of this we’ll use both halves.

Step 2 – Assemble your quilt blocks
This part is very simple. Take one of the charm squares and add two of the 5″ jelly roll strips to the sides. If you have directional fabric, make sure you align them the way you want them to be aligned now and put the short stripes on the left and right side of the block.

Press the seams apart to reduce bulk and add your 9″ stripes to the sides. Put aside the extra piece of jelly roll for later (we’ll use some of them for applique).

Make 42 blocks.

Step 3 – Assembling parts of your top
Layout your quilt blocks in a pleasing pattern in a 2×6 pattern and then in a 5×6 pattern for the rest of the blocks.

Sew your rows together, then iron the seams of the rows in opposite directions so you can nest the seams when you assemble it. Join your first two rows, then don’t join those with the last five but instead join the last five as their own separate section.

Step 4 – Making the “middle border“
Sew together the white fabric the one WOF piece to the half WOF piece giving you a continuous 66″ long white piece. Do the same with the orange strips, sew one half orange strip to a full WOF strip, giving you 2 66″ x 2.5″ orange strips.

Attach the orange strips to the sides of the white one.

Press seams apart to reduce bulk here as we’ll be doing applique on top of it.

Then lay it out next to your quilt and cut away the excess fabric.

Step 5 – Applique and trapunto
We haven’t assembled our entire top because you would have one rather bulky piece to work with at this point, making it much more difficult.

Now you can either just choose your favourite method of applique and skip the step 5 instructions below or follow along as we make a simple trapunto applique variant here. I’m sure there are tons of better ways/more correct ways to do trapunto – I’m very much a beginner at this, this is just the method I came up with for this quilt.

Step A – Drawing and cutting your applique pieces
Trace all your applique pieces (the ones I drew and used can be downloaded in the printable version of this post) onto your choice of fusible web, leaving a little space around each so you can attach them to the fabric and cut around them.

I personally like to use Steam A Seam (have yet to try the “lite” version, I’m sure I’ll love it even more) as it’s double stick and therefore allows you to rearrange your pieces while they still stick to the fabric. You can move your work around with the pieces in place before you’ve ironed them on permanently, allowing for more precise placements. If using it for the first time, make sure you read the instructions, as it’s a little different from normal fusible web.

Step B – Attach and cut your applique shapes
The pieces of jelly roll scraps should fit 5 of the big petals. Choose a print you really like for this as it will be a big focus piece:

For the center of your flower and your small flowers that you’ll be putting in the intersections of the blocks, you’ll probably want to double your fabric so nothing can be seen through your applique shapes. Simply add some fusible web in the rough size of your flower to your strip, fold it in half, fuse with the iron, and then add your applique shape.

 

Cut out your applique shapes and arrange them in a pleasing manner before ironing them down:

Spread out the little flowers in intersections over the quilt as desired/use them to embellish the white border more or maybe you wish to just leave them out.

Step C – Adding batting for trapunto effect
Now take a big scrap piece of batting that covers your entire flower and some area around it and pin it carefully in place a little outside of your applique.

Once pinned securely in place, roughly but carefully cut around the pins on the outside to remove any excess batting and thereby avoid any “double batting mishaps” (I learned that the hard way) that can happen otherwise if you leave the unpinned batting in place once we get to the FMQ part. Please use blunt tipped scissors and go slowly to make sure you don’t cut into your fabric.

Step D – Sewing your raw edge applique
Attach your FMQ foot to your machine and lower your feed dogs. Don’t be afraid of this even if you’re a beginner like me at FMQ; it’s quite easy to get a nice result if you just go slowly.  Thread your machine with a thread matching the color of the applique piece you’ll be working on. Bring up your thread an inch or so outside of the applique shape.

Then move to your applique’s edge and take a few short stitches close to each other to secure the thread while still holding onto your thread tails. This way you won’t have to tie your threads; you can just clip them.

Carefully sew around the edge of your applique, and once you’ve moved away from your starting area, you can clip the top thread. You do this as we go around the applique shapes at least twice to get a nice stitch line (the thread could tangle otherwise).

Sew around all of your shapes. If you want add more layers of batting for extra effects in places, feel free. I choose to do so for the center of the big flower once I’d sewn around it’s edges, I just added a second, small piece of batting in the area you want to highlight.

When all seams are done, very carefully cut away excess batting around your trapuntoed areas, taking much care to not clip into your fabric! If you don’t feel comfortable clipping as close as I did, don’t worry about it; it’ll look great anyway. It’s much more important to have a top without holes in it!

Step 6 – Assembling your quilt top
Assemble your quilt top by sewing the top and bottom sections onto the middle border we just finished.

Step 7 – Baste and quilt
Back and baste your quilt with you preferred method (you can use up the rest of the jellyroll scraps and make a pieced back?) and quilt your top. I choose to do a loose loop-de-loop pattern with little flowers thrown in the mix for good measure on the squares and then a meandering stipple for the white section to really make the trapunto pop.

Step 8 – Finishing up the trapunto
When your entire quilt is quilted as desired, change to invisible thread in your machine and stitch over all seams in your trapuntoed areas with invisible thread in each seam. This will really bring out the effects of the trapunto.

It will make the applique stand out all full and nice. The picture doesn’t really do the effect justice, but at least you get the idea!

Step 9 – Bind and you’re done! =)

One very summery, super yummy ~50″ x 70″ Summer Squares Quilt!

 

I also made a matching little “Summer Squares Table Topper” from the jelly roll scraps, a quick tutorial for it can be found on my blog:

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this tutorial as much as I enjoyed making it! If you end up making one of these – I’d so love to see it! Please send me an email {maria@idztech.com} with a picture as I’d be so excited to feature it on my blog =)

Maria Wallin
{Not Only Quilts}