Today’s sew-along is a pretty table topper with appliqué potted flowers. It also makes a great mini quilt!
Get your copy of the pattern here, and sew along with Paulette: Potted Flower Table Topper
If you’d rather have something other than flowers, swap out the appliqué for any one of our 365 free appliqué designs!
Video transcript:
Hi everyone I’m Paulette Morrissey from Tulip Square, and this week we’re going to do a video on one of our patterns that we’ve just updated. It’s called the Potted Flowers Table Topper and I’m just going to back up a bit and show you what it looks like.
There it is, it is 30 inches square when it’s done, it’s got log cabin corners and it’s got these little appliqué flowers like so. Easy to do, this is pattern number 513 if you’re interested in making this table topper. And this video was made for people who bought that pattern, or are thinking of buying the pattern and they’d like a little help, or they just like to do a little you know sew along with something, this is it. And also I want to mention, that because it’s such a very generic design, you know just a simple square with some, with some log cabins in the corner, if you’re not into flowers you can look at our free appliqué designs we’ve got 365 different appliqués and you could put any kind of appliqués virtually every appliqué that we offer would fit in the same squares as these flowers. So you could make your whole appliqué, your whole table topper could be, black and white checks, or red and white checks like a cute little café, and then you could put the little chefs in the four panels that have the flowers, or you could put fruits and vegetables in them, or anything else that goes with your kitchen. If you’re in Florida you can put flamingos in there, whatever you want. But anyway, I’m going to show you how to do the appliqué sections, and how to do a quick log cabin corner block, if you’re not sure how to make a log cabin they’re very easy, and then how to throw the whole thing all together and you’ve got a really cute table topper. So let’s head over to the ironing board and get started with the appliqué first. Here we go.
All right to make this cute little table topper the first thing we need to do is make four sections with the little flowers on them which is like this, and that’s how they get sewn and everything. So we’re going to start with that, and if you don’t know how to appliqué I’m going to give you a quick little lesson on how to appliqué. So you need your page with the pieces on it that have to be traced, you need some fusible interfacing, I like heat and bond there’s also, this is heat and bond light, there’s also heat and bond and there’s other brands, but this is the brand that I kind of like. So what you do is you trace all your pieces, and I’m just going to trace a couple and show you.
Have some good light so you can see. I’m just going to trace a couple of pieces like this and we’ve got another leaf right here, and keep your pieces close together so you’re not wasting a lot of your heat and bond. And make sure that you save small scraps like this piece because it’s very useful for a lot of small projects. And then I’m going to cut this little stem right here, we’re going to just go like that, and these don’t have to be exact because they are a little organic flower pieces so they don’t have to be perfect. And then I’m going to take these and I’m going to cut around them loosely and I would do this with all of pieces on the page, but I’m just going to show you a couple. We don’t have to waste time doing all of them. I’ve got some of them already drawn on over here.
And you’re not cutting these out completely, you’re just cutting them out like so, and we’ll cut out this little stem, and this is where you go dig into your scrap bin if you want to, or you use the same fabric as you’re using for your table topper, depending on what you want it to look like. You’re going to take your fabric, this is just a little scrap of green I’m going to use, wrong side up and you’re just going to press these on and follow the manufacturer’s suggestions for whatever of the heat and bond stuff you’re using, the fusible, you don’t use steam for these, so make sure your steam is turned off, and you’re just going to press these little pieces in place. They don’t need a whole lot of pressing.
Do a couple more, get all three of these little green pieces on here.
On camera would be better wouldn’t it. Okay so then you’ve got all your little pieces like this and then you’re going to cut them out. Now this is when you use the actual lines on your drawings and cut them out.
Got a leaf, we’ve got a stem here.
I could have put that right up against the side of the fabric.
Here’s another leaf here.
And I’ve got a little pile here of all the pieces I already traced and we’re just going to cut them all out really quickly.
For this pattern which is Potted Posies pattern number 513, you can use all the same color selections like I’m doing and keep it all rather uniform, or you can do it all random. You can make every flower a different color and you could make all of these little pots and everything all different colors, it’s just up to you. You could also, and here’s a kind of a cute idea I might have to try, is you could use instead of the flowers, you could go to our free 365 different appliqués and find something you like in there and make those appliqués in the squares instead of the flowers. And there that’s all of our pieces cut out for this little flower picture. Now keep in mind if you’re making the table topper you’re going to be cutting out four of each piece. You’re going to be… There is a template page that looks like this. You’re going to cut them out. Like this one, I cut this out and this is the top template, I cut this out. Okay so you’re just going to cut those two pieces out and then, I got to move these guys out of the way a little bit, you to take your fabric, the piece that’s for your flower block, make sure it’s pressed nice and flat.
I like to start by putting the bottom template kind of like right there. Now to take the backing off of these pieces, if you bend a corner towards the paper you’ll see that they separate quite nicely here. I’ll try to show you on a bigger piece. If you bend towards the paper they separate. Can you see that how the fabric is down here, they separate nice and easily and then you peel this off, and you can see the shiny stuff on the back of the fabric. If you bend towards the fabric nothing happens. So you have to bend towards the paper and then the paper folds and the fabric doesn’t, and then you just peel them off easily. So that works with all of the pieces just bend towards the paper and peel it off. Got one more little leaf here, and we got the little top of the planter. Okay so we’re going to start by putting the stem so it extends down into the pot a little bit.
And these don’t have to be exact this is just kind of to give you an eyeball of where you want the pieces to go, and if you don’t want to use the templates don’t use them.
This is just if you kind of want the pieces all the same, like so, and then I’m going to just touch this with iron just a little bit. I don’t want it to stick to the template. Okay I’ll take the template off you know that goes on there.
Got the leaves just a little bit above the planter, so that’s where I’m going to put them, just a little bit above like so, and remember you can rearrange them however you want, just make sure you keep all of the edges of your appliqué, however you arrange it, make sure that there’s at least a half an inch around the edge of everything. And you’re going to put the top one up here, so the big flower piece goes like so more or less. And then you can see, this piece goes right here, then I can just pull this off because we don’t want to accidentally fuse part of the paper down.
Like so, and then we’re just going to stick this little guy in the middle, like so.
And that’s all you do to make the appliqué piece, and then we’re going to appliqué around all the edges. Do some simple stitching. What I’m going to do is a little appliqué on here. I’m going to do some real simple straight stitching and a little blanket stitch. So what you do is you’re going to stitch around the outside edge and catch all your loose edges. Like I’m going to go here, and go around here, go around the stems, go around the flowers, okay.
I’m using white on this. You can also use thread that would match each color. You could do some tan on here, some green thread here, and some purple thread on the flower. For these I just feel like using white on the whole thing.
Take your time when you get to corners.
I’m going to go up the stem, and around the leaf, and up the stem, and back down and around the other leaf.
Also when you’re stitching, make sure that the right hand side of whatever stitch you’re using, is not hitting your appliqué piece, and the left side stitching does. You don’t want to break the edge, right along the edge because that will cause fraying. So make sure the right hand side of your stitches do not hit the very edge of that. The right hand stitches hit the background and did not hit the appliqué piece, and the left hand stitches caught the appliqué piece. Now this is a blanket stitch, a simple blanket stitch on your sewing machine. You can also use just a plain old zigzag works fine for this too or you can use straight stitch.
Okay now I’m going to switch over to a plain old straight stitch, and I’m just going to go up and down and around each flower petal.
Stay a little bit from the edge, so if this ever goes in the washing machine, which it would if it’s a table topper, these edges might fray because I’m not sewing right close to the edge, and they might fray a little bit and that’s fine for little flower petals.
And when I get to the top of this oval piece of the appliqué I’m going to go right up to the edge and then I’m going to stitch really close to it to get to the next petal. You won’t even see that.
Now I’m going to catch this little circle in the center.
So now that is all done, and what you’re going to need to do is make three more of them, and next we’re going to make four of these log cabin blocks. And if you if you’re familiar with log cabin blocks you don’t need to really watch this, or even if you’re using the pattern right now you don’t really need a lot of help to make a log cabin block, but if you do need a little help to make one, or you don’t remember exactly how to make one, we’re going to make one right now, and you’re going to need four of these. Okay we’re going to start by sewing these two pieces together. The two smallest squares, in this case it’s a tan and a light purple, and I’m going to sew those together with a nice quarter inch seam.
I’m only sewing one of the log cabin squares right now, but if you’re doing all four of them you would of course chain all four of these when you’re sewing them. And then I’m just going to press this open, and then you’re going to take the smallest purple left and you’re going to sew it right here.
So what you’re going to do is end up just going around and around and around with each of the next larger pieces, so the second piece of one color is always the same size as the first piece of the next color, and this will go like this, because you’re doing the purples are all going to work out this way, and the greens are all going to go this way. But it’s always this one and this one are the same size, and then this one and this one will be the same size, which will be the next purple, which will go here, and it’s the same size as this one. So you’re just going to keep going around and around, so we’re going to just do this really quickly and put this one right here. So I put this one on, I press this way, just press that way, now I’m going to put this one on.
And there we have our log cabin square, and I made four of those, so now we’ve got four of these, and we’ve got four of these, and the next thing we need to make is a little square that goes right in the middle. This is not a big deal of a square. I’m using purple for the middle square. I’m just going to sew these two small pieces here, on each side of this center square. This would be a good one to do a fussy cut of a flower or something if you’ve got it. And then I’m just going to sew these two pieces like so. Whoops. One on each side of this. All right, now we’re going to take this center piece, and we’re going to sew a flower to each side of it like so. Now we’ve got one big strip like this, and we’re going to make the two side strips. For this one you’re going to sew a flower piece to the one of the log cabins, and you’re going to sew it so the green goes up and away at the top of the flower. That’s where this one gets sewn. You’re going to do two just like that. So now you’ve got two like this, and you’re going to sew the other two right here, also with the green against the flower and the green at the top. So we’re going to sew those two pieces on next. Now you have two strips like this, and you have one strip like this. This is your center strip, and you’re going to sew these each to the center strip. Put the flowers all towards the center. I’m going to lay this one right here, and sew along this top edge. Now we have this and we’re going to sew the last strip over here, so we have all four flowers facing the center. We’ve got this all four of the green pieces are going towards the centers. Now if you wanted, you could have put all four purple things going towards the center, just as long as it’s uniform. And now we’ve just got to sew the borders on. Now for our borders, I’m using some dark purple squares for the corners and green for the edges. So we start by sewing border strips to two opposite sides.
We have two of the edges have the green border on them and two of them don’t. So what we’re going to do now is add the two green borders on the opposite ones, with the purple corners that are going to go right up here. So now we sew these little purple squares to both ends of the long strips of the last two strips.
And then I’m going to sew the strip, one strip to each remaining edge that has not got its border on it. Make sure we carefully line up the corners here.
And when you get down to the other corner, if your seams are real accurate quarter inch seams, this final corner should match up perfectly with your other border piece. Sew the other one on the same way, and then we’re going to press this open. And we’re all done, got the edges all done you’ve got your corners.
So I hope you like that video on how to make this cute little table topper, and there it is again one more view. It’s 30 inches square, you’ve got four squares of appliqué, and four squares of log cabin blocks. Fun to do and like I said you can alter the flowers for something else if you like, just have fun with it. It’s a lot of fun to do. Table toppers are kind of fun to have on your table, different things for different seasons, you can make seasonal ones or whatever you like. But if you like this video, please hit the like button, hit the Subscribe button, and be sure you check back every Saturday because we’re adding a new video every single week. We hope we see you again next week, in the meantime have a good week, happy sewing, we’ll see you next time. Bye bye.