Tutorial: CatStar Block

You might remember that I hosted a mini quilt swap? Yeah? Well, this CatStar Block was from that swap. I saw it under the hashtag and had to compliment it's maker, Janda, on how cute it was. She made it up out of her own brilliant head! Isn't she clever? There were a lot of requests for a tutorial on it but since she doesn't have a blog, she had to say no. So, I offered to help out.

I've decided to host a little #halloweencatstar quilt-a-long. Are you interested? One lucky participant will receive a Halloween trick-or-treat bag, stuffed full of goodies,from me! You must complete your Halloween CatStar block in order to be entered in the drawing, though. Let's get going, shall we?

You will need four colors of fabrics, in three shades each, and two different background fabrics for a total of fourteen fabrics. Fat quarters and charm squares work great. 

Using my photo above as a guide for color/fabric reference, cut the following:

Chevron (large polka dot) 

-four 4" squares

Background (small polka dot)

-fourteen 4" squares

-four 1 3/4" squares

Cat A right ear

-one 4" square

Cat A left ear

-one 4" square

Cat A face/forehead

-two 3 1/2" squares

-two 1 3/4" squares

Cat B right ear

-one 4" square

Cat B left ear

-one 4" square

Cat B face/forehead

-two 3 1/2" squares

-two 1 3/4" squares

Cat C right ear

-one 4" square

Cat C left ear

-one 4" square

Cat C face/forehead

-two 3 1/2" squares

-two 1 3/4" squares

Cat D right ear

-one 4" square

Cat D left ear

-one 4" square

Cat D face/forehead

-two 3 1/2" squares

-two 1 3/4" squares

{it helps to label everything}

{don't pay too much attention, I switched things around a bit after I took this pic}

Begin by making the center of the CatStar Block. Get your 3 1/2" face/forehead squares for the center cats and the four 1 3/4" squares. Place the small square in one corner of the large square, right sides together. With a fabric marking both, draw a line from corner to corner.

Stitch on this line,

Trim seam to 1/4".

Flip the corner fabric back and press.

Do this for all four inner star cat pieces.

For the outer star cat pieces, you will repeat the above process using the remaining four 3 1/2" face/forehead pieces and the four 1 3/4" coordinating pieces. 

You will also need to repeat this process for the four 4" background corner pieces and the four 1 3/4" outer star cat for heads.

I feel like I'm speaking gibberish so here's a pic of what the layout will look like:

To make the ears, you'll need to make half square triangles. With right sides together, match up one ear with one background square. You'll be doing all the ears at this time, so go ahead and match them all. Draw a line from corner to corner, right down the middle of each ear, then 1/4" away on each side. The first line (the one that is now on the middle) will become your cutting line. The other two are stitching lines.

Stitch directly on the line, adding a new square pair (teehee) after the last of the line is sewn & without cutting your thread or picking up the presser foot. This is chain stitching.

When you've reached the end of the ear chain, turn it around and stitch the lines on the other side. Snip the threads to separate, then use your rotary cutter and acrylic ruler to cut them in half.

Carefully press the half square triangles open, making sure the seam is towards the darker side.

Your Cat Star should look like this, after laying out the ear pieces:

Repeat the Half Square Triangle chain for the chevron pieces:

Now it's time to put it all together. Stitch four squares together, forming one block.

{this is where I messed up my inner star cats. I didn't notice so, my end result looks like calico cats. Oh well, it works.}

Now, stitch the blocks into rows.

And finally, stitch the rows together to finish your Halloween CatStar Block.

If you want to participate in the #halloweencatstar quilt-a-long, please be sure to use the hashtag and tag me (@schnitzelandboo) and Janda (@jrm0501) on Instagram. Don't forget, there's a sweet prize for one of our participants!

If you love this block, leave a comment and stop by Janda's Instagram feed and tell her. 

Happy Quilting!

-Kristi

PS thank you IG @actsofcraftiness for catching my lack of info mistake!

*finished size of CatStar is 18"

*please use Halloween inspired colors and/or fabrics to count for the drawing (but also know that Halloween is not limited to black and orange!)

*deadline to enter your Halloween CatStar is October 28, 2014 because that's my birthday.

{the original CatStar Block 

by Janda Wilden}

Tutorial: Triple Ruffled Dish Towel

A few days ago, I showed you an easy way to trim a dish towel, making it gift-worthy. Tonight, I'm going to explain how to make this (equally simple) Triple Ruffled Dish Towel.

I was supposed to post this the day after the first tutorial, but I have been under the wire trying to get the instructions finished for my first Rebel Craft Media published pattern, The Betsy Travel Bag. My fingers are still buzzing from the two-fingered typing of that project (I closed the lid on the laptop and immediately picked up my phone and opened the Blogger app!) but I didn't want to delay any further. 

So, then...here we go!

{Clementine by Blend Fabrics}

You will need:

-two 3"xWOF (width of fold) strips of three different fabrics for a total of six strips. 

-one dish towel of your choice (I prefer the flour sack towels, available at Target)

-thread

-grid ruler

-fabric marking pen

*please keep in mind that this tutorial and fabric strip measurements are based on the 30"x32" flour sack towel. You might have to adjust the length of your strips for a smaller towel.*

Draw three parallel lines at the bottom of the towel at every 2".

Start by stitching the ends of the strips together; press seams open.

Using a grid ruler, measure and mark 1" up from bottom edge down the length of the wrong side of each strip.

Fold raw edge to meet the line; press.

Edgestitch hems in place.

It's kinda neat looking all piled up:

Now, change your stitch length to the longest one your machine has. From

The right side of the fabric, stitch a line 1/4" away from top edge.

Leave the thread tails long on both ends. You will need these to gather the fabric!

Pin the center of the bottom strip to the center of the bottom line on the towel. Pin the ends of the strip to the sides of the towel.

Very carefully pull the bobbin threads to gather along the stitching line. You're going to ruffle one half at a time. Adjust the fullness by sliding and bunching along the thread. Once your ruffle is the same length as the half if towel that you're working on, pin it in place. Now you can start ruffling the other half.

Top stitch along the gathering line. Repeat for middle and top ruffles.

Voila! A pretty cute dish towel! They'll think you got it at Anthropologie.

Happy Sewing!

-Kristi-

Tutorial: Simple Trimmed Dish Towel

I'm a little behind on my Blend Fabrics tutorials, so I thought I'd play catch up on them as soon as I finished testing the Rockstar Bag pattern by Sew Sweetness:

{done!}

Well, I wrapped that up today and immediately got to work on a 30 minute project; a tutorial for Blend!

When they sent me my shipment of Clementine by Ana Davis, I immediately thought "kitchen project!" At the time, though, we had just moved into our apartment and I wasn't ready to determine what I was going to want or need in my kitchen.  All of our belongings are still in storage and we're basically living with borrowed and/or Dollar Store necessities to get us by until we get it back.

Well, one day, while walking past the kitchen towel display at Target, I had an epiphany. Dish towels! That's it! I would turn my stack of Clementine into dish towels! So, I grabbed a package of flour sack towels and went on my merry way. 

I love these towels in particular because they are large, absorbent and thin. Plus, a pack of four is less than five bucks. Perfect! 

{a close up, so you know what you're looking for}

Because there are four towels and a big beautiful stack of fabrics, I thought I'd split the package deal up and give you three mini tutorials throughout the week. By the time you're done, you'll have the perfect house warming gift! (Or Christmas, or New Year's or wedding present or whatever.) I'll have one towel left over, won't I? Well you know what that means! Giveaway! I'll do a giveaway at the end for the extra towel and the remaining scraps/fabric. That's a good plan, huh?

First things first, you will need a towel, 1/3-1/2 yard (depending on the accuracy of the cut) quilters cotton weight fabric, thread etc etc.

Iron the towel, making sure to straighten the edges as best you can.

Measure the sides of your towel:

{towel pictured folded in half}

My towel was about 30"x32". Now you have to do a little math. 30"x2 sides=60". 32"x2 sides=64". 60"+64"=124" total. Now, divide your total by the fabric width: 44" goes into 124" approximately 2.8 times, which is basically three times. Now I know I have to cut three strips.

Next, measure the existing hem on your towel. For mine, it was about 3/4".

I wanted to make sure I covered the existing hem completely so I rounded this measurement up to 1" and multiplied by four which gave me 4". 

Remove the tags on the towel, if necessary. Set towel aside while you make the binding.

Stitch your binding end-to-end-to-end; press seams open.

{I borrowed this picture from tomorrow's tutorial}

Fold the binding in half lengthwise, wrong sides together and press.

{center crease}

Fold one long edge to center, wrong sides together, and press.

Fold the other long edge about 1/8" away from center; press.

{I drew a red line on the center crease to make this step easier to see.)

Fold again on the center crease and press. I like to use lots of steam to make it extra crisp.

{this is what your finished binding should look like}

Lay the binding on the table so that the wider side is on the bottom and the narrower side is face up. Open up the binding and lay the edge of the towel right up into the crease. Make sure you get it tucked in there all the way!

Carefully fold the binding over the towel edge and pin. When you get to a corner, pin (or pinch with your fingers) the binding right at the edge of the towel. With your opposite hand, open the binding and fold it back over the new edge of the towel. This step is kind of hard to explain so I took some pictures, of course:

{hopefully that helped!}

Continue pinning and corner-folding until you get to the last little bit. Now, you can do this before you start pinning the binding on or you can do his next step now, before you have finished pinning...

When you have about 8"-10" of binding left, unfold the end and turn one corner down about 1/8" from folded edge and press.

It should look similar to this:

You might have to rearrange your pinning, this angled edge will go over the top of the end of the binding, creating a finished edge. When it's done correctly, it'll look like this:

Now, stitch the binding down, all the way around, about 1/8" from edge of binding.

There's no need to backstitch if you don't want. When you get around to the starting point, just run over your existing stitches by five or six stitches to secure your stitching. (Should I say stitch, stitching or stitches one more time before continuing? Stitch! Hahaha)

Now, give the binding one last final press to set the stitches (HAHAHAHAAAA) and you're all done! Fast and easy.

{this is also a good technique for adding premade binding to one yard lengths of flannel or fleece for a quick baby or pet blanket}

Come back tomorrow, I'll be showing you how to make a triple ruffled towel. I bet you can't wait!

Happy sewing!

-Kristi-