Today Tes is sewing our latest pattern, Kitchen Blossoms Placemats, and you can join her. It’s our pattern #625. Come sew along with us!
Video transcript:
Hi I’m Tes Scholtz with Tulip Square, and today we’re going to have a sew-along. We’re going to make these Kitchen Blossoms Placemats. It’s a brand new pattern that we just released today, pattern number 625, and the link is in the description box below. So if you want to grab a copy and sew along with us, that’s where you’ll find it. It’s got these cool little 3D triangles you know a little extra jazzy pizzazz, and if you stick around I will show you how to make these cute little coasters that go along with it, and you don’t even need any extra fabric for these because you use little pieces, you’ll see. Let’s head over the sewing machine and get started.
I’ve got my pieces all cut and the first thing I’m going to do is take an ivory square, and the orange squares
Now again, all these sizes are in the pattern so I’m not going to be telling you as we go along.
So you’re going to take an ivory square, and an orange square, right sides together. Now the pattern does say to draw a diagonal line across the middle. We’re not big fans of drawing diagonal lines, so we use this striping tape. They actually make special quarter inch striping tape that’s made, that’s made just for that, but we happen to have it this hanging around so we just used that.
When I’m doing a corner like that, I like to put… I like to use what people call it a header, an ender or whatever you want to call it, just a scrap of fabric, so that it doesn’t eat this corner. So you want to line up that end with your needle, and line this end up with the stripe.
Sew diagonal lines.
One thing I like to do is, see the pattern calls for you to cut this off and throw that away. No no I keep these.
Just set up my foot to be about a half inch away, so my seam is going to go right here and my, my new seam is going to go about a half an inch away from the center seam. I’m just going to sew them all.
You’re just going to cut this corner off right between those two seams, see that?
Now these are for the pattern we’re working on, and these…
Next you’re going to take 16 of your red squares, and you’re going to fold it in half and you’re going to press that like this. Fold it right neatly in half, and then you’re going to take that and you’re going to fold, right in the middle, one corner down and press that. So you have this see, one corner, and then you’re going to take the other corner and fold it down, and you’re going to press that. And while they’re still hot from the iron I like to clip it. So see…got your folded in half, got your corner and your corner pressed down. See because I clipped it it’s holding its shape there. See how this one’s kind of bleh, it wasn’t clipped. So I like to press those all, and clip them, and then we’ll move on to the next step. So let me finish pressing these.
So there we have these, and I do need to press these towards the orange square, so let me go press those open.
Now we have all these, we have our cute little triangles, we’ve got our black print, and the ivory. Now you’re going to put one of these in between each one of these. So make sure that the side with the fold, with the open edge there, is towards the ivory square. So the solid, the solid side is on top.
I’ll try not to do that in midair, how about that. You do that, and then you take your black one and put it right on top of that and you line up all your edges just like that.
Then you are going to sew a nice quarter inch seam right here.
Hold that down, you can just hold it in place. If you feel more comfortable to pin it or clip it, you can ,but it’s, you don’t have to go very far.
So I’ll just show you this one so you can see what it looks like. See you’ve sandwiched that in there, see it looks like that. This part towards ivory, solid towards the black okay.
So one more time, take your triangle, with the open part, put that down on top of the ivory, put your black square on top of it.
Now we’re going to press these all towards the black square. And when you press them open, press them so you leave the red over there. Press it this way, don’t press it this way, press it this way okay.
You’re going to use half of these pieces, and you’re going to sew them to each side of your grey square. Your center square, like so.
I only have one, because I’m only making one placemat, for the purposes of this video. I’m just going to sew along here. Now we’re going to sew this one on to here. Just like that.
A little note about fabric like this with checkers and things like that, you just have to train your eye. See it’s not exactly straight, and a lot of times checkered fabrics aren’t precisely straight. So your brain will want to follow the lines. Don’t let it. Follow the presser foot. Follow the foot, and follow your quarter inch seams.
Then we’re going to press both of these toward the center square. Okay we’re going to take these squares that we made in step one, and we’re going to sew each one to one of our rust colored squares. You want to make sure they’re all oriented the same way.
Make sure the long orange side is sewn to the red. You don’t want to put it like this, and make sure the other orange is at the bottom so you don’t want to put it like this either. They have to all be the same.
Orange here, orange on the bottom.
Sew a nice quarter inch seam right there.
Then we’re going to press these towards the orange.
You’re going to take these four, and you’re going to take four of your long ivory pieces, dust on there, turn it so the red rust color is on the bottom. Sew this to the side of that, like so.
Now, we will take half of these, and the rest of these, and we’ll sew them together like this.
Put that right there, nice quarter inch seam.
Next we take these squares that we made, take one of these and then turn this. This one stays pointing up, this one points over to the side.
Sew your quarter inch seam right there. Nest these little seams together.
Okay now you have two of those, and you have this. You have two of those per placemat, so you should have eight of those. Next we’re going to do this. So that’s how the center block will go together. So first we’re going to sew this, right along there, quarter inch seam. Make sure you nest all your little seams together. If it helps you can clip them to make sure they stay in place, but if you did your quarter inch seams properly they should nestle all nicely together like that.
We’re going to sew the other side too just like that. Nest your seams again, and again sew gently over these, where it’s a little bulkier there.
There is your centerpiece, now we’re going to turn that into our placemat.
We’ll take our rust colored strips, and sew one to each side like so.
Then we take your other half of, other half of your strips, and your little black squares, and we’ll sew one to each end, like so.
Next, we’re going to sew these to each side of that.
Just like this. Now you can see right here how important it is to have your quarter inch seams so that things like this line up.
And we’ll just sew the other one on, to the other end.
Ok, next we’re going to make some flying geese so,
Take our long pieces, and orange pieces, going to sew right there, and then cut and flip, and sew another one here, and cut and flip.
You can draw your line or you can use a line on your sewing machine.
And sew another line, half an inch away from this one so I can save my corners.
We’re just going to go press these, and then I’ll come back and do the other side.
Now we’re going to do the same thing on this corner.
And as Mom has pointed out before, when talking about your machine trying to eat the corners, it’s easier if you start from this corner than it is starting from this corner.
I’ll do this corner saving trick again. Again this is totally optional, you can just cut that off and do whatever you want with it. This is what I like to do with it.
I have those all pressed and we’re just going to sew these together, in strips of three, like that.
You’re going to sew this one to this one, sew that one to that one. Look at all that fluff.
Then we’re just going to add another one, onto here.
Here we have our center block.
Sew this right to the edge here. Sew one to that end, and one to the other end like that.
Last but not least, we’re going to sew these to each end like that.
And there it is. Your finished placemat top ready to be quilted and bound. It has these cool little 3D accents on it, right there.
So remember all these little corners we cut off? Well, we’re going to press them all open like that, and then we’re going to have a little fun with them. We have 16 of these little squares for each placemat. So now you can play with them and decide what you want to make with them.
So all we’re going to do is sew these rows together.
I’m not pressing those yet and I will let you know why in a minute.
We’re going to sew those pairs together, and then we will press them.
I want to make sure they’ll nest together on the next step, so, I’ll lay them all out, and then you want to press, want to press these ones all that way, these ones all that way, and then press these ones all this way, and these ones all this way. So you alternate. That way when you sew them all together they’ll nest nicely.
Let’s flip these over so we can see what we’re doing here.
Now we’re going to sew these two together.
See those seams will nest now, because of the way we pressed them. One one way and one the other.
Anyway you can cut these off, these little dog dog ears if you want to.
You’ll notice, you can’t even see them, so I’m just being lazy and leaving them there.
Well I’ll just show you. See you can just come along and nip these off. I find they’re really not in the way until now.
Now I have this, and this, and we’re going to sew those together.
And look at that. You’ve got a cute little coaster to go with your placemat.
I’ll show you how to finish that right now. So I just took a piece of this orange fabric, and cut it to the same size as that.
I’m going to take a piece of batting.
See I’m just going to move this like a half inch, because I don’t want all this batting in the seam I’m about to make.
We have this, and we have our piece, right there, and we have this piece of batting, right there,
And now we’re going to sew all the way around, except we’re going to leave most of one side open so that we can turn it.
I’m just going to start right here.
Then we take this, we’re going to turn it right side out.
Now I’m going to just fold this under, and I’m going to go press it. There I’ve tucked those both under about a quarter inch and pressed them.
Now we’re at the thickest part of the seam here, I’m just going to pin that in place, also known as clipping. I’m clipping that in place I’m not pinning it. Then I’m just going to top stitch all the way around, and catch that in the seam as I go. Now you could use a decorative little stitch here if you wanted to. I could put orange bobbin thread in…
This is why I keep all these colors handy. Look at that.
I’ll just swap that out, you won’t even see the stitching on the back side.
I’m going to start here so that when I come around, I’ll go over this twice and that’s just to make sure I get this in there.
And there. And if you wanted you could do, you could sew some more top stitching, maybe a line here, a line there, or even sew a line right in there, because these are separated right now. But it makes a pretty great coaster just as is.
And there it is, all quilted and bound, and we use the the color from the center square as the binding. So that ties it all together nicely. Matching coaster too. It’s funny I realize when I was laying out the squares for this, I put the white square in the center, and then when I sewed them all together I put the orange one in the center. As you can see it works out just as well either way. You could even do two of each. All kinds of options with those little squares. Then I wanted to show you, we used the same color scheme but completely different fabrics to make this one. See so there’s still orange, orange, black print, and black print, and rust color, but it looks quite a bit different wouldn’t you say? Another one for another look, is this one, and again we use the same center square for the binding and that really ties it all together nicely, so there we have that. So if you liked today’s video, hit that little like button. Don’t forget to subscribe, and hit that little bell if you want to be notified every time we have a new video, which will be Saturday. So we’ll see you then. Happy sewing!