Rainbows from the Heart – free Tutorial

Rainbows from the Heart

As promised (though a little late) here is the second charity quilt tutorial – Rainbows from the Heart.  I made two of this quilt and one was sent to Japan via Quilter’s Newsletter and the other will be given to the lady in my guild who requested kid-size quilts for a local charity…err, as soon as it is finished.  The top is complete but the quilting is not complete.

Rainbow from the heart free quilt tutorial

This is more of a tutorial than a pattern because there are a lot of variables left up to you – but don’t be scared!  It is super easy.  After I figured out what I was doing with top 1 the second was easy and except for the applique the second top was complete in a little over an hour.  Then the applique was easily accomplished during family tv time.  As usual it is the quilting part that runs me over.  But I digress.

Supplies

  1. Background fabric for the sky - a piece of fabric that is approximately the same size as your desired finish size.
  2. 3 rainbow-stripe fabrics – you will need to determine how wide you would like your stripes to be and how long you want your rainbow to be.  I cut my fabric 5 inches wide selvage to selvage and then pieced strips together end-to-end to get the length that I wanted.
  3. heart fabric – I chose red satin and my piece was about 18 inches square
  4. Freezer paper & scissors to cut it with
  5. A washable glue stick
  6. A marking device – I used a chalk pencil but anything that will wash/rinse out is fine.  You should test it on your fabric before marking on your quilt, just in case.  The marks should be hidden by the seam but you know that Murphy’s law thing comes up when you least expect it.
  7. Backing fabric and batting- the total piece should be 3-5 inches larger than your background fabric on all sides to allow for quilting
  8. binding fabric – mine required about half a yard but your amount will depend on the size of your quilt.
  9. thread that matches the color of your heart fabric
  10. The usual tools – sewing machine, fabric scissors, sewing machine, neutral thread for piecing, a thread you like for quilting, pins, 6×24 inch ruler, cutting mat, rotary cutter, etc.

Step 1) Press and starch your background fabric and lay it out flat.  I have an island that I set mine out on though some of it hangs off the side.

Step 2) Determine the desired (approximate) length of your rainbow.  If you have to piece two or more fabric stripes together to get your desired length that is ok.  Press the seams open.  Then sew your middle stripe to one of your outside stripes, right sides together, along the long length.  Press the seam open.  Sew your other outside strip to the new unit, right sides together, along the long length.  Press the seam open and don’t be afraid to use plenty of starch.  With your ruler and rotary cutter make a nice straight cut across both ends of the rainbow so you don’t have any unevenness at the end.

Step 3) Arrange your rainbow on your background fabric in the position you want it to appear when the quilt is complete, like so:

It is ok if the rainbow is too long.  We’ll cut that off later.  But it can’t be too short.  If it is shorter than you want it add more length to your stripes.

Step 4) Fold a large piece of freezer paper in half and cut a heart out of it.  When I was in elementary school I remember a teacher telling us to use our thumb as a guide – hold the paper in your non-dominant hand with your thumb on top.  Angle your thumb on the paper and cut around it.  Of course your thumb is small and you will have to eyeball it but cut yourself a good-sized heart and adjust it until you are happy with the shape.  Be aware that you will be appliqueing the heart so you don’t want the dip at the top to be too deep or the point at the bottom to be harshly sharp.  Now you can audition your heart shape on the rainbow like this:

Note that I liked it coming in from the corner, but there is no reason you can’t have it coming in straight from a side, top, bottom, or at a really steep angle. If you are happy with the position and size, it is time for the scary part: the cutting.

Step 5) Pin your stripe down the middle with a couple of pins.  You don’t want it shifting around but you don’t want to go nuts with pins either because they can interfere with your ruler.  Put your paper heart aside and get out your ruler.  You are going to draw your cutting lines first – you will cut on either side of the rainbow, extended all of the way to the opposite edge.  Starting at the top of the rainbow, place the long edge of your ruler along one of the outermost stripes, measuring out into the blue 1/4 inch.  Mark a line at this measurement, all of the way from this corner to the other.  There will be a point where the rainbow has stopped but you just use your ruler to extend the line you  have already been drawing, being careful to keep the line straight.  Repeat on the other side of the rainbow.

Step 6) Carefully cut along the two lines.  You can use a rotary cutter if you like but I just used scissors.  You will end up with three pieces of blue, one with your rainbow pinned to it:

Err, please excuse the messy backgrounds.  Ha ha!  Don’t unpin your rainbow just yet.

Step 7) Time to square up the upper corner.  Using the blue fabric that you are still pinned to as a guide, cut away the excess rainbow from the upper corner.

Step 7)  Now.  We need to replace the blue fabric from the middle piece with your rainbow.  To do that, we are going to piece the rainbow to the middle blue piece – but only to the part sticking out from under the rainbow.  The area that is covered up by the rainbow (the rainbow is pinned to it) right now will be discarded for some other purpose.  First line up your ruler with the end of your rainbow and draw a line.  Cut on that line.  Unpin your rainbow and discard that blue piece.  The remaining blue piece will be about 1/2 an inch wider than your rainbow.  Trim it back 1/4 inch on each side, then sew the end of the rainbow to it, right sides together.    Press towards the blue.

You now have three main pieces – a background piece above the rainbow; a rainbow with blue background at one end; and another solid background piece below the rainbow.

Step 8) Sew the upper background piece to the rainbow stripe, right sides together.  Then sew the lower background piece to the rainbow stripe, right sides together.  Woo!  The top is done.  Now you just have to add the heart.

Step 9) First use a dry iron to adhere your freezer paper to the wrong side of the fabric you will be cutting your heart from.  If you are using satin, cut around your heart with a 1/2 inch to 1 inch seam allowance.  This is important because it is more prone to ravel than cotton.  If your fabric is cotton you can use a smaller seam allowance of 1/2 an inch.

Step 10) Get out your glue stick.  Starting at a curve, apply glue along the edge of the fabric.  Then gently turn the fabric over the edge of the paper (using the paper as a template) and stick it down.  If it doesn’t stick well you can add more glue directly on the freezer paper.  Work your way around the heart, glueing the fabric onto your paper template all of the way around.  At the point of the heart you will want to fold it, sort of like wrapping the corner of a present.  At the top of the heart you will need to clip the fabric right at the dip, but be careful not to clip past the paper.

In the picture below you can see that I clipped at the top of the heart and folded at the bottom.

You can also see that it looks a bit wavy.  That did not turn out to be a problem for me but if you like you can try ironing or extra glue to beat it into submission.

Step 11) Position your heart on your rainbow.  Use a few pins to anchor it in place.  Using a thread that matches the color of your heart as closely as possible, applique the heart to the quilt top.  The paper will now be trapped between the quilt top and the heart.  That is ok, we can fix that!  Turn your quilt top over so that the wrong side is facing up.  Pinch the fabric over top of the heart so that you can cut a little slit in the fabric.  You only want to slit one layer of fabric. By pinching the fabric you both lift the extra layer of fabric away from the heart and you will be able to feel if you have any other layers caught between your fingers.  Very carefully make a small snip, then insert your scissors in the snip to make a slit large enough to reach inside.  IMPORTANT: your slit should be near the center of the heart, away from the edges.  Then carefully reach inside the slit, loosen the paper and pull it out.  If the paper tears that is no big deal.  We are done with it.  You can be a good little quilter and whip stitch the slit closed but I have to confess I just left it as it was.  Another option is to clip away the background fabric leaving a seam allowance – but I felt the satin really needed the stability of the background fabric to prevent distortion.

Ta-dah!  You’ve got yourself a rainbow from the heart.  Enjoy!

4 Comments

pq, May 24th 2011 | Posted in Charity quilts, Free Stuff, Quilting for Charity, technique, Tutorial

Owl Quilt Tutorial

The Owl QuiltWhere's the owl?

So here is the owl quilt.  Peek-a-boo!  (You can see a few more pictures of it here.)  I’m really happy with how it turned out.  Thanks to The Husband who gave my owl sketch a few tweaks to give it super-cute status.  I created this quilt from a 2-1/2 inch strip set and a fat quarter set of the Golden Afternoon collection from Connecting Threads.  I also tea-dyed white muslin for the center.  The back is made up of fat quarters also from the Golden Afternoon collection and various scraps from the front.

Fabric Requirements:

  • 1 (one) 2-1/2 inch strip set – you can cut your own strips if you like.  If you do, you’ll need 9 dark and 9 light strips from a variety of fabrics (for the scrappy look) or just two fabrics (for the checkerboard look)
  • 5-7 fat quarters, 4 of them in owlish colors (gold for the head, off-white for the eyes, brown for the brow and wings, and orange for the belly) the rest for the backing.
  • 24-1/2 x 24-1/2 inch square of muslin (tea-dyed, if you like)  (Note – I originally had the wrong dimensions here -
  • at least 152 inches of binding – I usually cut mine 2-1/2 inches wide.  I used one 2-1/2 inch strip and a fat quarter of the same color and that was enough to bind this quilt.
  • 2 small buttons for eyes
  • freezer paper
  • applique glue (I use Roxanne’s glue baste-it)
  • the usual quilting accouterments
  • The owl patterns – download and print the overall guideline, part 1, and part 2

Step 0) If you want to tea-dye muslin for your center: in a dutch oven (i.e., a big pot) fill the pot an inch or two below the top edge of the pot with water and boil.  You want it to be full but you also want room to stuff your fabric in there.  When the water boils, add the tea bags and let it brew for 5-10 minutes.  I used 6 regular old Lipton’s tea bags.  Turn off the heat and remove the tea bags.  I took my fabric and twisted it into a ball.  I wanted my fabric to be somewhat mottled and uneven and twisting it prevents full absorption of the tea.  Put your fabric ball into the tea and push it down with a spoon as best you can so that it is totally submerged.  Stir it every three or four minutes but not too hard because you don’t want your ball to fall apart.  After 10-15 minutes, pour off as much of the tea as you can and squeeze the excess tea out of your fabric.  (Careful!  Don’t burn yourself.)  The fabric might look pretty evenly dyed but the washing machine will fix that.  Throw the fabric in your washer (use the mini cycle if you have one.)  Wash it with cold water and your regular detergent.  Then dry it on the hot cycle in your dryer to set the color.  Press when almost dry.  Tada!  Beautiful tea-dyed fabric.

tea-dying in a pot on the stove

Step 1) Sort your strips into lights and darks.

Step 2) Make six strip sets.  Three should have a light-dark-light pattern to the sets, and three should be dark-light-dark pattern.  Like so:

Press towards the dark fabrics.

Step 3) Cut all six strip sets across the stripes into 2-1/2 inch pieces.

Step 4) Sort the pieces from step 3 into two piles – one for light-dark-light, one for dark-light-dark.  I put my pieces into paper bags and grabbed pieces randomly.

Step 5) Sew 20 nine-patch checkerboards from the pieces in step 4.  Put them right sides together and match the seams.  You’ll want to make 10 with the dark patches in the corners and 10 with the light patches in the corners:

Notice that I used some mid-colors as well.  I think that charged up the randomness.

Step 6) Press the new seams towards the strips with more dark pieces in it.

Step 7) Sew a dark checkerboard to a light checkerboard, right sides together and matching seams.  Press towards the dark checkerboard.  Sew the remaining 9 pairs of checkerboards in the same fashion.  From these pieces, form the borders. The top and bottom borders can be created with 2 pairs (a total of 4 nine-patches).  The side borders are created with 3 pairs (a total of 6 nine-patches).  Press towards the darker checkerboard.

Step 8 ) Time to whip us up an owl!  Fold the 24-1/2 inch square in half and in half again, finger-pressing the fold at the center to mark the center.  Open up the fabric and lay it face up on top of the owl pattern guideline.  Match up the center you just marked with the center cross-hatch marks on the belly of the owl.  You can tape it to a window or use a light box if you cannot see the marks on the pattern through the fabric.  Using a chalk marker (or some other washout marker) trace the owl pattern guideline onto the fabric.

Step 9) Trace the owl pattern pieces onto the dull (non-plastic) side of the freezer paper and cut the paper out on the marked lines.

Step 10) Iron the freezer paper patterns (plastic side down) onto the right side of the fabric you’ve chosen for your owl pieces.  With a chalk marker (or other marker you prefer) trace around the pattern pieces on the fabric.  These are the lines you will applique with.  Cut the pieces out leaving a barely 1/4 inch seam allowance.  Clip the curves, being careful not to clip into the marked lines.

Step 11) Following the guidelines you marked in step 8, position the owl body with the right side of the fabric up on the right side of the center piece.  Use applique glue or your preferred method to hold the piece in place and applique the body down using needle turn applique on the lines drawn in step 10.  Do not applique the neck of the owl – the fabric of the head will overlap it.  I remove the paper to applique but if you want to use it as a visual guide you can leave it there until the piece is appliqued.

Step 12) Imagine that the wing of the owl is your arm.  Sew two wings right side together, leaving the shoulder end of the wing unsewn.  Clip around the point and turn right side out and press.  Repeat for the other wing.  Position each wing on the body, again following the guidelines.  The open (shoulder) edge of the wing should be inside the lines of the owl head.  Machine sew the shoulder ends of the wing down.  Make sure the sewn seam is also inside the guidelines for the owl head.

Step 13) Position the eyes and beak on the owl head.  Glue or pin them in place and applique them down, again using needleturn applique and the lines drawn in step 10.

Step 14) Position and glue the owl head on the body, following the guidelines.  Applique it down all the way around except for the space between the ears where the brow will overlap.  When I stitched over the wings, I appliqued through all layers.

Step 15) Position and glue the owl’s brow on the owl head, following the guidelines.  Applique it down all of the way around.

Step 16) Sew the top and bottom borders on the center.  Sew the side borders on.

Step 17) Piece together your fat quarters and some scraps from the front to create a backing that is at least 40 x 40 inches.  I made each fat quarter a rough quadrant and added some of the nine-patch leftovers to give it some interest, and a few plain 2-1/2 inch strips as well.  Be creative!  I liked how it used up some of my scraps.

The back is pieced from scrap pieces and fat quarters

Step 18) Layer, baste, and quilt as desired.  To get the look on my quilt: meander quilt around the open area of the center.  On the owl itself I quilted random loop-de-loops in loose rows to look sort of like feathers.  I did a series of small loops on the owls brow, not as close together and not as random.  Around the owl’s eyes I made lines that radiated out, sort of like how a child might draw rays of sunlight emanating from the sun.  I did not break the thread – i.e, I radiated out, then back in, then out, in, etc. until I’d made a semi-circle around an eye.  Then I repeated on the other eye.  On the nine patches I quilted each square corner-to-corner.  It ends up resembling an argyle pattern.

Step 19) Machine sew the binding to the front, wrap it around to the back and hand-sew down.  Attach your button eyes & label.

Who-who!

Copyright 2011 Kelley Koszegi

Please note – I am not compensated in any form by the companies that I mentioned above.

PS – if you would like a chance to win a kit to create this quilt yourself, hop on over to episode 30 and leave a comment telling me what you are grateful for!  You can also get a second entry by subscribing to my blog feed and leaving me a comment that you are a subscriber.

4 Comments

pq, February 5th 2011 | Tags: ,
Posted in Free Stuff, Quilting for Charity, Tutorial

Episode #4 – Quilt fix by Snail Mail

Episod #4 – Quilt fix by snail mail

There are lots of ways to get your quilt fix by snail mail – who doesn’t love getting mail?!

Show notices – glossy brochures to upcoming shows are lovely to get.  Here are a few I’ve recently received:

Sewing catalogs!  I love catalogs!  Sure you can shop on the internet too but then you don’t get the joy of touching glossy paper.  And you can still browse when the electricity goes out.

Magazines!!  There are tons of magazines to read, here are the three I get:

What about…

  • Block of the Month programs – otherwise known as BOM’s.
  • Fabric subscriptions – some shops offer a subscription service similar to fruit-of-the-month clubs, with themes like Bali or Moda fabric, etc.

Many thanks to those leaving comments!!!

1 Comment

pq, February 15th 2009 | Tags: , ,
Posted in AQS, Free Stuff, Giveaways, John Flynn, Keepsake Quilting, NE Ohio Quilting activities, podcast episode, quilt guild, Quilt shows