Good video on how to make your icing not stick to your icing bag - great video tutorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxE-pnqmsE0&feature=player_embedded
Taken from: http://www.karenscookies.net/Cookie-Decorating-Video-Color-Mixing-Bag-Filling_ep_74-1.html
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Lap Quilt step-by-step with pictures
Lap Quilt Tutorial
Lap Quilt using pre-cut fat quarters (Finished size: 50” x 60”)
Materials needed:
- Ironing board
- Iron
- Ruler and meas
uring tape (a quilter’s ruler comes in very handy but i
s not essential)
- Sharp fabric scissors
- Sewing machine if available, or sewing needles and complimenting thread
- Seam ripper
- Batting of any thickness, when you shop for batting feel them before you buy to be sure it is the thickness you want
- Curved upholstery needle, or large yarn needle
- Quilt pins
- Large safety pins, or quilters safety pins
- Embroidery thread
Fabric:
- 2 complete packs - Fabric fat quarters
- 2 yards fabric for backing
- 1 BDU/ACU military uniform top
1. Wash all fabric
2. Iron all fabric
3. Measure your squares 10 ½” x 10 ½”, cut with scissors or using a rotary cutter (fairly cheap at WM or JoAnn’s and save a lot of time!)
4. Start your first rough layout
You’ll want to manipulate your fabrics and put them in
to the order you want as your semi-final position.
From here you can connect your squares in a number of ways, but what is easiest for me is to add them one by one for each row.
5. Take your first two squares and attach them together along one side, allowing a ¼ in seam.
6. Press the back of the two squares, so that you splay out the seam you just created. This helps
keep your quilt flat, and neat. If you quilt it, you are reinforcing the overall strength, because your quilt stitch is in that ¼ in “extra"
7. Grab another block, and attach it to one end or the other – continue for 5 blocks if you want to follow my example – but of course you can make as many as you would like (TIP: if you find a combination of 4 or 6 blocks together that you like, make groups of 4 or 6 and attach together in that manner –or- lay out the pattern you like on the floor, and then use the method I did here. For mine, I wanted the "nothing matches" look)
8. Continue to make 5 additional rows. You will have 6 total rows of 5 blocks each
9. Now is the fun part- lay your rows out from top to bottom, each edge touching the next. Take a quick pic, then flip your rows around. Take another few pics and then go through to see which order you like your rows in
10. Take your first and second rows (or the top row, and the 2nd row, however you want to picture it) and stitch them together, again leaving a 1/4 seam allowance)
* When you attach the rows together you can pin them if you want, but the most important thing is to pay close attention to matching up the corners of each block. It will be fairly obvious when you hold it up, if your corners do not match.*
11. Press the seam you have created.
12. Add another row, and press the seam it creates there
13. Continue until you have attached all rows together.
** Press each block as you go**
14. Now you will need to “square up” your quilt top. This means making it square LOL
To do this, you will fold the quilt in thirds, and find the shortest point. Placing your ruler across the entire thickness, at that lowest point, use your rotary cutter to go through the layers. When you unfold the piece, this will be squared evenly. You will need to do the alternate side as well, in the same manner. Don’t do all 4 sides, because you square the rest on the floor!
Pick one side to start on, you will go through all four sides, and go down the length of your quilt top with your ruler. If you find any part that is uneven, mark it so that you can later trim off the excess. After the one side, do the top and bottom in the same manner. For the fourth and final side, you will need to measure from the far side and find the shortest length. On my quilt top it was 50 ¼ in. So at 5 in. intervals, I measured and marked 50 ¼ edge-to-edge, from top to bottom. Take your ruler down the quilt top at the tick marks you measured. Trim any excess.
* A good tutorial on this is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPlo79fz6P0
15. Now you will want to get to as large and flat a surface as possible. I used my dining room table, but should have used the tile floor! We will work with the backing next, so be sure (only if it has a pattern) that you square the piece of material – if you do not, you run the risk of having the pattern look wonky, or off center. I choose solid backings, so that I do not have to worry about this. – make sure you wash your backing fabric also : )
16. Lay out your backing and double check that it is as close to perfectly straight as possible. Take masking tape to the edges, and pull straight at each edge, tape to the floor/table. I use 10 – 15 pieces of tape per side. This ensures the backing doesn’t get bunched as you put together your “sandwich”. You don’t want the fabric so taught that it is stretched at all, because that will also cause awkward gathers or bunching on the back.
17. Lay your batting on top of the backing and smooth it out. Feel it as you go, because sometimes there are pills in the batting, and they feel like hard glue spots – I just pull the tiny piece off so it doesn’t feel hard in the quilt. I only had one on the 2+ yards of batting I used for Hailey’s quilt. In the past I haven’t had any. You will want your batting to go to the edge of your backing, or just shy of the edge. Make it as even as you can, all the way around.
18. Lay your quilt top on top of your batting. Make sure, as you did your batting, that the quilt top is centered on the batting and backing underneath. Get your safety pins ready!
19. In the center of each block, pin through the sandwiched layers. If you feel that’s not enough because of the size of quilt, you can add more – my mom always adds more I tend to go with the fewest necessary. Around the edges you will want to pin a few extra spots as well.
20. Now you are ready to tie or quilt your blanket! If you want to tie, as I did here, you will use a yarn thread like this:
http://www.herrschners.com/product/JandP+Coats+Royale+Fashion+3+Crochet+Thread.aspx
21. To tie, you’ll use your curved needle (or any large needle, honestly) and go through all three thicknesses, then right back up. The advantage of the curved needle is you can go down and back up in just a quick motion. I placed all of my threads before I went through and tied them down. On each block I did the 4 corners, and one in the center.
21* An alternative to tying is traditional quilting. If you hand or machine quilt, you can do any pattern, but be sure to have something stitched at least every 4-5 inches. I can give you more information on this, if this is the route you choose, or you can also google youtube videos of machine quilting, and/or hand quilting.
23. Now you will need
to decide how thick you want your binding, or edging. For my quilts, I use the backing folded up and over for my binding. If you wish to have a separate binding, I can steer you in that direction too – but these directions will be for the way I did on Hailey’s quilt.
24. I chose 2.5 in for my binding. With your quilt flat on the floor, go around the edge and measure (and mark) out 2.5 in all the way around. Trim the excess.
25. To pin the edging, fold the backing up and over the top, and over once more. Pin around the edges
26. Taking the same yarn thread, go around the edge and attach using a standard whip-stitch, or decorative stitch if you choose. I chose the blanket stitch because I LOVE it, and it is very simple. I can only so-so describe it, and it may not make sense. I found a good YouTube tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXkSE2TTF4s
A good step-by-step with pictures here: http://www.squidoo.com/bunnycostume toward the bottom, where she stitches the bunny tummy on the costume.
27a. Stop about 5-6 in from each edge, if you want to do mitered corners.
Two good tutorials for mitered corners:
http://thedillspiel.blogspot.com/2011/02/mitering-around.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=_uZV0GMQiOg
27b. Keep going to the edge, if you want to do squared corners. To square a corner you will follow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INh6sVKJRrA
Finished blanket stitch, up close:
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