Braided Block Tutorial

This tutorial is the first of two,in a two part series.  As I will be using this block to make something else,hopefully later in the week.  That being said,the coming week is going to be a very busy one so,the second part might not happen for a couple weeks.  We shall see how the week progresses...  On to the Tutorial.

~ Braided Block Tutorial ~  The photo above is the braided block I will be making in the following tutorial.

~ Preparing your fabric strips ~  My fabric strips measure 2 1/2"x 71/2",you however can use just about any size strips,as long as they are three times as long as they are wide.  You can use as many strips as you like,as long as it is an even number, for this tutorial we will be using 26.

~ Sewing the strips together ~  Lay your first strip face up on your work surface,take your next strip and lay it face down,(or in sewing terms RST) on top of your first piece.  As shown in the above photo.

Move both strips of fabric to your sewing machine and sew along the right edge,as pictured.  You will be sewing down 2 1/2" from the top,which will connect your first two strips together.  Clip your threads and press open your seam.

Lay your two strips back on your work space,they should look like the leg and top left part of a T.  Take your third strip and place it even with the top of your half T,this will make your strip 2 1/2" short of being even with the leg of the T,don't worry about it being short.  That is how it is supposed to be.

Now place your fabric strips RST,move to your machine and sew from the top of the strip to the bottom of the top strip.

Like this .

To the end of the top fabric,now clip your threads,

and press your seam open.

Add your next strip along the top,lining it up to the right,as pictured.

Place RST sew your seam and press open as with the previous strips.

Line up your next strip as before.  Continue adding on your strips in this manner,until your strip/block is as long as you want it.  Just make sure to finish with an even amount of strips on each side when you are finished.

Here is mine with all 26 strips sewn together.

Now we need to square up the side of the strip/block.  Lay your ruler along one edge so that when you cut with your rotary cutter,you will be cutting off little triangles.

Like this photo above. Turn your strip/block around and cut/square up the other side the same way.

Time to square up the ends,line your ruler up so that the end will be nice and square and cut off the end.

Repete on the other end of the strip/block.  When finished your strip/block will look like the one at the top of the post,only with different fabrics of course :)

Here,my strip/block is cut into 4 smaller blocks,because as stated earlier,I will be making something other than a quilt with this block ;)

Hope this was easy to understand,if not feel free to ask any questions I left unanswered.  Sorry if there were too many pictures,but some people,like myself,find that (pictures say a thousand words!) even though the instructions don't make sense,the pictures do.

Sugar and Spice in a box

The minute I first saw a boxy pouch in blog land,it went onto my, I want to sew that List!  Of course that was sometime last year... This weekend it was finally time to make one of these cute little pouches. What can a girl say,when the list is long,keeps getting longer,and rearranged,sometimes on a daily basis!  

Actually,I just started off playing around with my scraps of Sugar and Spice.  A few weeks ago some of those scraps were turned into two string blocks.  So Saturday ten more of those little guys were sewn up :)  They are 5 x 5 (charm) squares.  I love this line,and have a hard time throwing away even the smallest pieces.  So,after squaring the charms up,the leftover pieces were used to make some smaller blocks.

The inside seam still needs to be hand sewn closed,because it seems that it is time to restock on some colors of thread!  Although this little pouch turned out much smaller than planned,I am loving it :)  The measurements are 3 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 3.

My little boxy pouch started out as a braided block,another one checked off the list!  This is quite fun to sew up and so easy too :)  There are two more waiting to become boxy pouches!

Here are all the little goodies that came out of scraps!!!  One 4 1/2 inch block,one 5 x 5 block,one 3 1/2 block,two 2 blocks,twelve 2 1/2 blocks,and lastly twelve 5 x 5 (charm) string blocks.  There are still some scraps left to play with ;)  They just might find their way into a future giveaway :)