This week marks the celebration of Lincoln’s birthday, and so today I thought I would show how to sew a Lincoln’s hat quilt locked together. This one is kind of interesting, it’s kind of spins around, looks like four little Lincolns with his top hat on and it has this block strip. I’m going to sew that on using a tape kind of method and machine stitched on after the block is finished putting together.
Hi! This is Penny Halgren from QuiltBlockLibrary.com, thanks for joining me today. And I’m ready to get started sewing these blocks so let’s go to the sewing machine.
So we’ve got a pattern pieces spread out and I think the way I’m going to sew these together is in kind of thirds, so this is going to be 1/3, the center is going to be the second third, and then the bottom is going to be the bottom third. But starting out, I’m going to sew all of these little patches together because they’re just all the same and I can easily chain sew them together. Now that the hats are sewn on to the little guy’s face, the next thing I’m going to do is sew these big red triangles on to the side. And then also I’m going to sew this piece onto the center.
Now I’m ready to sew the other triangle on to the sides here and these two patches onto the strip. Now I’m ready to sew these little triangles on the ends, so I’ll just take these two and then on one end here. Now I just need to add these little triangle on the side and then will be ready to put a whole lock together. Now we’ve got the three sections so I just need to fold this down and line these seams up. I’m just going to make sure that these two seams match and then watch my triangle tips on the corner. So I’m just going to sew that seam.
We’ve got the top triangle here on the centerpiece, so all we need to do is sew the bottom triangle on and then we’ll be ready to add the block strip that goes around the whole center of the block. My bios tape maker is a half an inch wide and I’ve cut my fabrics so that its one inch wide. So what will happen after I run it through is I’m going to have a strip that’s a half an inch wide and quarter of an inch on each side that’s going to be folded under. So the first thing I’m going to do is just feed my fabric into the bios tape maker. And sometimes it’s easier if you cut like a little point either a point like that or just on one side. But I like to cut a point in the center and then you can just pull it through.
If it doesn’t go easily through, you can use scissors or pin to kind of force it through and once you see fabric coming out the other side, you can just pull it and initially it doesn’t have to be totally straight or lined up. But eventually you’re going to want it to be lined up so that your quarter of an inch is on both sides evenly. So I’m just going to put my iron down, I’m using my finger, my thumb actually to hold those in place and I’m just going to press, put my iron on that end here you get it started. And once I’ve got it started, I can use my iron to hold it down and pull the bios tape maker just a little bit maybe and inch or two at a time and then move the iron so that it presses the fabric.
Now that I have the two sides folded over on this strip and I laid it on on my block I decided that it was actually too wide. So in order you get it to be at a quarter of an inch wide, what I’m going to do is just simply fold this in half and then press it and once I finish doing that then, I’m going to be ready to attach it to the block. The block is all finished here and I’ve got my piece of folded over fabric which is about a quarter of an inch wide, I’ve just folded everything in the side and it’s not stitched shut. So now that the challenge is to figure out exactly where I want to lay this onto the block. And as I look at the pattern, what happens is it goes in a square around the center here and it’s about a half an inch below this patch.
So in order to figure that out, I’m going to use two square templates here and I’m going to use this one, it’s going to measure my half and inch below the guy’s hat so I’m just going to put that down and I will line up these lines with my seam lines so that I know that it’s perpendicular here. Then, I’m going to move it over here and determine 0where a half an inch—there is. So that’s there, you know I’m still going to line up my grid lines to whatever degree I can and then I’m just going to mark with my black pencil around the outside. So now you have that square kind of mark in the center and I’m just going to pin this piece on top of that square. And by using a straight grain instead of a bios green here it kind of keeps your fabric a little bit straighter, and then when I get to this corner I need to back off a little bit from the line here and then I’ll fold this part of it back so that this tip where I folded is right on that line and then I’ll fold it back on it so, and square up the corner and I continue on around. And then when you get back here, just make enough so that it overlaps and you can stuff both of them back inside.
Our Lincoln’s hat quilt block is all finished and ready for a quilt and ready to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, so happy birthday Abe. Thanks for joining me. This is Penny Halgren from QuiltBlockLibrary.com, if you’re not already there, head on over to Quilt Block libray.com and get your free download of this pattern.
Thanks for joining me and until next time, peaceful piecing.
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