One Foot Stool

Want to make a foot stool with me?

Here's what we need: A scrap of leftover pine board (mine's about 10 inches of a 1x12 board).

Four curtain rod finials (these will be our legs -- they're about 5 inches long).

A big hunk of leftover quilt batting (I didn't measure how much).

Upholstery weight fabric (everyone has a closet full of random fabrics, right?).

Paint, sandpaper, staple gun, staples, pencil, ruler, and a drill (for pilot holes).

After sanding the edges of the board smooth to avoid snags and splinters, mark the position of the four pilot holes. For this size stool and this size "leg" I decided to go 1 1/2 inches in from the edge. Be careful not to drill in too far -- we don't want to go through the board -- then sand the holes, just to keep everything smooth.
Place a piece of fabric (larger than your board) right side down on the floor. Fold up the hunk of quilt batting (to be the same size as the board) and place it in the center of the fabric, with the board on top hole side up.

Folding the raw edges under, pull the fabric up and staple it to the board. Begin at the center on one side, pull tight and staple the opposite side. Then staple the two alternate sides, leaving the corners for last.

Trim the excess fabric away from the corners.

Fold and tuck the corners, and staple down. Be sure to leave the pilot holes visible.

Paint the curtain rod finials to a coordinating color.

Once the paint dries, screw the four finials into the four pilot holes to make the legs. Flip over and...

Tada!

Just Around the Corner

I like to self-bind my quilts (usually back to front) because I can never get my corners to come out smooth with bias binding.

So here's what I do. I trim down the top two layers of my quilt sandwich to the same size, and leave the backing about an inch larger. It's no problem to fold the raw edge in and fold the backing over the front along the sides then; but the corners still take some maneuvering.

The first step is to clip the corner. That point will just get in the way and make things bulky. Snip it off.
Then you can fold over the first side using binding clips to secure it. (Or pins -- pins work too.)And then fold in the other side. Just in case you're not certain what I mean... we're bringing the raw edge of the back to the raw edge of the front by folding it. Like this:Then folding it again. This time that fold line is the spot where the raw edges met; the backing will come over the front of the quilt and neatly hide all the raw edges.
At that corner I use the tip of my pin to make sure everything gets tucked in smoothly and neatly. And then pin it firmly in place.

There are several different choices for how to sew the binding down. In this case I'll use an applique stitch, the nearly invisible surface of the stitch works well for the front of a quilt. If I had folded the front of the quilt to the back, most likely I would simply use the faster whip-stitch. And with a project that's going to see heavy use -- a utility quilt -- I tend to machine sew the binding in place.

Bird and Beak -- Machine Applique

These folk art birds are fast and fun. You can make your own template easily and with machine applique you're done in no time.

Pin down the whole bird, including the tiny triangle that is the beak, onto your background fabric. I'm using a blanket-stitch setting, but you can also use a wide zig-zag, buttonhole stitch, even a satin-stitch to do machine applique. I've also chosen a black thread, to complement the folk art look but use whatever color best suits you and your bird.

Begin at the top of the beak and sew down the body of the bird. You will need to have the needle down to pivot around the corners on the tail. If you have a needle down setting it's helpful, if you don't just manually lower the needle each time. When you get back to the top of the beak pivot again. Lower the needle, raise the presser foot, and turn the fabric, before lowering the presser foot again.It may help to use a seam ripper or the point of a pin to hold the fabric flat as you sew down the edges of the beak.Then just add an eye -- I couldn't resist using the "eyelet" setting for that -- and trim your thread ends and you're done.

Flying Crow Block

The eighth pieced block in our For the Birds Sampler Series is known as Flying Crow. Personally, I don't get where the crows come in, but I like the block anyway.

To begin you will need a light, a dark, a medium, and a contrast/center fabrics. I selected the red "eyeball" print as my dark, a cream print as the light, the green homespun check as the medium value, and the serpentine flame-stitch for my center.

Cut the following pieces:

• Four (4) light 3.5 inch squares
• One (1) light 3.5 inch square
• One (1) light 4.5 inch square (mark diagonally for HST)
• One (1) medium 4.5 inch square (mark diagonally for HST)
• Two (2) dark 4.5 inch squares
  

Use the medium 4.5" square and a dark 4.5" square together and the light 4.5 " square and a dark 4.5 " square together, to make four (4) HSTs. For more instructions on how to make Half Square Triangles follow this link to my HST tutorial.
Mark a diagonal line across the back of the two (half light) HSTs... Like I've shown in this photo.

Because what we are going to do is put a half medium HST with a half light HST and sew down one side of the diagonal, then up the other, and cut apart -- just as though we were making plain squares into HSTs.

When we press them open we have four (4) matching Quarter Square Triangle units. You can see they do get a bit wonky (that one on the left center in this photo really needed to be trimmed straight).

Before we sew those together (as laid out), we need to make sure the QST units are squared up.

They should measure 3.5 inches square (just like the other/plain pieces). To make sure that we get our X shape centered here's how we do it:

Half of 3.5 is 1.75.

So use your see-through ruler and put the 1.75 (one and 3 quarters inch) mark at the center of the hourglass, the center of the X. Trim those two sides. Rotate the block, put the 1.75 mark back over the center of the square and trim the last two sides. (The already trimmed sides should fall on the 3.5 inch line of the ruler.)

Once those pieces are trimmed and squared-up you are more likely to get an evenly square finished block.

Lay out the block again and sew in rows:

Sew the three resulting rows together and you get your finished block. Give it one last press and we're done.

Creating Cardinals -- Quilt Templates

In our For the Birds Sampler Series most of the blocks are pieced, but I thought some folk art applique Cardinals might be fun and complement the blocks we've been making. Lately, I've just been in the mood to make some "pluffy" fat Cardinals. So I made up some bird templates using card stock I had on hand.

You can do this too. I'll walk you through it; it's not hard.

You need:

• Your template material -- I used card stock but you could use anything from Mylar to copy paper to basswood.
• A pen or some sort of marking implement that works with your template material.
• A pair of scissors or something to cut your template out with.
• Straight edged ruler (I mostly used my rotary cutting ruler).
• Something round -- I used a water bottle here, but I've also used the jar lid of a scented candle, a bowl, and a canister of hand salve. Anything round will work as long as it's the right size to be the body of the bird.

Trace your round thing in the center of your paper. Line the ruler up on the side that will become the bird's back and draw a straight line. I take advantage of the 45 degree angle on the corner of the ruler to get the feel of the peak of the birds head. This helps me estimate the height of the head and get the length of the line correct. You will need to draw another line from what becomes the chest of the bird to the tip of the head -- Cardinals don't have 45 degree heads.
Another line from the bottom of the bird out, helps to define the dimensions of the tail (in this case a downward tail) and then you can smooth out the shape of the bird.
Add a beak (and an eye just for looks) and cut out your template.
All that remains is to trace the template onto the fabric and applique your bird onto a quilt square. I keep the beak on the main template so that it doesn't get lost ( it's such a small piece) but you will use a different fabric and cut the beak separately when making it up.

Remember when cutting out your fabric, if you are doing needle turn applique you will need to add a seam allowance. If you are doing raw edge applique you can cut out on the lines you trace around your template.
You can also create an upward facing tail on the template as shown in the photo below. Simply add a rectangle at the lower end of the line that makes the back of the bird, and shift the bottom line to connect.
This tufted-head bird template done in reds will be Cardinals, and since my For the Birds sampler has been in reds, browns, and golds I have been calling it a Cardinal. However, there are other birds with similar head shapes, the Tufted Titmouse, Woodpeckers, Quail, and Blue Jays. Blue Jays would be an excellent choice for a sampler done in shades of blue.

Make Your Block Bigger

Remember the Goose Tracks quilt block? We made it a while back as part of our For the Birds Sampler Series. The Goose Tracks tutorial is here.

I decided it was too small, for my purposes I wanted it to be a little bigger, about 10 inches or so for the finished size. The easiest way to make a block larger without remaking it with larger pieces is to frame it.

To frame my block I took my dark fabric from this block and cut 1.5 x 9.5 inch strips. I added another light fabric for the 1.5 inch squares.

I sewed in rows:
new square, new strip, new square
new strip, "old" block, new strip
new square, new strip, new square

and then I sewed those rows together in that order.

This process works with any sized block. If you had a 5 inch (finished -- unfinished measure would be 5.5) block that you wanted to turn into a 7 inch (finished) block you would use strips that were 2.5 x5.5 inches and 2.5 inch squares in the corners. You could add 3 inch strips and squares to a 15 inch block (allowing for seams) and get an 18 inch block. and if you ever feel you've added too much and you want to chop it back down to a smaller size -- rotary cutters and see-through rulers are great for that.

More For the Birds blocks and tutorials can be found by following the cardinal photo link in the sidebar.

Sampler Block: Goose Tracks

Okay, In our Bird Blocks Sampler we were up to Block #7. Goose Tracks. So let's do that now.

We will be cutting (for the corrected version of my scribbled notes)
4 light and 1 dark three and a half (3.5) inch squares
2 dark four (4) inch squares which you will cut in half diagonally making 4 triangles
4 light two (2) inch squares
2 dark and 2 light two and three quarters (2.75) inch squares which you will mark with diagonal lines on the back of the light ones (make an X as shown in the photo below).
If you have no clue how to make HSTs you'll need to go to the tutorial I did a while back on Half Square Triangles here. Because we are going to take those 2.75 inch squares with the X on the back and make HSTs.

And then you're going to cut the four resulting HSTs in half diagonally, to make Quarter Square Triangles.Got that? No? Okay, I'll wait while you look at the picture again. (You'll have cut on the X lines -- so from 2 dark squares and 2 light squares you get 8 triangles that are half light and half dark.)

Ready now? Good job. Let's lay out the next steps.

What we're going to do is use two QSTs and a 2 inch light square to create the triangle that balances the large dark triangle. The QSTs make the goose's toes and the large dark triangle makes the foot. Do you see it? We're going to make four of those. So join the pieces as follows:

QST 1: QST 2: Then put the pieced triangles and the dark triangles together.

So now, all the pieces we have should be squares (or vaguely resemble squares). Lay them out as they'll look in the block.

Put together the rows, and don't forget we're still pressing flat at each step.

Then put the rows together and the block is done.

Hopefully as we go along we are building on skills learned on earlier blocks.... if it's been too long and you can't remember the earlier blocks just take a look in the sidebar under "For the Birds."

Building Blocks: Snowball Bonus Block

Here's my easy method of making Snowball blocks and Half Square Triangles at the same time.
I begin with one large square (this one was 9 1/2 inch) and four small squares (these were 4 inch). The four small squares are marked with a diagonal line from tip to tip as you can see in this picture:

Of course, you only sew them on one at at time. So take one small square and match its unmarked corner to the corner of the large square. You may want to pin it in place; I don't but I'm a bit careless about things like that.

The diagonal line (which now runs across the corner of the large square) is your seam guide. Run you quarter inch foot along the line, so that your seam is a quarter inch from that line. Do that on BOTH sides of the line.

Once you have done this on all four corners (and used all four squares) you will cut along the marked lines.

Press the large square open and it's the snowball block (it will need to be trimmed a bit) and press cut off corners open for four HSTs.