Make a Pinovations Quilt with Misty Doan and Charisma Horton on At Home With Misty

hey everyone it's misty and i'm so excited about this week's project and our special guest so be sure to stick around [Music] hi guys like i mentioned i have a special guest with me today this is charisma horton hi misty i'm so glad you had me here today so glad to have you it's so fun to actually have you here in studio with me um i haven't been able to do that because of all the fun things going on in the world so to have you here in person is really great thank you i'm like beyond excited and excited to share this project with you and just have a great time sewing together today yeah me too so tell everybody a little bit about yourself you are like an incredible pattern designer she has like more patterns than i don't even know do you ever sleep um sometimes not often i bet those creative minds never turn off i know that right from my personal experience so i have been a long-arm quilter for about 12 years and in december of 2018 i took the leap into pattern design and now i have been picked up in about at this time 75 magazines and i've published over 300 patterns and i'm just working working working yeah it's amazing amazing so today's pattern that charisma has brought to share with you guys is the one that you see hanging behind us this is called pinnovations and if you um pick up the pattern that charisma wrote you can get it from us here at missouri star quilt company and it actually comes in two sizes it gives you the instructions for both sizes on the pattern we're going to make the crib size today which is what you see behind us and this is fat quarter friendly we've been getting lots of requests for fat quarter quilts so we hear you and i think you're going to love this one because it's still really straightforward yeah and simple so yeah let's dive into it okay great okay so we need our background fabric and in this case we used windsor uh a kona cotton which is like a navy blue blue color yes and then we also need our fat quarters which is just a variety of fat quarters and in this case we use this is called melon ball also from kona it's these beautiful pinks and oranges i love it i love it warm sunny colors yes so that's what we started with and so you'll want to cut your background strips and then the hardest thing about this is the half square triangle and so i have those and i have it marked here i have my line and we're just going to sew on either side of that line for our first unit so she's just drawn a line corner to corner and we're sewing a quarter inch away from each side and now we're just going to flip that around and do the other side all right [Applause] she's getting used to my speedy machine okay we'll clip all those threads sorry no you're good go ahead okay and then i'll just cut in half okay and so while you're doing that i'll just sort of lay out some of the pieces that we have in order here because all of your background strips that you cut and then you get these pieces from they're all three and a half is that right three and a half okay so you're well we have three and a half and then we have three and a half by six and a half okay so you're just going to sub cut your with the fabric strips yep and into that that's awesome and do you want me to go ahead and press these open yes please okay you've got it it's so much fun having a quilting buddy i love sewing with my friends me too all right we've got those ready okay and so now we have our two half square triangles and we'll put those in here and now we need to make another unit and we're going to do stitch and flip and so what we have is we have this kind of cream color here and we have one unit done here we need two of these units and the trick to this is to make sure that all of the angles are going in this specific direction so if we start with our three and a half inch square we need to mark that can you mark that on the diamond absolutely yep just corner to corner and i'm just using a regular pin here because it's just our stitch line there we go okay and to test that just to make sure that it's going in the right direction i just sort of lay it and then i'll fold it to say okay is this going to match i have that right okay i'm just going to go ahead and sew on that line and you want to sew directly on that line unlike when we did with the half square triangles we went on each a quarter inch on each side of the line this time we're sewing directly on the line that we marked and this is a three and a half inch square on a three and a half inch by six and a half inches okay so fast so it's the same size as these backgrounds rectangles perfect okay and now we just need to cut a quarter of an inch so if you could do that to your bed and then press that there we go oops i missed this little corner there we go and then we'll roll that back stitch and flip is one of my favorite ways to get all of those angles yeah so i get all these fun little prints or patterns from doing that and so same thing i'm just going to lay this on here and i'm just going to fold this up to make sure okay yep it matches the other one i know that i'm doing this correctly and i'm just going to sew that line again right on their corner to corner i get to do all the easy stuff and i get to hand it off to misty to do all of the cutting and ironing like work i think i need to do this full time you can come sew with me anytime charisma i would be happy to have you happy to be your wingman you know all right so then we're going to press that one back as well and it is ready to go so this goes in right like so yep so we have this pinwheel sort of effect right so the reason the way this design came about is because i wanted to those have to flip oh they do have to flip sorry no you're good um i was trying to modernize a traditional block so if you look at it there's a pinwheel but i modernized that block and so now we have these three are these four rows uh we need one more more three and a half inch square there it is okay so this is a fresh take on a traditional block and so we have our pinwheel and i've just sort of altered it a little bit and you can see from the picture that or from the quilt on the back that if you sort of twist the orientation it forms this maybe like little wreath and i just love that movement yeah and so anyway so now we just need to sew our pieces together and this just goes together lickety-split so i'll just start with these two three and a half inch squares and we can just go ahead and chain piece these yeah oh and i just have to clip those off because i'm a long arm quilter by trade yeah and you have to do that because but then now you can run the risk of having it go the wrong way yep always double check yes always gotta double check about that so when you make these blocks though they're all laid out the exact same way in the orientation we did and then you're just twisting them in the layout and you get all of this movement and variation which is so so cool man this is the easiest i got the easiest job i just get to watch you [Laughter] yep and i like the speed on this thing [Laughter] so yeah okay do you ever keep your threads together and use them like pins i guess it wouldn't work because the blocks aren't the same size in this instance i didn't actually ever know how to do that i saw somebody in a class do that one time and then i was like what are you doing what kind of magic are you creating right there so jenny does that a lot and i i always look for it now but so then this one flips yeah there we go okay and now we're just going to do the same thing we'll just chain piece those again i love how this comes together and it's really two halves so if you remember that as well so if you just wanted to go ahead and start pressing these and then we can start sewing the halves together now do you press any special way well as a long arm quilter i like to press to the dark if i can okay that's what i do too i always try and put my seams on the dark side all right those two are ready for you okay i'll press these teamwork makes the dream work that's right it sure makes it go fast okay and just to make sure i just want to make sure that these two little seams nestle and if i have to put a little pin then i'll do that just to make sure that i get those to line up oops okay here's that one all right i had to kind of fudge that one a little bit okay let's see if those nestled together okay if you're happy with it oh yeah they look great okay awesome okay if you want to press that one of course i'll clip a thread i feel like this would be an addicting block well and because it's fat quarters yeah i mean who doesn't have fat quarters in there exactly i know i'm thinking i have some really pretty fat quarters at home i just might have to make a few and this would make um like a fun accent pillow for the middle of your bed with four of these locks together that would look so cool it's me not the machine no it just takes some getting used to oh that's awesome all right we'll press that we have our finished block here ready to go pinnovations so cute so there they are there is our finished block so let's go ahead and take a look at the quilt behind us and we can see how these set in okay so here's our block and let me just show you how this fits in so just like so there's one and then it's the same block yep you just flip it each time so these two are going to be the same orientation and then these two are going to be the same orientation so when i sewed it i sewed in groups of four just to make sure that that circle was right yeah and it's just that easy so such a beautiful quilt this one measures i believe 48 by 48 is that correct yep and the other size is 72 by 96. and so remember you could get both of those in the pattern so be sure to stick around and we'll learn even more about charisma all right so thanks again charisma for being here i just really appreciate it thank you it's been so fun to meet you in real life i've been following along on instagram and i love love seeing what you share so you mentioned that you got started as a long arm quilter so how did you were you a quilter already how did you make the jump into long arm quilting well actually it all is sort of this divine thing right so i worked just part time at a quilt shop to pay for my hobby like a lot of people do and they sold long arms and they um had to repossess the machine i asked if i could take over the payments on that machine and they said only if you quilt for our customers and i was like okay but i've never quilted for anybody and and that's really how it started and then two weeks later i just put a little thing on my blog saying i'm going to quilt for customers within two weeks i had 60 quilts from all over the country oh my god and 12 years later i've had a booming business ever since that's amazing now i have three long arms and i have a pattern business and you know it all all those little stepping stones so are you just like a one-woman show or do you have a team that helps you or how does it work a team that consists of my husband okay hey that's a great way to start yes that's the best yes that's awesome okay so uh so where do you live tell tell everybody a little bit more about you well i live in a little rural community in central washington we're actually in the process of moving but for the last 20 years we've lived in ephrata washington which is just a small rural community in the center of washington state and i have six kids the last one just left for college in um august so i'm an empty nester and i have three dogs and everything in between that chaotic wow i love it it sounds so fun absolutely that's great six kids i had no idea yeah six i know i'm crazy don't look old enough to have six kids especially if they're all out of the house yeah that's amazing they were all close at age yeah so yeah that's awesome so you started long-arm quilting and then what inspired you to begin designing patterns obviously you were a quilter already you loved doing it and it sounds like you just had all these ideas yes that's exactly it right you get into that little group and creativity builds on creativity right so i really wanted to just design quilts to quilt i wanted to design patterns to quilt because as a long-arm quilter you really love negative space you love and i just wanted to you know branch out on that but then i decided i need to maybe make this a business and you know that's sort of how it all kind of snowballed and i just um i got picked up in a magazine and then i thought maybe this is really a legitimate thing maybe i could be a designer and then it just everything sort of snowballed so well and it's amazing how life works that way sometimes you know i have a similar story i never thought i would be here teaching quilting i've been around quilting my entire life but i think sometimes we as creative people we don't give it enough credit for how much it connects us to others and how much people are looking for these opportunities and these ideas because we just really want to make cool things yes right i put good things into the world like i love color i love everything i love the community of quilting so it's just a comfortable space for me i agree i feel the same way so is there anything else you want people to know where can they find you online if they want more charisma in their life um charismascorner.com is my website and you can find me on instagram as charisma horton and i take a lot of pictures i'm constantly posting you'll see several quilts and just be filled with color and landscape and everything else i love it thank you so much for being here if you guys want to see more of charisma be sure to follow her on her website and on instagram and be sure to tune back in here on at home because she's going to be back with us in the future so thank you guys so much have a wonderful week