Sew Very Smooth Blog
Starting My First Block
by Steve Tippets on 01/26/18I'm so excited! My first two blocks came for my block of the month club! Most months I'll just receive one block, but there will be a few with two and I kind of love that the first month is a double block month. Look at these fabrics! Aren't they beautiful?!
I just now realize that I didn't include the piece of white fabric I also received. Oops.
Anyway, these are hand dyed fabrics and they feel amazing. The end result will be fantastic. I was a little nervous about the possibility of bleeding, especially since these are shades of red. Thankfully Cristy Fincher, who owns Purple Daisies Quilting and who is running the block of the month club, is willing to answer any questions one might have, no matter how silly it may be.
I emailed Cristy and asked her about the possibility of bleeding and if there was anything I could do to help prevent that. She responded faster than I expected, which was nice, and she assured me that they had been thoroughly washed and shouldn't bleed. However, if I wanted peace of mind about it I could get a corner of the fabric wet and then press it with a hot iron on top of a light colored towel. If it was going to bleed, the color would get on the towel.
I will admit I wanted the peace of mind so I did test three of the six shades of red. Once I got the third done I felt pretty confident the others wouldn't bleed either.
Look, not a trace of color on that white towel!
I spent some time this week watching the tutorials that are available to those participating. They're long, but worth taking the time to watch, especially if you're a beginner like me.
We will be doing half square triangles using a method that I've never done, so I appreciated the help with cutting the pieces out. I have a feeling I'm going to like this method, but I won't know until I start sewing.
Before I started cutting this time, I made sure to starch my fabric when I pressed them. I hadn't done that before but it really made a difference. My Aunt LuAnn told me to make sure I starch and I'll never not starch again.
The tutorial also went over a new cutting technique that I had never tried, but it makes cutting so much easier. It seems obvious now, but if you cut with the ruler on the left of the fabric and have the ruler cover the portion that you want to cut off, you have a more secure cut.
It also helps to have a grippy ruler that won't slide around. I had already purchased my ruler and didn't want to go to the store to get another, more expensive one. So instead I took some So Tacky Technology, the same technology used on the Ideal Seam Guide, and placed small strips of it at three different points on my ruler. Now, my ruler grips the fabric the same way the Ideal Seam Guide grips the sewing machine. You just buy replacement strips for the seam guide and use them on your other tools. So helpful and easy.
With the tutorials and getting all the cutting done, I didn't have time for anything else, but the cutting went faster than it ever has before. Just last week I mentioned that prepping is my least favorite part, but now that I know these tricks I don't think I'll be dreading it any more.
Do you have any tips and tricks up your sleeve to help with the preparation process?
I Need Help With Curves
by Steve Tippets on 01/19/18Okay, so this week I wanted to do step four first, which is to applique the poppies onto the 6" squares I cut, just so I wouldn't lose the small pieces that make up the flowers. Also, I'm nervous about them so I kind of wanted to get them over with.
Slipping is a big concern of mine. No matter how hard you try to keep two pieces of fabric together they always manage to shift. I know you can pin it, but then you have to deal with potential holes in your material, not to mention the time it takes to get them pinned properly.
Thankfully, this weekend I received a visit from my Aunt and Uncle by marriage who own Sew Very Smooth, Steve and LuAnn Tippets. I think I forgot to mention I was their niece when I first introduced myself. Shame on me. Anyway, they left me with some materials and a lot of advice. One bit of advice is very helpful in this exact situation which is to use elmer's glue to baste the material together. It's starch based and water soluble so it will come out when it gets washed. Fantastic.
Knowing that it would be extremely helpful to have these pieces stay put, I took the time to glue my poppies together so all I'd have to do is sew around the edge with a fun applique stitch.
I was so excited to start sewing, but then I realized I'd never done applique with a sewing machine before and I didn't want to make a mess of these flowers.
I decided it would be best to practice a blanket stitch on just a scrap of material. I've done it by hand before, but I've never tried it on a machine. The stitch itself was easy, but once I tried to turn it went horribly wrong. There was bunching and gathered thread on the back, not to mention there wasn't much of a turn happening.
Here is a small sampling of my attempts.
It looks awful. You can't see all the stitching that is under the striped material. I had more, but then decided I needed to try and sew two pieces together and ended up covering most of it up. Oops.
So how do I master a curved stitch? I watched a video where it was suggested to practice tracing a curved line on paper on the machine but with a non-threaded needle. The problem with that is the needle gets dull from the paper so you have to throw it away once you're done practicing. That doesn't seem very ideal. I am considering drawing some curved lines on a scrap of material and trying to follow that. I just need to figure out the best way to turn material.
The feed dogs make it difficult to turn, but I'm not sure I'm ready to attempt to sew with them down. I just know my stitches would end up in multiple different widths if I did that. Do the feed dogs have to be down in order to do a curve or can they stay up? Also, I've heard of quilting gloves. Are they really useful in situations like this or do they just create more problems?
For now I'm going to have to put the applique on pause and go back to the first step, half square triangles. I know how to do those. I think after dealing with this struggle it will do me some good to do something I have confidence in. I'm hoping to gain some insights before I attempt the applique stitching again. I probably have a few weeks, but I'll eventually need to tackle them.
That Was Harder Than I Thought It Would Be
by Steve Tippets on 01/12/18This week was spent focused on cutting out my material for my table runner project. I'm really glad I didn't plan on making any other progress because I needed the whole week to get all of the cutting done.
Part of the problem was I had a choice between using a charm pack or using a variety of fabric with different colors. I couldn't find a charm pack with enough variation so I decided to just do the variations of fabric. The problem was I didn't have as much of a variation as the pattern wanted so I had to figure out how I was going to incorporate the fabric options I did have. I think I have it figured out, but I won't know for sure until it's time to assemble the blocks together.
I have to know, where do you all get your charm packs? The only ones I could find were color themed so I would have thirty 5" blocks of different blues, but none of the other colors I needed. That meant I'd need six different charm packs and I'd only use at the most an eighth of each one. Is it possible to find charm packs with more variation in them? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and get a bunch of different ones and keep the leftovers on hand for future projects?
Another issue that I wasn't expecting was the need to cut out shapes with curves, not just straight lines. I had to cut out circles and leaves to make the poppies that will go down the center of the table runner. It was intimidating, but I was able to get through it.
I was able to use my small rotary cutter for the first time which made cutting relatively easy, once I got the hang of it.
Is there a trick to cutting out patterns? I just made one 'stencil' and held it in place while I cut around it because I needed 24 leaves and I didn't want to cut out 24 paper leaves. Going forward, should I take the time to cut out individual stencils and pin them to the material? These were so small it was easy to keep them where I needed them, but I imagine it will be harder if the item I'm cutting out is bigger.
These will be applique'd to a block of fabric, which I'm a bit nervous about. I'll probably be tackling that next week, out of order, just so I don't lose any of the leaves or stems. I've done applique before, but never with a machine.
The rest of the cutting was relatively straight forward. Lots of squares and rectangles.
Now that they're all cut and I can see them all together I'm hoping the colors all work and don't clash. I feel like bad fabric choices can really ruin a great project.
I have all the sizes stacked together so you can't see all of the fabric in this picture. What I can see I like together, but there is some orange hidden in there that I'm a bit worried about. And the blues are brighter in the picture than they are in person. We'll see how this goes.
I'm ready to move on to the next step. Bring it on.
