Lanyard Tutorial

I've been wanting to make a lanyard for myself for a little while now to use when I go to conferences for work.  With QuiltCon just a few weeks away, I figured now was as good a time as every to make one for myself and one for KK.  Here's a tutorial on how I made my lanyard.

*Note, these instructions are for a lanyard hook with a 1" opening.

1. Cut a piece of fabric 3.75" x 35"

2. Iron your strip in half lengthwise

3. Using the crease you just created, fold the edges in, aligning the edge of the fabric with the crease and iron down.  Repeat for both sides of the fabric. 

4. Fold your strip in half and Iron.  I used starch here to really set all of the seams. 

5. Using a scant seam allowance, sew both sides of your lanyard.  I like to sew the folded side first to avoid puckering and shifting. So far we've followed the same steps you can take to make a bag handle. 

6. Now it's time to sew the hook to the lanyard.  Lay your lanyard like shown in the photo above and below.  Arranging your lanyard like this helps it sit comfortably on your neck.

7. Insert the fabric through the hook.  To avoid raw edges showing, fold your edges under about 5/8" and sew using a tight zig zag or take several passes with a straight stitch.  I just uses a straight stitch because I was too lazy to change my the foot on my machine.

And there you have it, a quick lanyard.  These work up really fast.  I made two of them in about 45 minutes, and that was with stopping to take pictures throughout the process, calculating measurements, etc.

I made a second one out of some Tula Pink Salt Water for KK.  I thought the fabric was perfect for her since she loves the ocean and loves to scuba dive.

If you have a different size lanyard hook, I recommend measuring the opening, multiplying that by four and subtracting 1/4" to give you a little wiggle room.  In my case, my opening was 1" wide.  I multiplied that by 4 to get 4" and subtracted 1/4" to get a width of 3.75" for your starting width.

Tutorial - Charmingly Crazy Nine Patch Quilt

Charmingly Crazy Nine Patch

This is a quilt that I designed a while back and I wanted to share a tutorial on how to make it.  I made this quilt using four charm packs and some coordinating yardage.  The whole quilt is made using Basic Grey's Sultry line.

Here you can see what a basic block looks like.  It's a crazy nine patch that is sashed using a very light pink and then all of the blocks are sashed using a medium pink.  I didn't want a lot of contrast in this quilt, so I went for a lot of light and a few medium value fabrics to coordinate with the charm packs.

Materials

This tutorial is for the lap quilt, but I am also providing a materials list for other sizes should you want to make something smaller. 

	Table Runner (16” x 44”)	Table Topper (42” x 56”)	Wall Hanging (56” x 56”)	Lap Quilt (56” x 70”)
Number of Charm Packs (calculated with the average of 40 squares (or charms) per pack)	1 (27 charms total)	2 (54 charms total)	3 (81 charms total)	4 (108 charms total)
Block Sashing (light pink)	1/3 Yard	½ Yard	¾ Yard	1 Yard
Quilt Sashing and Inner Border (medium pink)	¼ Yard	½ Yard	2/3 Yard	¾  Yard
Border	N/A	1 Yard	1 Yard	1 Yard
Backing	¾ Yard	1 ½ Yards	3 Yards	4 Yards
Binding	¼ Yard	½ Yard	½ Yard	½ Yard

Optional: 3 ½” square acrylic ruler, paper plates for organizing groupings

Cutting

For this project, the numbers are for the lap quilt pictured above.

           

Preparation

If using fabric other than charm packs, cut your fabric into the required number of  5” squares.

Block Sashing (light pink) 
1. Cut the sashing fabric into 26 strips that are 1¼” x WOF (Width of Fabric).
2. Cross cut your sashing into 72 strips that measure 3 1/3” x 1¼”.
3. Cut an additional 48 sashing strips that measure 11” x 1¼”.
4. From the final 1 ¼” strips, cut 24 sashing strips that measure 12½” x 1¼”. 

Quilt Sashing (medium pink) 
5. Cut the quilt sashing fabric into 11 strips that measure 2 ¼” x WOF.
6. Cut 5 strips that measure 2¼” x 40”.
7. Cut 8 quilt sashing strips that measure 2¼” x 12½”.
8. Cut 2 strips that measure 2½” x 58”.  *Note that you will need three strips total for this.  Cut one of the strips in half and sew it to each of the other two strips and trim.

Border

9. From the border fabric, cut 6 strips that measure 6” x WOF”.

Directions

Note: All seams are ¼” 

Preparation
1. Make 12 piles of nine 5” charm squares to create your crazy nine patch block.  Make sure you have a good variety of colors in each pile so that one grouping doesn’t stand out more than the others.  

Sewing the Crazy Nine Patch

Repeat these steps for each grouping.



1. CAREFULLY align each pile so that all nine squares lie directly on top of each other.  It’s easiest to do this on your cutting board so that you don’t need to move your perfectly aligned pile and reposition it after you move it.  Aligning the piles is the only area where you’re going to need to be very precise, the rest of this step will require you to let loose.

2. Place your ruler vertically about a third of the way in on the left and at a slight angle.  Cut through all 9 layers of the pile.

3. Take ONE piece of fabric from the TOP of the smaller cut piece on the left and move it to the back of that same pile.  Throughout this entire section, you will always move the smaller piece of fabric.

 

4. Being careful not to change the order of the pile you just cut, sew the cut pieces together.  It is helpful if you chain piece the fabrics and keep them connected until after you’ve ironed all of the pieces to ensure that the order will always stay the same. 

5. Iron the rectangle and stack the pieces one on top of each other in the same order that you sewed your pieces.

6. On the right side of the now rectangle, place your ruler vertically about 1/3 of the way in at a slight angle and cut through all 9 layers.

 

7. Take TWO pieces from the smaller, cut side on the left and move it to the back of the pile. 

 

8. Repeat steps 4 and 5. 

9. Rotate the block 90 degrees to the right and place your ruler vertically on the pile about a third of the way from the left from the top and at a slight angle and cut through all 9 layers being careful not to move the pile around when cutting through the sewn seams. 

10. Take the top THREE pieces of fabric from the top, smaller cut section and move it to the back of that section.  Remember, you're always moving the smaller cut pieces of fabric here. 

 

11. Repeat steps 4 and 5.

12. Make your final cut by positioning your ruler vertically about a third of the way from the right of the pile and make your cut like in step 9. 

13. Take the top SIX pieces of fabric from the top of the smaller piece at the bottom of the section and move it to the bottom of that same pile.

 

14. Repeat steps 4 and 5.

15. Square up your crazy nine patch to 3½” square.  You can square up the nine patch at a slight angle if you want the block to look even more interesting.  

 

16. Repeat the entire step for each set of nine patches that you plan on making. 

Tips:

·         Mix up your angles so that your blocks look different from each other.  If they all look the same then you loose some of the crazy nine patch effect.

·         Make sure you cuts  at least ½” from the edge of the squares when creating your crazy nine patch blocks to avoid any one piece from being too small.

·         ALWAYS move the SMALLER piece from the cut section from the top to the bottom of the pile.

·         Use a new, sharp blade in your rotary cutter to make cutting through nine layers of fabric much easier.

·         Remember, it doesn’t need to be perfect, these squares are meant to look different!

·         Because you’re going to square off your block, you might want to make the center a bit smaller when cutting and sewing to allow for some extra fabric to be cut off on the outside blocks during the squaring process.

·         Chain piece your pieces together and don’t snip the thread until after you’ve ironed the pieces to ensure that the order never changes. 

Block Sashing

These instructions are for one block.  Repeat for each nine patch grouping.

1. On a design wall or other design surface, lay out your 9 nine patches into a 3x3 layout until you’ve found a layout you like.  Depending on the fabrics you’ve chosen, you might need to do some rotating of the blocks to find an appealing layout. 

2. Arrange and sew block sashing strips in each horizontal row to form three horizontal strips in the following order {sashing, block, sashing, block, sashing, block, sashing}.

3. Take 4 of the 12½” x 1½” strips and place them vertically in between the newly formed strips and on the top and bottom and sew together.  This should give you a 12½” square.

4. Repeat for each block.

Quilt Sashing
1. Using the12 ½” x 2¼” strips, sew the sashing in between three quilt blocks in the following order {block, sashing, block, sashing, block}.  You will not be adding sashing to the outside of the row right now.

2. Sew the five 40” x 2 ¼” strips to the pieces created in the previous step to begin assembling your quilt top. 

3. Sew the 2½” x 58” strips to the last two unsashed sides of the quilt top.     

 Borders
1.Create two strips from your border fabric that measure 6" x 58" and sew them to the sides of the quilt.

2. Create two strips from your border fabric that measure 6" x 55 ½" and sew them to the top and bottom of the quilt.

Finish your quilt!

 

How to Paper Piece - Part 3

I know, it's been a while between my How to Paper Piece posts.  Here I talk about the tools you'll need to paper piece and here I talk about some good books and patterns.

First you want to set your stitch length to 1.5.  You want to reduce the stitch length and increase the number of stitches per inch.  Why?  This perforates the paper a lot to make it easier to tear away after you're done.  It also creates more stitches so that a shorter length comes undone when moving and tearing the paper that you'll see we'll have to do.  I would also recommend using a 90/14 needle as it will punch a bigger hole in the paper, also making removal easier.

Step 1 - Place your piece for the #1, RIGHT SIDE UP on the BACK OF THE PAPER PATTERN.  Your piece should overlap all sides by at least 1/4".  I will double check this by holding the fabric in place and lifting up the paper and looking through the paper to the fabric to ensure all sides are covered.  Once in place, pin your #1 to the paper with the pin PARALLEL to the line connecting #1 and #1.

Step 2 - Place a piece of cardboard or thin plastic on the line connecting #1 and #2.

Step 3 - Fold the paper back on to the cardboard/plastic. Folding the paper down has two benefits, it extends the line to show you where to sew beyond the actual line and it weakens the paper to also make it easier to tear off after the block is finished.

 

Step 4 - Place your Add-a-Quarter ruler against the cardboard and folded paper and cut.  You just created your 1/4" seam!

Step 5 - Place piece #2 on top of piece #1 RIGHT SIDE DOWN.  (All pieces will be placed right side down from now on.)  Place it on the 1/4" steam that you created in the previous step.  Place a pin parallel to the line that you will sew.

Step 6 - Sew on the line between #1 and #2.  Begin sewing a little more than 1/4" from the start of the line and finish a little more than 1/4" after the line. (see below)

Step 7 - Iron your piece open.  The paper piecing will determine where you iron towards.  If you know that you will be ironing towards a lighter fabric, place that lighter fabric just slightly beyond the darker one before sewing so that it doesn't show through when you iron it open.

Step 8 - Continue repeating steps 2-7 for each piece until you finish your block!

Note: This block is from the Carol Doak Yahoo Group's Simply Radiant Star BOM. 

Baby Quilt Tutorial

I made this baby quilt for a friend with a matching baby bumper and I thought I'd share this quilt as a tutorial.

Materials:
(I used Eden by Tula Pink for this quilt, except for the yellow)

Purple (nine-patch and binding): 1 yard
Green (nine-patch) : 1/2 yard (you'll use almost exactly 1/2 yard, so if you may want a little extra for a buffer)
Purple/Green Vine (blocks): 3/4 yard
Yellow (inner border): 1/2 yard
Border: 3/4 yard (you'll need exactly this, so you may want a little extra for a buffer here as well)
Backing: 3 yards


Finished Quilt size: 42" x 54"

Cutting Instructions:
1. From the purple, cut 8-2 1/2" strips for the nine-patches.

2. From the green, cut 7-2 1/2" strips for the nine-patches.

3. From the purple/green vine fabric, cut 3-6 1/2" strips.
4. Cut 17-6 1/2" squares out of the 3 purple/green vine strips that you cut in step 3.

5. Cut 6-2 1/2" strips out of the yellow inner border fabric.
6. Cut 6-4 1/4" strips out of the border fabric.


Instructions:
1. Take 6 purple strips and 3 green strips and sew them into three sets of purple/green/purple strips, pressing towards the purple.

2. Take 4 green and 2 purple strips and sew them into two sets of green/purple/green strips, again, pressing towards the purple.
3. Take your sets of purple/green/purple strips and cut 36-2 1/2" strips.

4. Cut your green/purple/green strip sets and cut them into 18-2 1/2" strips

5. Sew 18 of your purple/green/purple strips to the 18 green/purple/green strips

6. Add your remaining 18 purple/green/purple strips to the other side of the green/purple/green strips.

7. Sew 14 of the nine-patches to 14 of the 6 1/2" squares

8. Sew your sets created in step 7 into 7 rows of 2 nine-patches and 2 squares

9. Take your remaining 4 nine patches and 3 squares and add them to the end of the 7 rows so that you have 4 rows that begin and end with a nine-patch and 3 rows that begin and end with a square.

10. Sew your 7 rows together to begin assembling your quilt top, alternating the nine-patches and the squares.  
11. Add the inner border
12. Add the outer border
13. Piece your backing
14. Baste, quilt, and bind the quilt and enjoy!

Baby Bumper
I also made a baby bumper using additional nine-patches and squares and a 2 1/2" yellow border.  I used 13 nine-patches and 13 squares to make a really long bumper to wrap around a crib.  I used an additional  yard of purple for the nine-patch and binding, 1/4 yard of the green for the nine-patch, 3/4 of a yard of yellow for the border and 1 1/2 yards for the backing.

Enjoy.  I'd love to see pictures if you decide to make one.