Today Paulette will show you how to make a very popular pattern, our Kaleidoscope Placemats Pattern 598. This is a great pattern for using up scraps, and it’s also perfect for charm squares!
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Here’s some of our favorite charm squares:
Mini charm packs from Connecting Threads: All Mini Charm Packs
Some more charm packs that would be perfect for this pattern:
Video transcript:
hi I’m Paulette Morrissey from Tulip Square and this week I’m going to show you how to make one of our most popular placemat patterns the Kaleidoscope placement block pattern this one has been very popular for us and we’ve had a few people asking how to make it since it looks kind of difficult but it really isn’t so we’re going to take you over to the sewing machine and show you just how easy this one is to make so let’s get going and make the Kaleidoscope placemats
okay to start with I’m going to take the two and a half inch squares and I’m going to sew them into strips of three for one place mat I will need three strips of three like so and for your whole set you would need 12 strips of three three for each placemat so I’m just going to sew these together I start by putting them in pairs and then I will sew a third one to each pair now you have more pieces here than you need but you’ll need them later for another step so after I’ve sewn all the pairs I’ve made three pairs now I’m just going to sew a third piece to the end of each pieces and then I will have my strips of three so I’m going to go ahead and sew all those three and then I’m going to press them okay when you press your strips make sure that you press each one with all of the squares going in the same direction I’ve got them all going in the same direction and then when I sew them together I can take one of them I think I’ll take this one with the dark color in the middle and I can flip it so these seams are going up and these seams are going down and these seams are going up so when I sew them together into a nine square block the seams will nestle nicely you can see how they that reduces a lot of bulk especially when you’re quilting I’m going to go ahead and sew these three into a square and then I will press it and be right back now I’ve got that nine square section all done and I’m just going to set that aside for now and now we’re going to work on our larger squares and pair them up and what you’re going to do on the back of the white or your light color you’re going to draw a diagonal line
nice and accurate because you want to sew on both sides of it
Nice accurate line like that and you’re going to sew a quarter of an inch on each side of it with one of these okay so I’m going to sew a quarter inch on each side of that line and you’ve got this sewing on both sides like here
Now you’re going to cut on the line you drew
And then you will have two half square triangles and you can press these towards the darker color and you’ll do this twice I’ve got two more pieces to do that to and then you’ll have four pieces like this and then you can set these all aside as well and then we’ll go on to the next step and next we’re going to take the rectangles and I made them all the same color they can be all different if you want I made them all the same color for this one and you’re going to take the white triangles and we’re going to make some flying geese so we start by sewing let me get the right side here I just sew a diagonal line from here to here on each piece on the right side of the rectangle now when you sew these diagonally you can either draw a line on here and then just sew right on the line or I like to do this on my sewing machine I’ve got a line of tape sewn stuck down so that I can follow that tape back to a centerline here
and I can set my needle right on the top point here
and then if I keep this point on the left side of this piece of tape I will have a perfect straight diagonal line
you see that right there nice diagonal line so I’m going to go ahead and sew all of those diagonal lines and then we’ll continue now once you’ve got those all sewn on like this you’re going to cut off that corner of each one leaving a quarter inch seam allowance like so
Cut them all off and then you’re going to go press that corner to the corner like so I’m going to go I’m going to cut these and sew them oops I already sewed them I’m going to cut them and press them and I’ll be right back
Now to finish these and these are all flying geese I’m going to sew another one to the opposite side of each one like so oh and I wanted to mention that when you’re sewing any kind of a diagonal line like that you want to start along the edge if there is a fabric edge to be along start your corner there rather than starting it at the two points because this will have a tendency to get caught by your machine sometimes how your machines like to eat ends of fabric if you start here you’ve got a whole line of fabric to save you from doing that okay now I pressed I’ve trimmed off that second corner and pressed them also towards the corner so I have four of these for each placemat and now what I’m going to do is take these little rectangles and I’m going to sew one to each edge of each of these pieces to each flank so there’s going to be one here and one here on each side so I’m going to go ahead and sew all those on okay I pressed them all with the little strips pressed towards the strips everything pressing outwards so I’ve got four of these and now I’m going to take these longer strips and I’m going to sew these I’m going to sew these quarter inch seam along the bottom of each of those now I have four of these pieces so we’ve got these now is I’m going to sew two of them to opposite sides of our centerpiece our center 9 square
Just sew this one here and this one here and I’m going to press them towards those white strips again and I’ll be right back okay so we’ve got the center section sewn right here and then I’m going to take the remaining ones of these two strips and I’m going to sew triangles like so our triangles squares here I’m going to sew one here and one here making sure that this is the placement with these two triangles sideways like that and this triangle pointing up I’m just going to sew this one here and that one to the other side now we have two pieces like this now we’re going to sew these all together like so I’m just going to put this here the quarter inch seam this here for quarter inch seam I’ll go do that I’ll be right back okay so now you’ve got that part done so what you’re going to do is take all of your little remaining 2-inch two and a half inch squares and you’re going to sew them into strips six squares long so for one placemat I’m only going to need two of those and for all of your placemats if you’re making this set of four you’re going to need eight of those strips so strips of six now you’ve got two strips like this for each placemat with just six random squares on them now you’re going to take your main piece your main block and you’re going to sew these long white strips to two sides we’re going to sew a strip down on each side here and here and press it and then I’ll be right back all we have to do is sew these square strips to the outside edge of each side and we’re done so I’m going to go do that and we’ll be finished and there is the finished placemat
and now you know how to make the Kaleidoscope Placemat that was pretty easy wasn’t it it’s got a good number of steps but they’re all very easy and if you take it step by step you can see that they’re nothing difficult about making this and it’s a great way to use up scraps so we tried it in this one is just all blue scraps and it beautiful in batiks it’s beautiful in multicolor scraps you name it it we haven’t made one yet that didn’t turn on really pretty so I hope you enjoyed that video and if you did please hit the like button hit the Subscribe button and hit the notification button if you’d like to be notified when we put out our patterns on I mean our videos on Saturday morning so we hope you have a good week happy sewing and we’ll see you next time bye-bye
Can you give me the measurements of the pieces of fabric to make the kadeioloscope place mate. I love that .
Thank you for your video.
It’s all in the pattern, it’s the very first link above, or click right here: https://tulipsq.com/598