The Orange Peel Quilt: Easy Quilting Tutorial with Jenny Doan of Missouri Star Quilt Co. Jenny demonstrates how to make an impressive looking Orange Peel Quilt using a simple interfacing technique and 5″ squares of precut fabric.
For details about this project click here: http://land.missouriquiltco.com/orange-peel-quilt/
Transcript:
Hi, it’s Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company and I have a great project for you today. Take a look at this quilt behind me. I know this looks tricky, but this is so simple. You are going to love this. This is EASY.
So, you guys know I love blue and white, anyway, and I have a big dish collection of blue and white. And this reminds me of that. I just, it’s just so much fun to me.
So, to make this quilt you are going to need 4 packets of 5 inch squares, 42 squares in each, and you are going to need 4 of these. And we used the Bluebell by Nancy Gere for Windham. Just a gorgeous line of fabric. You are also going to need 4 packets of precuts, 5 inch squares that are a solid. This is going to be your background fabric that you are going to set your blue football shape onto. We also have this football shaped template and, I mean, it just works perfect for this job and it’s called Circle Magic Plus, and you are going to need some fusible interfacing. This is because I’m going to show you a super easy way to do applique and it uses this fusible. You are going to look for something really lightweight that has fusible on one side only. So, and you’ll need probably 8 yards of that.
So, let me show you how to make this block. Okay, so let’s get started. The first thing we are going to do is, we’re going to take our blue fabric and you can actually stack these and cut, you know, two or three of them at a time. We are going to lay our template, our Circle Magic Plus Template, diagonally right across it and we’re going to go ahead and cut that out and you just want to go slow and keep your rotary blade right along the edge of the template. It’s a little different when you’re cutting curves, but your normal rotary cutter should work with this. And you just go all the way around and your piece should look like this when you’re finished. It will look like this little template, little football.
Now we are going to do the same thing with our interfacing. So, we’ll get our interfacing out and interfacing is very thin, so you can actually cut several of these at a time with the interfacing, and we’re just going to do the same thing. We’re going to cut right around it, like this, and then we’re going to pull this around and cut up this side. There we go.
And this is a super cool way for doing any kind of applique that you want to do. This makes it quick and easy with no mess and it gives you the look of needle turn.
So, now you have your fabric and your interfacing all cut out and what we are going to do is, we’re going to lay our fabric down. We’re going to take our interfacing and we’re going to feel for the bumpy side. The bumpy side is going next to the fabric. I know that sounds a little crazy, but trust me on this. It works.
We’re going to line it up on there and we’re going to take this to the sewing machine and we’re going to sew ¼ of an inch all the way around the outside edge, completely enclosing it. So, let’s go over here and do that. I’ll move my chair here a little bit. There we are. Make sure it stays lined up. Mine got a little wonky in my travels to come over here. There we go. And I lay my presser foot along the edge and I just sew straight off the end. And then, bring it back and come straight up the other side. So, put your little presser foot right along the edge of it. Just like that.
And then we have this piece, right here; it’s completely sewed. And what we are going to do, I’m just going to trim this end, right here, and I’m just trimming it, not cutting through the stitches at all, but trimming it so it’s a little closer because I’m going to turn it. So, to do that, I lift these fabrics so they are away from each other and I’m going to cut a “V” in the interfacing and I’m just going to cut a big slit, right here, to make it a little easier and then we are going to turn it right sides out. So, I reach in here for the corner and I push that corner out on both ends and then I run my finger along the seam so it stays nice and curvy and I close my scissors or use your purple thing or something like that for these points. You want to try and get the points pretty nice and pointy.
And then you have this piece, right here, but what you will notice by turning it around, now the fusible is on this side. So that’s when you take your piece of background fabric, your 5 inch square, and you are going to line up your little football shape on there and we are going to press that down. Alright, so now we are just ironing this down on here and it’s to hold it in place. That’s going to hold it in place. You want to make sure your points are a ¼ of an inch away from the edges so you can take your seam in there because we are going to sew these together.
Alright, so there’s our finished little peel and we need to go stitch around it; I like to use a blanket stitch. So I’m going to go over here to my machine and I’m going to find my blanket stitch and I am going to go ahead and stitch that and just stitch right along the edge. If you make your blanket stitch fairly narrow, you really can hardly see the stitches and then it looks really like it’s been hand appliqued on there, but this is a great way to put applique on because all you do is, you machine sew around it and flip it. It gives you nice, clean edges. Looks like you did all that hard needle turn work. All the work without — or — all the look without the work.
Alright, now here is our little finished block, right here. How cute is that? I mean that is darling. Then you are going to put these together in a four patch. So, I have some other ones done here and we are going to put these together so that all the points point to the middle and this is our four patch, right here. So, we are going to go ahead and put this together and stitch ¼ inch seam right down the side, just like this, and it gets pretty close to that peel on the bottom, but that’s alright. And then we’ll press this back, right here, and I’m going to press this one as well, and then you just put these together with all your points pointing to the middle just like you would a four patch. So, you have this little seam here in the middle and you just want to turn those right sides together and nest that seam up and sew that together. Isn’t this fun?
Alright, now you’ve got your square, your block sewn together, just like that, and you are going to be able to just sew rows together and you really just sew them right to each other. See how that works? Just like that? And then you just add your next row on. There is no sashing, no nothing. You want them to meet and it makes kind of these circular patterns that circle in and out and around. I mean, it just looks gorgeous.
So, once you get your four patches together, you are going to put 6 across the top and 7 down and it’s going to make a quilt that is about 65 x 74. As much as I love blue and white, I wanted to see what it was going to look like in a different fabric, so I put together this little table runner, right here, and, I mean, I think it’s just darling no matter what fabric you use. This is a really fun quilt. They are commonly called Pumpkin Seed Quilts or Orange Peel Quilts or Football Quilts. Whatever you call them, we hope you enjoyed this tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company.
