Let's Make A Quilt - Cabin Steps

Do you remember what the first quilt is that you ever made? I actually do. It was a log cabin quilt. Great for a beginner. So that's where I kind of started out. I think one of my favorite things about that quilt was the book had all these different layouts. So you could, I mean, you could make 10, 12 different quilts just depending on how you laid out the block. So, I thought that was really cool. Do you still have a quilt? I don't, early on all the quilts I made I gave away. Yeah. Yeah. As gifts and even now I probably only have a handful of quilts in the house because they always seem to end up going to other people. Same thing I've, I've given a lot away, but I do have stacks and stacks of them. I have one that I designed that was like kind of a log cabin. But then other blocks, uh, mixed in with that. But then was yours a paper piece or traditional piece? Because I've seen log cabins both ways. Uh Mine was traditional and, um, strip piecing. Yeah. So, yeah, so that was my first foray. Into the quilting world and I, that's what got me hooked because it was so easy. It was really easy. I'd only like sewn clothes before that used to make all my kids clothes, which is a whole another thing to talk about. Um, tormented them with. You know, I always told them I invented color blocking because I wouldn't have enough fabric of, to make the whole shirt. So I'd like one sleeve would be one color and one would be another. And is that why you wore that shirt? I knew it was like, yes, I invented color blocking. You didn't know that at the time? Yes. So. Ok. Of the, the long cabin ones that you've made, do you have a favorite? Um, I have one that I designed myself that I kind of changed up just a little bit, you know, um, changed the size of the strips and stuff. So, um, yeah, that's probably my favorite one. I'm thinking, I think if I make one, I'll do like strips that are, I don't know, 2.5 inches because I'm thinking pre cutts. Like I do a lot. I love pre cutts. Yep. Got them stacked up in my house. Sometimes I just sit there and, you know, admire them for a long time before I use them. But then it's always fun when you come up with a project that you can pull them off the shelf and use them. Um, I have a story about pre cutts too and that I like them sometimes, but then I never ever touch them. So I give them to my mom and in her sewing room she literally has like a fat quarter bundle and she'll jelly rolls decoration uses them as decoration. Yeah. My problem is there, there's too much color. Like I need gray. I need, you know that. Yeah. But I mean, in the log cabin you can pretty much make them any color. So, yeah. Do you know what color? Your first quote was? My first quilt and probably 10 quilts after that were hunter green, navy and burgundy because like, I'm dating myself. But that's, that was the color scheme then and I was so happy when I broke out of that mold. And so when was that like last week or? Yes. Ok. Uh, what is your favorite color to make clothes? Um, I am a fan of gray as a background color now. Like it used to always used to think it needed to be white for background. But, um, but yeah, I think I've, I've grown into the, the grays, shades of gray and then adding pops of color with that gray. I think it's awesome. I'm still in love with the shades of gray. I don't know that I've added enough pops of color yet, but I think, you know, I can work on that and get that in there. But, um, yeah, I think I'm gonna do a log cabin quilt, I think, uh, definitely gonna have some gray, definitely gonna have those 2.5 inch strips. But then, I don't know, color is, is, can be anything and then I know, you know, I'll make a quilt but then I obviously send it to you to quilt it. So it's probably not gonna give you a whole lot of, uh, information about it. You just a log cabin block. What did you, what do you think about in terms of building? Um That depends, you can just, um you can do real modern and just follow the straight lines. But I always think it's fun to add curves in some way when there's a lot of straight lines, it just gives, gives the quilt movement. That's true. Yeah, that's true. So that's always fun in that book that you had for the first log cabin. It had different layouts, right? So because I mean, a log cabin is just an an L, right? It wasn't an L. So if you put four of those together, you get essentially a big square, right? Or you can always do different layouts. So, what layout did you do on the very first one? Gosh, it was so long ago. Um I think I tried to form a star. There was a layout that kind of formed a star in the middle. So, yeah, because I was into that as well. I think I'm gonna go simpler. I don't know. Are you trying to literally, as you said, star, I'm trying to in my mind figure out how you can get a star shape and I'm picturing, I, I know I can do straight, you know, 90 degrees, you know, you can do squares. But yeah, maybe what you should consider this make two instead of just one, we'll quilt one kind of custom, we'll do the other one with like an all over design just to show the difference because not every customer wants custom quilting. Sometimes that's not in their budget that maybe we can do two. We'll change it up a little bit. Alright. Maybe I'll make one of the second ones. Oh, I don't know, green or burgundy or one of your colors. I don't know. There you go. How about, how about sticking with like just I can't go there. I can't go back. You can't go back. I do that done. We're modern now. We're with the times. Well, I think we should probably get started. I'll go pick out some fabric and I'll start working on a log cabin. Quote. Awesome. I can't wait to see what you come up with and I can't wait to see how you called it too. The cabin steps, quilt pattern is a great pattern for a beginner. Someone making their very first quilt because it's easy to put together and it's made entirely from 2.5 inch strips which you can cut and I'll show you how to do or you can use pre cutts like jelly rolls. So we're ready to get started making cabin steps. Now, the great thing about this quilt is that it's made from all the same size strips. So we're just gonna cut a bunch of 2.5 inch strips and that's going to make every single block we need for this quilt. So I wanna give you a couple of tips for cutting those 2.5 inch strips. You're going to want a really long ruler. So most quilters have the six by 24 6.5 by 24. But you're definitely gonna wanna have something that is the 24 inch width. So you can cut your width of fabric strips. So I just have a little sample here, but I've already squared up my edge. So it's squared up with my fold and my salvage. I'm going to simply line my fabric up on the 2.5 inch line and then my tip for cutting long strips is to not just hold your ruler and expect it to stay. I always use my entire arm and I'm gonna lean over and hold this down. Then I can come in with my rotary cutter and cut right along and I know that that ruler is not gonna move when I'm cutting my strip. So you're gonna do that over and over and over again, until you have enough 2.5 inch strips from your gray and your three colors of fabric. So complete cutting instructions is of course, uh available in the pattern that you can download with this and you're gonna wanna do that. So you know exactly how many strips to cut once you have your strips cut, now we need to cut the pieces that actually make up our log cabin. So again, these all come from 2.5 inch strips. So we're going to start with 2.5 inch squares, then our squares become rectangles and we build out on that. And I'm going to essentially create this little puzzle diagram that I am going to follow when putting my strips together. So when you're doing this, when you're laying out your log cabin blocks, you're always going to be alternating gray color, gray color and you're always building up and to the left. Once you have everything laid out, it's very, very simple. We're just going to start putting them together. We're going to start in the center work our way over and we're always going to sew, then press, then put it right back in our little puzzle diagram. So we are making sure that everything is going the correct way. So I'm gonna put my fabric right sides together. I'm just going to come over and sew quarter inch seam allowance. You can take this off and I'm gonna press Now, when you are pressing your pieces, as you're adding them on in your log cabin block, once you start getting to the rectangles, you're always gonna be pressing towards that next rectangle that you added on. But in the case of these two squares, it doesn't really matter. So you can just kind of pick which direction you wanna go once it's pressed, I'm gonna put it right back in my diagram so I can see where it is. I need to go. This is a very, very repetitive quilt block. Um It's one of those quilt blocks. That's great. If you are maybe making your first quilt, if you're trying to teach somebody quilting, you're really wanting to get somebody into uh quilting as something new. This is a really, really great pattern to start with. So we're just gonna add on the next piece, trimming my threads and again, I have my next section ready to go. I'm going to always press towards the rectangle that I just added and then continue moving on as your pieces get larger as your rectangles get larger. You want to make sure that when you are pressing them that this line stays straight. So what I mean by that is it can be really easy to when you're pressing maybe start in the middle and press uh your iron a little bit too much to where this starts becoming a little bit of a curved line, not a straight line if that is happening, you want to take it back and repress it, you wanna make sure this is always a very, very straight line, a straight seam, go bring our next piece on and continue sewing. So this block is another great one that is a good test of your seam allowance accuracy. So, as you can see when I pull up my next rectangle that I'm gonna sew on there, it is the exact same size as the pieces that I just sewed together. Meaning this rectangle that I just added is the exact width of these two together. If for some reason, this rectangle was a little bit too long or a little bit too short, you want to go back and test your seam allows to make sure you're stitching at an accurate quarter of an inch. I'm gonna open this up, press. So just keep repeating that over and over again, again, very repetitive block, but very, very easy. So again, a good beginner block if you are new to making quilts, but then what's going to happen is you're going to have your finished block. Now, you will reference your pattern for how many of the light medium and dark you need to make. And then once you have that number, you have all of your blocks made, you're gonna start assembling your rows. Now, the important thing when you're assembling your rows is the rotation of the blocks. This is what turns our log cabin blocks into log cabin steps. So you can see with just the, the few blocks that I have made right here. If you put them together in one direction, you're gonna get sort of this closed off square shape and that's not what we're going for. We wanna have this steps, look to our cabin steps. So again, you're gonna consult the assembly diagram, so you know exactly how to lay them out. But in general, you always wanna have this little step effect. So when you are assembling your blocks, you were always pressing your rectangles, pressing towards the rectangle that you just assembled, doing that and making every single block, the same means that when you rotate this one so that you can put it together to create the step effect, it's going to allow your seams to nicely nest together, which is really, really important with this. With this design, we have a light neutral, which is our gray fabric and then we have three shades of blue, especially when you get up into the darker fabrics. It's going to be very obvious if when you put these together, you're off just a little bit and you wanna make sure that's not the case. You wanna have very precise lines. So you definitely want to be nesting your seams. So to nest your seams, you're going to simply put your blocks right side together. It doesn't really matter where you start. I generally start in the middle and I'm just going to use my fingers to feel and make sure that these seams are directly on top of one another. So I'm kind of rocking back and forth with my fingers to make sure they're locked together. Then when I know that they're locked, I'm gonna put a pin in the second seam allowance that you're gonna come up. And by that, I mean, you're gonna sew like this, start here in here. The first seam allowance is here on the bottom and I'm putting my pin in the second seam allowance. That's gonna allow me to sew all the way up to and one stitch past this stitching line right here, which means I know that those seams are now secured in place exactly where I pinned them. Then I can take that pin out and keep going again. I'm gonna sew right up to about one stitch beyond this seam allowance right here. Take out my pin. I don't wanna hit my pin with my needle and I can move on once I have these together, take it off and trim our threads and you're just going to again consult that assembly diagram and it's going to have all of the light medium and dark that you need to put together to make the step effect again, very repetitive. All the blocks come together the same way the rows come together the same way. Um And then the rows come together to, to make a really fun quilt top. That is the cabin steps. So again, since it's repetitive, we're gonna skip forward to where I already have the quilt done. So I can show you what it's gonna look like when you have all of your rows assembled and you can see that no matter what direction you look at it from, because we put together the blocks all the exact same way and we made sure that all of our seams nested when we were putting our blocks and rows together, no matter which way this throw quilt is thrown on the back of the couch, on a bed, it's going to have this really fun cabin steps feel. So now that I have my quilt top, all put together, I'm gonna hand this off to penny so she can get it quilted so we can use this fun cabin steps quilt. So I just got Ashley's quilt that she's calling cabin steps. It's a really simple log cabin design great for a beginner. Um, I've got, uh, gray thread. I keep plenty of gray thread on hand because Ashley loves the color gray. Um, so what I've decided to do on this one, I'm just gonna accent the blue with some straight lines just to, um, keep that design going. And then in the gray, I'm going to add kind of a feathering motion, um, just to give the quilt some movement. So I think when you stand back from it, it's really gonna be an awesome, awesome quilt to look at. So I'm gonna get going here and, uh, I've got a great little ruler here from quilters. Apothecary gives me a little handle to hold on to. It keeps my fingers away from that needle. Um, because trust me, I know what that feels like when the needle goes through and it's not fun sometimes when you're quilting and using the same color thread as the fabric, it can be really hard to see doesn't show up when you're, um, pretty close to it. Uh Usually it shows up pretty good if you, you're able to back away from it once the quilting is all done. Um, but that does make it a little harder. It's nice when there's light thread on dark fabric, you can really see what you're doing. But the other thing is you have to be really careful because if you make a mistake, it's really gonna show the other thing if you're using a long arm and you wanna use a ruler, you've gotta have a table underneath to keep the balance of that ruler. Otherwise, uh, you're gonna end up with that ruler under the hopping foot under the needle and uh broken ruler ask me how I know that. So you can see how simple that is. I'm just following along the outside edge. I'm coming in like maybe about a quarter of an inch there using the ruler to guide me along those and then, um, I'm gonna go back and do a little bit of the feathering motion in here when I'm working on these feathers. I try to eyeball. I know that this section of three, maybe I can fit two in this section, maybe I can fit 2.5 or three. so I just try to, I really try to just eyeball that keep it pretty organic. I don't worry about making them identical because things in nature are not identical. Uh That's my excuse anyways. So, um, when I'm starting on this and I've got to work my way across Ashley's got some seams here and there and I'm just tuning those out, focusing on the gray space that I have and trying to fit those feathers in that space, working around a corner can be hard. If it's too hard, I'll just stop and start over in that corner. Uh Instead of trying to curve my way around this quilt being a great quilt for beginners could be a great beginner quilt. If you're just learning long arm quilting as well, you can be real specific with each strip like I'm doing here or it's a great one that you can just do an all over design and will really make the quilt pop and look great. All right, as you can see, I've got lots of lines to do lots of feathers to do. So I'm gonna get back at it roll this quilt forward and keep going with my feathers. When you see the finished quilt and stand back from it, you're really gonna be able to see the movement that I added to the quilt with the feathering. I think that's gonna be really awesome. I'm super excited for Ashley to see that. I think she's gonna love it. She's also gonna make a second one for me that I'm gonna do some all over designs on so that I can show her um, how, how they compare custom quilting to all over designs. So I'm really excited to get together with her and show her the quilts. All right. Cabin Steps quilt, I even gave you two of them. So what did you do with these ones? So first one, as you'll notice, um, this one has more custom quilting. So I did some straight line stitching in all of your blue using the same gray thread because, you know, I know you love your gray and the gray thread and I actually, I love how it looks, the gray on gray and how that puffs out. Um So this was kind of just the like of fun little feather design to kind of access the movement of your steps. That's perfect. And then obviously there's blue on the top. So we did three different shades of blue. So I'm just gonna even pull up a peek at the back a little bit. So we have blue on the back too. So, do you usually try to match colors? I do, I kind of see what the back has and see how I can, you know, make that all jive once it's all done and together, that's perfect. And then gray thread. So you, sometimes you do this, I know you've done it on the fast or say if you're doing a dark color you would have changed and done dark thread. But with all the different shades of blue, I didn't want to go back to the quilt, um, four times. So, um yeah, so we just went with the gray thread that's on that and I think it looks great. So I brought you the Yeah, it's the first time I get to actually present you a quilt in person. That's true because normally, yeah, normally the way it works is, yeah, you mail it to me and then you open the box and then mail it back. So we, you said you would make a second quilt for me and you did so that we could kind of show threads occupational hazards. Yes. Um So this is just an all over design that still it's a swirl and a hook and it still gives the quilt a lot of movement. And so the other thing I did because you always send me your binding. I did. Um I didn't use it. So I pulled out look at this bias stripe and the lime and then little gnomes. I know you would like it. I do. I love it is really cute little gnomes and there's, and there's little plants on there because I mean, we don't have green thumbs. We can't do that cactus because I live in Texas. I like it so you can have some flowers and plants in your house with. You might be, you might be selling me on the binding just a little bit like I do like that. It's fun. You know, it just changes the whole quilt when you add and this, this particular um print is the the stripe is on a bias. So you can cut your stripes on the bias and make yourself more work. But this one was already done for me, but I do want to show you a couple other things. Um So this, you know, with the little gnomes perfect for you could be a baby quilt, you know, or for a small child for the boy. I have two little boy. But what this backing. So what if I would have pulled out this backing and then used uh the flowers and then look at this straight binding. So then you change the whole look of the quilt and uh the the back you can flip up and have the beautiful flowers and the phone stripe. It just takes not that your quilt is plain, not that it was boring, it's not plain, it's not boring. But if you wanna add a little pizza. It's an easy way to do it with the backing and the binding goes out. I like it. Now, you touched on the quilting a little bit because I know this is something that you and I have even talked about because, um, I'm obviously not the only person that ever send you quilts quilt for a lot of people. Right. And you have people who say I want custom quilting or I want all of quilting or maybe they have a, a budget that goes into the decision too. So kind of talk about the difference of that. So an all over one is gonna take me a lot less time. Um So that's gonna cost a lot less. Sometimes I can narrow that down like they say, well, I want custom but I don't want it to be real expensive. So then I kinda maybe would do just a blend or sometimes you can do kind of an all over design that's, that is custom. Um You know, if you're focused on the blocks and we'll look at some of the other cults we did um where I kind of incorporated that. So um you just try to fit their budget without, I have had a few where I've said, are you sitting down, is there anyone near you that knows CPR before I tell you how much? Um But yeah, but usually it's no problem. No, this is fun and I think it's really great to be able to see the two options to see how this, this I, you see the quilting more, I think I see the quilting more when it's over the design. Sometimes more than when it and the other thing is um, finished is better than folded up in the closet. So, yeah, whatever your budget is, it's true. I've been trying to convince my mom of that uh for a long time. She has like, I don't know, six or seven quilts all hanging on hangers in the closet. No, no backing, no battery, no clothing. No. Yeah, I should probably put her in touch with you. That's my number I will for, I absolutely love this. I absolutely love the, the backing fabric. Do you like the winding? And I think maybe we'll go 50 50 from now on. Sometimes I'll send you my names and sometimes I won't, won't let you surprise me and we'll, or, or you could make b oh no, if I'm gonna make it, it'll probably be gray but the plain. I absolutely love it. And that's ok too. You know, you can always pull one of the colors out of the quilt to kind of frame it. You know, you use gray on this one which is the background. But you know, any of those blues would have made a great binding. That's true too. Um But yeah, but it's also fun sometimes to step outside the box. That's true. Do you ever pick if you have leftover backing fabric? Would you ever make the binding out of the backing fabric? Uh Once in a while, if as long as it looks really good with the top, they would have to, they would have to really blend well, that's fun. All right. So lots of binding options. Absolutely. Love the quilting, love the little gnome. So I think, I think this one really turned out perfect. I like the way all the cabin steps came together. Really nice book. Great job. Thank you. Thank you.