Session 7: Bonus Project: Quilted Sewing Machine Organizer

All right, let's keep the organization theme going. We're going to get you organized, right down to your fingertips at your machine. This little sewing machine organizer is perfect for portable class machines because you can roll it up and it can go along with you. It's super simple, super fast, super cute. You're going to need approximately 2/3 to 3/4 of a yard of quilted fabric, and about 1/4 of a yard of fabric for binding. You can make your own quilted fabric if you like, or you can get as creative as you wish. These are two real cute ones on a sewing theme that you could put together and quilt. And I say quilted fabric because it's going to be a little bit sturdier for holding your tools, and that's why I like to do that. So you could take and cut two pieces of this fabric and put the batting in between and work it that way, or you can buy pre-quilted. On the organizer, I want you to have two different fabrics though because the bottom is going to come up and you're going to see a different fabric on the pocket. Of course, if you just want it to be the same, that's fine too, it's your organizer. You can also use pre-quilted fabric, which is what I'm going to do today. Recently, the fabric stores have started carrying this, and I just love it because before you could only find solid color quilted fabric, but with the ones that are in the store, they're reversible with different motifs and colors. These were just two that I picked up that I thought were really cute. They're great for making tote bags and other items. But this is the one we're going to use today. I just thought it was real cute with the checked fabric and the paisley and daisy theme. So I have cut a piece to fit this Pfaff machine that we quilt on here in the studio. It's a larger machine, so I've cut this in a 24 by 24 square. If you're using a portable machine, it's probably a 3/4 size machine, it'll be a little bit smaller, so you'll probably be able to get away with maybe about 18 by 18 inches square or 18 by maybe 20. The considerations that you're going to want is when your sewing machine is on the table, how far down do you want this to hang? What's going to happen, and you'll see it as we sew, is the bottom is going to be folded up approximately four inches, and that's where your tools are. So you've got a four inch drop right there and probably allow for one to two inches over the edge of the table. And then your machine will sit on top of this and anchor it down, and then your tools are right in front of you. So when you're trying to figure the depth for the piece, that's how you would do it. If it hangs out past the back of the machine, that's okay, it's not going anywhere. So again, for this one, I'm doing a 24 by 24 inch piece of fabric. Let me set that aside. The next thing you need you to do is cut your binding strips. And if you aren't a quilter, you may not be as familiar with how to cut binding. On your yardage, you want to open it up and you have your selvedge edge is your lengthwise grain, and then the cut edge is your cross grain. What we do for quilting binding and for this type of binding is a straight grain binding. As a sewer, you're probably used to that binding being on the bias grain, and we don't need that. So what you're going to do is if you have the, if you have a cutting mat and a ruler and rotary cutter, is you're going to trim up your first edge, and then you're going to cut strips coming across the cross grain. So in other words, I'm going to cut 2 1/4 inch strips, and this is how you do it with the rotary cutter. You just come over your 2 1/4, hold your ruler at the edge, and then cut. If you don't have a rotary cutter cutting mat and ruler, you can just mark and cut with scissors, it will work just fine, but that's how we do it in the quilting world. You can, of course, use bias tape. I just never have good luck with it, so I like to make my own binding. The problem I have with it is I never can get it to look as good on the front, or on the back as I do on the front. So I have a little better luck with this. Once you have your strips cut, you're going to put them perpendicular to each other like this and then you're going to sew across. When that's done, it will look like this. And then you're going to take a ruler, lay it on, and the reason I've offset this by 1/4 inch is when you turn your binding back after you press it, it ensures that it's all even. Sometimes when you butt the edges together, it doesn't come out even. This ruler is called an Add-A-Quarter. I love it because I can just put this lip, which is 1/4 inch from the edge of the ruler, I can put the lip right on that seam line, and then I can cut. If you're using scissors, you're just going to trim that seam to approximately 1/4 inch and then cut off the ears, as we call those little tips, cut them off. And your piece should look like this. Once you have that done, you're going to press open the seam. Now your piece looks like this. It's a long, straight piece of fabric with a diagonal seam. And then you're going to take and fold it in half, edge to edge lengthwise, and press that. When you do that, this is what it looks like finished, and that's the binding that we're going to be working with today. I've already pre-made my binding. I'm using a black binding, and so that you can see a little bit better when I stitch, I'm going to be using yellow thread rather than a matching thread. If you have, what I like to put this on with, you're only going to be using a 1/4 inch seam, and I know my sewers out there are used to 5/8 inch seams, but we're going to be using a 1/4 inch seam. This is a wonderful little foot that quilters are very familiar with. It's called a 1/4 inch foot. It will make your life a lot easier anytime you're doing binding or any time you do do quilting. It's got a lot of markings on it. The outside edge is a 1/4 inch. The inside edge here is an 1/8 inch. And you can see where the needle hole is, so from the needle, you've got a 1/4 or an 1/8. And then these marks here, this mark lets you know that you're exactly at the needle, the one in front is a 1/4 inch in front of the needle, and behind it is a 1/4 inch behind. Those are important for while we're sewing so you don't have to take time and measure. You're going to see how easy it is to put the binding on with this. If you have this foot, that's what I would recommend. If you don't, you can still just use a regular sewing presser foot and it will work just fine. Just be aware that we're only doing a 1/4 inch seam today. If you have integrated dual feed on your machine, such as I do with this Pfaff machine, go ahead and engage it. It will keep the layers together better and it will be easier for you to use, and it won't pucker as much. This project is very easy and very fast. I want the outside of my organizer to be the pretty print and I want the plaid to be the part, or the gingham rather, that comes up to hold my tools. I'm going to, normally when we do binding, we put it on the reverse and bring it to the front and then hand stitch. I'm doing the opposite today. I want to sew it to the backside. We're going to turn it, bring it to the front, and then we can top stitch it with the machine, which is a lot faster than doing hand work. So we're doing the opposite of what my quilters out there are used to. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to just line up the edge of the binding with the edge of your fabric, with the bottom edge here, and we're going to sew a 1/4 inch away. So I've got the edge of my foot at the edge of the fabric. It's just running right through there. We're simply guiding it through, we don't have to pull. And you can see with that foot riding the edge, we can get some speed going and still be very accurate. This is a project where you don't have to be super accurate. As long as you're in the ballpark, you'll be fine. Accuracy is always better, but I don't want you sweating the small stuff over it. Now we're going to simply cut off our excess binding. So you want to make sure that your ruler is nice and square on your front edge and then along the side so we get a nice square finish there, just trim that off. This looks good, and now we're going to press this I want you to just come along and we're just going to set the seam, just up and down with your iron, set the seam. It's a good habit to get into, especially for my quilters, set your seam. The next thing you're going to do is fold it away from your fabric and give it a press. I like to hit it with the steam because it helps hold the binding in the opposite direction. Once we have that done, you're going to fold the binding up and it's going to go just past your 1/4 inch seam. Because this binding is folded in half, that's why it's called a double-fold binding, and when it wraps, you've actually got four layers of fabric around the edge of your garment or your quilt. Going to press, press that down. Once we have it pressed, I like to use pins. I like these glass-headed pins. They're a very fine pin, they're long, and they have a glass head that if I use them with the steam iron, it's not going to be a problem. So you're going to come in and pin perpendicular to the binding to hold it. And you can do about every three inches or so, just enough so it's not getting twisted as you work. Now, these glass headed pins, with thicker fabric like this, they do tend to bend a little bit, but it pops right back out. They're very easy to straighten. I just like them because they're a very sharp pin and they don't melt on me, 'cause I do use a lot of steam when I'm creating. Now we're going to put on a different foot. If you have it, my favorite is the narrow edge foot because you can put this one right up against the edge of the fabric. It has a little guide in front, kind of like your, if you had a hand in front of a car guiding you along, it goes out in front of the foot. The needle is right here behind it so you don't have to watch the needle, you don't even have to watch your fabric. You're just watching the edge of this foot. So as you're sewing, the guide is going to be right along the edge of the binding. So you're going to want to move your needle in a click or two so that it's just catching that edge. So let's put this on and I'll show you how it works. All right, here we go. I've got the needle in. I don't want to sew over my pins, so take those out. So as you can see, I'm sewing right along. We're getting the stitching right next to the edge. And normally it would be in black, but this could actually be a decorative accent. I'm going to finish sewing this, and then I'll be back and show you how we finish it off. All right, I've finished sewing the binding on and I've pressed it. And I brought the bottom edge up four inches. I went ahead and pinned it. And then I took a ruler and a marking pen, chalk, and I made marks where I wanted on my organizer. It's totally up to you how you do this. I find if you put six inches in one area, it's enough for a hand to go in. That's a good place if you have bobbins or thread let's say. I like to do three inches for some of my bigger tools like my point turner. And then I like to do maybe two inch marks for pencils, you know, your marking pencil can go in here, and you've got enough room to hold it, but it's still snug. It's also good for your snips and other things. So I did a few, I did two six inchers on the end, I did a couple of threes, and then I did three twos. That's just how it worked out for me. I marked it with the chalk, the chalk will rub off. The easiest way to get it off is take a little piece of fabric and rub against it and it'll come off. It also will come off in the washer. There's two pencils that I like. The first is a cloth marker, that is a chalk or a pencil, and you just mark like you would with a pencil. The other one is this little rolling marker by Clover. You fill the backend with the powdered chalk and then it just runs right along your ruler and makes your mark. That's another favorite. They all come in different colors. I know I can get my Clover in yellow, white, and blue. In this case, I used the yellow one so that I could see the markings on the white and black, not knowing exactly where my marks would fall. It's pinned along, I'm ready to go, let's go sew. I want to make sure that I catch the edges here, do it within an 1/8 inch, if you will though, of the edge of the fabric because we are putting binding on and we're going to need that 1/4 inch. I like to back tack on this and then come forward. All right. Now you need to stitch the other edge, and then we're going to start doing the sections. All right, now that I've done both edges, let's start doing our sections. Again, you can keep that narrow edge foot on with the guide. And we're just going to come straight up the quilt, or the marked line. In this case, I'm starting from the bottom. You're gonna hit the reverse just to tack it and give it a little more security. And then we're going to come forward, stitching on the yellow line. Come just past your binding, and then hit reverse, and go just past the binding and do it again. You can see how our stitching is, and that it's double stitched at the top and at the bottom for security. All right, just like that. Now go ahead and complete the rest of those, and then I'll show you how we're going to finish this up. All right, we have all of our pockets stitched and we are now ready to go ahead and put on the binding around the rest of the project. This time we are going to be starting on the reverse side of the project. So this time it will be on the checkered side. You want to turn in a little bit of fabric at the bottom here. I did maybe 1/2 inch, just press that so that it's turned in and that the edges are together. And we're going to go ahead and start sewing this. So let me put this on the machine and we'll get you started here. I'm still, I put on the 1/4 inch foot again. Remember that was the great one for doing our binding. Oops, I need to start down. We're going to start down where the pocket is, I should have mentioned that. So we're starting at the lower edge of the pocket. We're going to line it up so that it's even at the bottom. And then along the edge, I have the 1/4 inch foot on, and we're just going to sew right along the edge. Now as we come to the corner, you're going to be stopping 1/4 inch away from the edge of the corner. And that's where you use these little marks. They're going to help, help you stop where you need to. So slow down a little, it's kind of like being in a school zone, you've got to slow down. And I'm going to bring the machine up so that, whoops, so we're going to stop at the edge where the marks are on that corner. And I want to stop with my needle down. If you have a needle down function on your machine, it's a good idea to sew with needle down. Turn the project 90 degrees and bring the thread out. You're going to pull a little thread out, not a lot, just maybe about three or four inches. You're going to take your binding and you're going to flip it back up and over. So I want you to look at this. I've got, let me bring it down here so you can see what we're going to do. The binding was coming along here. We stopped 1/4 inch away. I take the binding, and I'm going to bring it back and over so that it forms diagonal here, a miter. My threads are still attached. Then I'm going to flip it back on itself. And when I flip it back on itself, I want to line up the edges on all three sides. So I want a nice corner there, or a nice edge there on the top side, if you will, even on the edge here, and even on the right side. And then we're going to put it back in the machine Just tuck those threads underneath, they aren't going anywhere. Make sure everything has stayed even, and then we're going to put it down and sew. And keeping everything even on those three edges, you will get a beautiful miter to your binding. And then we're going to go ahead and sew this and I'll be right back. All right, I've got the binding sewed on. I just want to give you a friendly reminder that as you're sewing the binding on, when you come to the very end, you're going to need to cut it just a little bit on the long side so you can turn under that 1/2 inch and tuck it up while you're at the machine and then continue sewing on your binding. I've started to turn and pin this at the ironing station here, but I wanted to show you how to do the miter. As you roll your binding over, the miter on the back, you can see here, we've got the angled edge, that's your miter, and it should just literally fall into place on the front side. So come along with your iron and give it a good press and hit it with that steam. And on the outside edge here, you'll see that we've just come straight along, and then when you pressed it, you've actually got a miter going in this direction. Now we're going to, and you might want to use your pins or a stiletto if you have it, now you're going to roll this back over and you want to have that nice, hopefully you can see this, that nice angle in your corner there, that's your miter. And it should just be as if the miter on the back wrapped up and over in the same direction there. That's how you know you're going in the right direction. The opposite direction, it will fight you like crazy. So just get your miter where you want it, give it a pin. And then you're going to, I pin a little more frequently, or rather a little closer to my mitered edges there, the mitered corner. And you can either trim all those threads underneath, or just, I just tuck them back under. And with the binding, I do tend on this to pin just a little more closely. So I'm usually within one to two inches in the corners when I pin and then a little further apart down the home stretch. When I get to the other side of the miter, with the glass head pins, I can just come in and give it a shot of steam and it's not going to be a problem. With some of the other types of ball headed pins, you will get melting and that's not good for your iron or for the pins. All right, I'm pinned, I'm ready to go. Now you're just going to stitch along the edge just like you did before on the pocket binding. You're going to do the exact same thing. So let me stitch that and I'll be back with our finished result. And here you have it, the finished project, our quilted sewing machine organizer. As you can see with the tools in here, everything's right at your fingertips for your sewing needs. I have snips. I have my scissors. I have my hemming ruler. I have my point turner. I've got my stiletto. I've got room for thread, pattern, instructions, whatever you want to put in your pockets. And you can customize these sizes to fit your particular tools that meet your need. I think you're going to find you really like sewing with it at home, but where you're really going to like this sewing organizer is on the road. When we take quilting classes or we're at a retreat, the tables are usually very limited for space, and this will hold your tools very easily for you and be the envy of everyone at the retreat. So have fun making it, give it your own personal touch, and go out and be organized.