Quilting for Beginners Part 4: Mastering Curves

1. Introduction: Have you been curious about adding curved blocks to your quilts? But it felt a little intimidated to give them a try. Maybe you've heard that piecing curves is really difficult. And you've avoided them up to this point. Or maybe you've tried making a curve block, and it didn't turn out so well. Circles and curves can add such a unique and beautiful element to a quilt design. However, they have a reputation for being notoriously difficult to master, and it's no wonder many quilters avoid attempting them. Piecing curves does require some techniques that are different than the ones used for more traditional quilt blocks. In this class, I hope to demystify sewing curves so that you can utilize them as part of your repertoire. Hi, I'm Julie Ray. I'm a quilt artist and online educator living in Portland, Oregon. I bought my first sewing machine in 2013, and I've been obsessed with sewing fabric together ever since. I love exploring line, shape, and color in new ways to create modern quilt designs that are truly unique. I specialize in natural fabric dyeing and use curved piecing almost exclusively in my current work. This class is part four in my quilting for beginners series. In this series, I break down the entire process of creating a quilt, beginning with the fundamentals and progressing towards more advanced skills. Before beginning this class, I recommend that you have a little bit of experience with piecing a quilt top. Ideally, you've already completed a quilt or two. You're brand new to quilting, I recommend starting with part one of this series. In that class, we cover the fundamentals of quilting and learn how to piece a quilt top. You can find a link to that in the resources section of this class. Throughout these lessons, we'll work to create the three most common curved blocks found in quilting, the quarter circle, the half circle, and the inset circle. Along with this course, I've also provided a free quilt pattern for you to download and use. This quilt pattern will provide an opportunity to practice the three blocks that we'll be constructing in this class while you work towards creating a finished project. So bring along your sewing machine and join me as we work together to create some beautiful curved blocks. 2. Class Project: In this class, we're going to be working to construct the three primary curved blocks, a quarter circle, a half circle, and a full circle, which is usually referred to as an inset circle. To help us practice these blocks, I've included a free quilt pattern called the in bloom wall quilt. Following along with this pattern, we'll allow you to practice all three of these blocks and work towards a beautiful finished project. This quilt pattern also offers some suggestions of different variations you can create based on this quilt pattern. So feel free to scale your project as small or as large as you like. You've completed your quilt top or whatever project you're making using these curved blocks, take a photograph and upload it in the projects section. In the next lesson, I'll be going over some of the materials and supplies you'll need to gather for this class. I'll see you there. 3. Materials and Supplies: In this lesson, I'm going to go over some of the materials and supplies you'll want to gather for this class. If you've been quilting for a little while, you'll likely have most of these on hand. First of all, you want to gather some of your standard sewing notions. You want a neutro colored thread for piecing. I like to use 50 weight cotton thread. Some sewing machine needles. You'll want to have some straight pins on hand. You'll also want to gather your cutting materials, a self healing cutting mat, a rotary cutter, a pair of sharp fabric scissors, as well as a pair of smaller thread scissors and your acrylic rulers. I have a variety of sizes. If you only purchase one acrylic ruler, I recommend this long one -24 " by 6 ". There's also two different presser feet that we'll be using in this class. The first is a quarter inch presser foot, and this helps ensure accurate seam allowances. You also want a zipper foot. Most sewing machines will come standard with a quarter inch foot and a zipper foot. If you don't have a quarter inch foot or a zipper foot, you can find universal ones online at a pretty reasonable price. You'll also need to gather some pressing supplies, a hot iron, preferably one that can produce steam and a pressing surface. I'm using a wool pressing mat, ironing board or other pressing surface will work as well. So here's a little overview of some of the other supplies that you'll need to gather. For the different PC techniques that I'll be teaching in this course. In this class, I'm going to be showing you how to create your own curved templates. And here's a few things you'll need to gather for that. First of all, you'll need a card stock or a lightweight cardboard. I really like to use an old cereal box. I find this to be the perfect material for creating our curved templates. You'll need a pen or a sharpie or some kind of marking tool, a scissors designed for cutting paper. You don't want to use your precious fabric scissors for cutting out cardboard and a ruler. I have this plastic school ruler. You're also welcome to use your acrylic quilting rulers, if you like. One of the techniques we're going to use will require freezer paper. Freezer paper can be purchased at your local grocery store, and you really want to ensure that what you purchase is freezer paper. Freezer paper is different from parchment paper and wax paper. Wax paper is coated with wax on both sides, and parchment paper isn't coated at all. Freezer paper is coated with wax on one side, and it's matte on the other. The freezer paper that I use is designed specifically for quilters, and this is nice because it's a little bit heavier weight, so it makes it easier to reuse. But the freezer paper that you find in your local grocery store will work just fine for this class. You'll also want a compass. This will help us draw perfect circles. We're going to be doing some glue basting, and this is a special basting glue that's designed specifically for quilters, and I really like to use this for glue basting because the applicator tip provides a high level of control over how much glue you use. If you can't find glue specifically designed for quilt pasting, you can also use an Elmer school glue, and that will work just fine. And finally, you'll need to gather the fabric you'd like to use. I recommend using a quilting cotton, as this will be the easiest to work with. If you're just practicing making some different blocks without an intended project in mind, you're welcome to just use two contrasting colors of scrap fabric or perhaps grab a couple of fat quarters. If you are following along with the pattern provided in this class or using another quilt pattern of your choosing, refer to the fabric requirements table to ensure you have all the fabric that you need. If you haven't already, go ahead and download the free resource workbook, as well as the in bloom wall hanging quilt pattern. So take some time to gather all of the different materials that you'll need. I'll meet you in the next lesson. We'll I'll provide a brief overview of the three different curved blocks that we'll be learning about in this class. 4. Overview of Curved Blocks: In the last lesson, we went over all of the materials and supplies that you'll need to complete the upcoming lessons. Before we jump into creating, let's take a closer look at the three primary curved blocks, the quarter circle, the half circle, and the inset circle. Well, the curved blocks are not as common as the more traditional square rectangle and triangle blocks that you find in many quilt patterns. They can add a great deal of variety to a design and help achieve a more organic look. One thing to note about curves is that even though we'll be creating circles, every curved block will be finished as a square or a rectangle. This will allow for it to be easily sewn into the quilt design. Quarter and inset circles will be finished as squares, and the half circle block is generally finished as a rectangle. Let's quickly review a couple of terms that you may remember from high school geometry class. Each curved block is comprised of two pieces, a concave piece, which is the background fabric and a convex piece. This is the piece that makes up the inner curve. Here are a couple of other important terms that will take a moment to refresh. The radius of a circle is the distance from the center point to a point on the edge. The diameter of a circle is twice the radius. It measures the distance of a line from one point along the edge of a circle to another point as it passes through the center. Piecing the two components of a curve together, you need to take the quarter inch seam allowance into consideration. Therefore, the diameter of the inner curve or the convex piece will need to be larger than the background curve or the concave piece. This will make more sense in the next lesson when we create our templates. If this is at all confusing or doesn't quite make sense at this point, don't worry too much about it. Trust that it'll all come together as we begin working. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to create your own curved template, and we'll be using these templates to create all three of our curved blocks. I'll meet you there. 5. Curved Templates: In this lesson, I'm going to show you the technique that I used for creating my own curved templates. Now, most quilt patterns that you use will include templates for any curved blocks that are used in the quilt. However, I find creating my own curved templates to be super useful. They not only allow you to create any sized curve you want, but they also help you begin to wrap your mind around how curves are constructed. I love being able to create my own templates. It allows me to create really small circles, really large circles. Creating your own templates really gives you the power to create any size curve that you like. So the first thing we need to do is figure out what size templates we need to make for the curves we'd like to create. For every curve, you'll need two templates. One template for the inner piece, which is the convex curve, and one for the background piece or the concave curve. In order to account for the quarter inch seam allowance, the diameter of the background curve needs to be cut smaller than the diameter of the inner curve. Here's the formula for calculating the size of the two different templates you'll need. For the outer curve or the concave curve, you'll subtract a half inch from the desired finished diameter. For the inner curve or the convex curve, you will add a half inch to the desired finished diameter. So let's say, for example, you want to create a half circle block that's 8 " in diameter. You would need to make a template that's 7.5 " in diameter, for the outer curve or the concave curve, that's 8 " minus a half an inch to get 7.5 ". And you would also need a template that measures 8.5 " in diameter or eight plus a half an inch for the inner curve or the convex curve. For the blocks that we're going to be creating for the bloom quilt pattern, these are the exact sizes that you need. So we're going to be making two templates, one that measures 7.5 " and one that measures 8.5 ". So to create your templates, you'll need two pieces of lightweight cardboard that are large enough for the size curve you'd like to make. I'm using an old cereal box, and you'll also need a ruler. I'm using this school acrylic ruler, but you can use your quilting ruler as well. A pair of paper scissors. Do not use your fabric scissors. Cutting cardboard with your fabric scissors will dull them. And you don't want that. And also a pen or a pencil for marking and labeling our template. And the first thing you want to be sure if you are using something like a cereal box is that we have one edge that's straight. And the way that I do that is I'll just take my ruler, mark a straight line across one edge, and then just take your scissors and cut. This will be the edge that we'll be working from. Great. Let's create these two templates. First, I'm going to make the 8.5 inch half circle template. Putting my cardboard flat on my workspace, I'm going to take my ruler along the straight edge of the cardboard and I'm going to mark the diameter of my curve. In this case, 8.5 ". Since I have these weird folds on the edges, I'm going to try to avoid those and mark the 8.5 inch diameter inside this flat space. So I'm gonna line that up. Use my marking pen, and I generally use a pencil for this. I'm using a marker to make it easier for you to see. I'll place a mark at the zero. And then I'll place a mark at the 8.5. Then I need to find the radius by dividing the diameter by two. 8.5 divided by two is four and a quarter. So using my ruler, making sure it's lined up at the zero, I'm going to make a mark at four and a quarter inches, which is right here. This is my center point. Next, I'm going to use this radius measurement, the four and a quarter inches to mark straight up from the center, perpendicular to the straight edge. So I'm going to line up here at four and a quarter inches and come up and make a mark at zero. Then keeping my ruler centered at the halfway point along the straight edge. I'm going to continue moving my ruler around like a clock, marking the radius all along the curved edge. I'm keeping the four and a quarter mark aligned right at that center point as I move my ruler around the curve. And as you can see, those little points, once they're all connected, will make a nice curve. Then I just have to do the same to this side. Lining up my four and a quarter right with the center mark and continuing to rotate my ruler and marking my measurements to create the outer edge. The more points you mark, the clearer your curve is going to appear. The next step is to connect these points. And for this, I am going to use a pencil just because this can take a little maneuvering. I'll just take a pencil and lightly connect all of those points. Once I have all those points connected and my curve is complete, I'm going to cut it out. This is why a lightweight cardboard is useful. Thick cardboard can be hard to cut out. So card stock or lightweight cardboard generally works best. There we go. Once I have it cut out, I can label this 8.5 inch, half circle. Now, let's repeat these steps for the second half circle template. So for this half circle template, I'm going to line up my ruler with the straight edge, again, avoiding these creased marks, and I'll begin by marking the diameter. The diameter that I want for this template is 7.5 ". And then I want to find the halfway point, which would be the radius. And half of 7.5 is three and three quarters. Then using my ruler, I'm going to mark the radius straight up from the center point. So I'm going to place my three and three quarter mark right on that center point and mark at the top. Then rotating my ruler like a clock, I'm going to continue to mark the radius, all the way around the outer edge of the curve. Then I'll use my pencil to connect all of these points, creating the outer edge of my curve, then I'll cut it out. And lastly, I'll label this 7.5 inch half circle. You've now created the templates that you'll need. To create nearly all of the curved blocks we'll be constructing in this class. In the next lesson, we'll use these templates to create a four inch quarter circle. I'll meet you there. 6. Quarter Circle Block: Cutting and Pinning: All right, let's get started. In this lesson, we're going to be using the templates we created in the previous lesson to create quarter circle blocks. Quarter circles are definitely the most forgiving block, making them one of the easier curved blocks to create, which is why we're beginning here. A quarter circle is essentially half of a half circle. So we'll be using half of our half circle templates. I'm going to begin with two squares that are about a half inch larger than my desired unfinished size. So since I'm planning to make quarter circles that are 4.5 " by 4.5 " unfinished, I'm starting with 25 inch by five inch squares. One will be for the inner curve, and one will be for the background curve. Beginning with squares that are slightly larger will allow some trimming room, which you'll appreciate, especially when you're just starting out. Let's begin with the inner curve, and I'm going to use this sage green for my inner curve. These are my two templates. If you remember from the overview lesson, the inner curve needs to be larger than the outer curve in order to account for the seam allowance. For the inner curve, I'm going to be using the 8.5 inch half circle template. I'm going to set this template aside for now. To begin, I'm going to align the bottom edge of my template with the bottom edge of my fabric. And I'm going to align the halfway mark at the top and the bottom with the side edge of my fabric. Now, one thing to remember is these templates don't include seam allowances for the edges. Since this block is going to be sewn to another block, we need to make sure that we account for the seam allowance on both of these edges. To do that, we're going to shift the template up a quarter of an inch, and I can use my acrylic ruler to measure that. And then we need to slide it over a quarter of an inch. That ones a little harder to get exactly precise. But I can eyeball it and then check with my ruler to make sure that I have quarter of an inch. Once I have that in place, I'm going to hold the template down firmly with my non dominant hand, and then I'll use my dominant hand to very carefully cut along the edge of this curve. And since this fabric is intended for the inner portion of the curve, I can discard this outer portion. For the in bloom pattern, you'll need eight quarter circles. So I'm going to go ahead and cut out my seven other inner curves, and then we'll move on to cutting out the outer portion of the curve. So I have the inner curve for all of my quarter circle blocks cut out. I'm going to set those aside for now and move on to the outer curve. The outer curve needs to be smaller than the outer curve again to account for the seam allowance. I'm going to use the smaller template, the 7.5 inch half circle template. We're going to line this up the exact same way that we did for the inner curve. I will line up my template along the edge. Since we're just doing a quarter circle, we'll use half of our half circle template and line up the side edge with the halfway marks on the top and the bottom. Then we'll use our ruler to shift the template up a quarter of an inch and over a quarter of an inch to allow for a seam allowance on the bottom edge and the side edge. Once I have that all lined up, I will hold my template down firmly and cut along this curve. And since for this one, I want to use the background piece, I'm going to discard this inner curve. I'll go ahead and cut out all of my background pieces. Here are a couple of tips if you are working with printable paper templates that maybe came with a pattern rather than the cardboard or card stock templates that we created. First of all, when using these templates, you don't need to account for the quarter inch seam allowance. On the bottom and the sides as the pattern designer will have factored those measurements in. So you can line these templates up directly with the edges of your fabric. Now, cutting along the paper, because it's so thin, it's a little bit more challenging to stay precise. So what I like to do is I like to use an acrylic ruler as a guide. And I'll follow my acrylic ruler all the way around the edge and very slowly use that as a guide. To be sure that I don't cut into the paper template. All right. So here I have my inner portion and outer portion for my quarter circle block. And you can already see how these two will fit together. If we kind of line them up, they should overlap about a quarter of an inch all the way along that curve. That's a good indication that you've done it. Right. The next step is we're going to pin, and I always like to mark the center. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take the outer curve, match the edges. And make a little crease right at the center point. And we can do the same thing with the inner curve. We do a little finger press to make a crease there. Now, we're going to pin these right sides together, and this part takes a little bit of trust. It might seem like it's not going to work, but trust to that it will. I like to start at the center point and match the center point. I have them lined up how they're going to be sewn together. Then I'm going to flip them right sides together right at that center point. So I'm going to flip this over and pin right at the place where I marked the centers. Next, I like to pin the ends. So I'm going to go to this end. And for this, you can just kind of follow all the way. I'm going to pin right here and match the end. And then I'll come to this side and do the same thing, matching the raw edges right at the end, and I'll pin. Don't let your fabric shift on you. And then if you like, you can add a couple pins in between. When doing this, you'll see that as you kind of manipulate the fabric, those raw edges will just kind of naturally line up with each other. You want to be careful not to stretch either side of the fabrics. Because curves are cut along the bias and not along the grain, they're very prone to stretching. And if either of your fabrics becomes stretched, it will create a pucker or creasing in your curve, and your curve won't lie as flat as it would otherwise. So I'm going to add a couple more pins here. And it seems a little funny. It seems a little awkward. It's definitely not laying flat right now. But it should look something like this. I'm gonna take this over to my sewing machine. I'll meet you in the next lesson where we'll sew our block together. 7. Quarter Circle Block: Sewing and Trimming: In the previous lesson, we cut out the pieces for our quarter circle blocks and pinned them together. In this lesson, we'll work to finish our quarter circle blocks. All right, so I have my piece over at my sewing machine, and we'll spend a moment getting set up. First, I'm going to install my quarter inch presser foot. This will help us keep a consistent seam allowance. I'm also going to set my stitch length to 2.0. We'll place our fabric under the machine lining up the raw curved edge with the quarter inch marker. I like to put my needle down just to kind of secure that in place. And I'm going to very slowly begin sewing. Oops. You want to be sure to remove the pins as you go. Since we are using a shorter stitch length, there's a greater chance that your needle could hit a pin. And the key to curves, especially when you're starting out, is to go slow. And as you sew, you kind of want to adjust. If you notice that there's a little tuck or a pucker, you can kind of try to smooth it out. I'll sometimes even use a pin, sweep it underneath just to kind of smooth out any fabric that might be bunching up. In the end, you might need to use a pin to kind of pull these two pieces back together. Be sure that the rat just stay aligned all the way to the end. Now I'm going to bring this piece to my pressing mat. All right, so I have my bock over at my pressing mat. And the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to snip inside the seam allowance. This is something that I find helps the two pieces lay flat. So I'm going to take just a small thread scissors and just snip about every quarter inch or so, all the way along the seam allowance. Just being very careful not to snip into my stitching. If you do that, you'll have a hole. I've done it before. It's sad. I'm just going to snip all the way along the edge. And then I'll press. I will almost always press towards the background fabric, and the only exception I make to that is if the fabric that I've used for the inner curve is much darker than the background. If I'm using a white background or a very light colored background, then I'll press it towards the center. So with my iron, being very careful to press and not iron, then I'll flip it over and press it again. And that looks pretty good. You can see on this edge, I have a little bit of a little place here where it's not perfectly aligned, but that's okay. That's why we left some space for trimming. So we'll be able to trim that off. And the final step before I'm finished is to trim this block. And I want the unfinished size of this block to be 4.5 " by 4.5 ". So I'm going to line that up. And one thing I want to pay attention to while I'm doing that is I want to ensure that I have at least a quarter inch from the seam line here to the end of the background fabric, and that's to allow seam allowance for sewing the blocks together. So I'm going to line this up. 4.5 ". My 4.5 inch mark here and 4.5 " there. I've got a quarter inch of background fabric here and here, so that should be good. And then I can take this and trim. And we left a very generous amount of room for trimming. There is my first quarter circle block. Go ahead and make a few more quarter circle blocks. If you're creating the in bloom wall quilt, you'll need eight quarter circle blocks. Take some time and finish making all of the blocks that you need before moving on to the next lesson. In the next lesson, we'll work on making a half circle block. 8. Half Circle Block: In the previous lesson, we created quarter circle blocks, and hopefully you've had a chance to practice at least a few and are beginning to feel comfortable piecing the quarter circle curve. In this lesson, we're going to move on to the half circle, which is a little bit more challenging than the quarter circle and provides the perfect opportunity to continue practicing your skills. We're going to be using the same templates to create an eight inch half circle. And rather than using pins, in this lesson, I'll introduce a technique called glue basting. Our half circle blocks, we'll begin with two rectangles. Cut, so that each side is about a half inch longer than the desired unfinished size. If you're following along with the in bloom quilt pattern, you will need five inch by nine inch rectangles, one of fabric B, and one of the background fabric. For the technique I'm going to be showing you, you'll also need the templates that we created in previous lesson, your 7.5 inch half circle template, and your 8.5 inch half circle template. You'll want straight pins, a rotary cutter, and I'm going to be showing you the glue basting method. You'll want to grab whatever glue you're using for glue basting. So I'm going to begin by cutting out my half circles. I'll start with my inside half circle, and I'm going to be using my larger template to account for the seam allowance. So using my 8.5 inch half circle template, I'm going to line up the straight edge of the template with the long raw edge of my fabric. And since we haven't accounted for the quarter inch seam allowance that we'll need when we're sewing this block to another block, we want to be sure to add a quarter inch at the bottom. And I can do that using my acrylic ruler. I'm just going to push this up a quarter inch. I can use my ruler to be sure that's exact. And we'll line it up right there. Then holding my template down firmly, I'll use my rotary cutter to cut around the template and cut out my curve. Since this is the inside curve, I can discard this outer portion. I'll set that aside. For the background piece, I'll use the smaller template. In this case, the 7.5 inch half circle template. And I actually want to be sure that this piece is centered. So the first thing I'm going to do is fold this in half, matching the short edges. I'm just going to finger press just to create a center mark. I don't know if you can see that. Just made lit a little mark there at the center. And then I can line up my center mark here, with the center mark I just created. And like I did before, I'm going to line up this long straight edge of the template with the long raw edge of the fabric, and then I'm going to push it up a quarter of an inch and I'll use my ruler to measure. Make sure that's still centered, and then I will cut out this curve. And since this is the background piece, I'll discard this inner portion or save it for another project. Now we need to base these together, and I'm going to be showing you the glue basting method. The first thing I like to do is find the center point of both the inner curve and the background piece. To do that, I'm going to fold this in half, matching the corners and all of the raw edges, and just do a little finger crease right at the top. You can also use a pin to mark that center point if you prefer. I'll do the same thing with the background piece, fold it in half, matching all of the raw edges. And just finger press to find the center point. Now, I'm going to line these up as I want them to be arranged in the quilt block, and right at the center point, I'm going to flip this half circle over so that these two pieces are right sides together, just like that. And then I'm going to put a pin right at the center point. And pinning at the center point just helps to ensure that these two pieces stay centered. I've switched over to my pressing mat and plugged in my iron. That's going to help the glue basting portion go a little bit faster. As I mentioned in the materials lesson, this one's really nice because of this applicator, it makes it really easy to control the amount of glue that comes out. The Elmer school glue is another really great option. And with that, if you're having a hard time controlling the amount of glue that comes out, if it feels like too much is coming out at once, what I've done is just opened up the cap and used a pin, obviously not one that you'll use with fabric. And dipped the end of the pin into the glue bottle and use that to apply the glue around the raw edge. So that's an option if you're not able to find specific basting glue. So what I like to do is I like to start at the pin and work my way from one side to the edge and then from the other side to the edge. So starting here in the middle, I'm going to apply a very, very thin layer of glue, maybe just a couple of inches, very close to the raw edge. I want to be sure that the glue I'm applying is within the quarter inch seam allowance. So you really don't want to add very much at all. And then I'm going to follow along this curve. And match the raw edges, essentially gluing those together. And I'll finger press for a moment. And if you've used only a little bit of glue, you shouldn't have any seeping out. And I might just do a little press with my iron to help aid in the drying of the glue and setting that. And then I'm just going to keep going. I'm going to follow all the way along this raw edge, applying a very thin layer of glue. Within the quarter inch seam allowance. I'm about maybe an eighth of an inch from the raw edge. And then I'll continue following along matching the raw edges. And one thing you want to be really mindful of is to not stretch or pull either of the fabrics. Because this is cut on the bias, it's going to be prone to stretching. You want to avoid that. Just set that and keep going. So I've got that side glued together. I'm going to do the same thing over here, applying a thin layer of glue all the way along this raw edge and matching the two edges together. Glue basting is honestly one of my favorite techniques. I find that it really is useful in getting clean, accurate edges without any pokerin. And at this point, you can remove the pin. I usually leave it in, and I'll take it out as I sew. Now that I have the raw edge of the curve, glue basted together, I'm ready to take this to the sewing machine. Alright, so I have my quarter inch presser foot installed on my machine, and my stitch length is set to 2.0. I like to sew with the inside curve facing down. I find that makes it a little bit easier to control the puckers, since it's the background fabric that's more likely to pucker. Min a line up right here at the edge. And sew with a quarter inch seam allowance all the way around that curve. And remember, the key to curves is to go slowly. I usually will sew a few stitches, stop, and adjust. If your sewing machine has the option to end the stitch and lift the presser foot, I find that makes it a lot easier to kind of shift the fabric around as needed. So, I'm back here on my pressing mat, and the first thing I'm going to do is snip all the way along this curved edge inside of the seam allowance, making a snip every, I don't know, half inch or so. And then you can press your seams towards the background fabric. And again, as I mentioned before, if you're using, like, a white or a light background fabric where the seam allowance might show, then feel free to press the seams towards the center. The last thing we have to do with this block is bring it to our cutting mats and trim it to the desired unfinished size. If you're following along and making the in bloom quilt pattern with me, we're going to trim this to 4.5 " by 8.5 ". And to begin, I'm going to start by actually trimming off this bottom edge. Since here I notice it didn't quite line up. I'm just going to trim that off. The one thing I just want to be really mindful of is to make sure I leave at least a quarter inch of background fabric between the edge of the seam and the raw edge. I might begin on this side by lining up a line on my ruler with that long raw edge at the bottom, and lining up the seam with a quarter inch mark, and then I can trim off this side. And then from here, I'm going to measure 8.5 " And that leaves me a quarter inch on that side. And then from this bottom, I'm going to measure 4.5 " and trim off the top. I always leave myself space to trim. When sewing curves, weird things can happen with fabric. They can shift and distort. So I always just err on the side of giving myself a little bit of breathing room to trim excess off if things get a little bit wonky while I'm sewing. The in bloom wall quilt pattern only requires one half circle, but I recommend pausing here and taking some time to create a few half circles. The more comfortable you are piecing a half circle block, the easier it's going to be to jump into an inset circle, which is what we'll be constructing in the next lesson. 9. Inset Circles: Glue Basting Method: In the previous lesson, we learned how to construct a half circle block using the glue basting method. So at this point, hopefully, you've taken some time to create a few half circles and are beginning to feel a little more comfortable and confident using the glue basting technique. In this lesson, we're going to be constructing an inset circle using the same technique. Inset circles are definitely the most difficult and least forgiving of the three different curved blocks. But go slowly and give yourself time to practice, and I promise it will come together. I'm going to be showing you two different techniques for piecing inset circles. In this lesson, I'll demonstrate the glue basting technique. And this is a technique that I generally use for larger inset circles, ones that are 6 " in diameter or larger. For smaller circles, I use another technique, and I'll cover that in the following lesson. So for the first method of creating an inset circle, I'm going to show you, we're going to be using glue basting. This is going to be really similar to the method that we just learned for creating the half circle. I'll show you what it looks like when doing an inset circle. If you happen to be following along with the Ibloom quilt pattern, you'll notice that the inset circles in that pattern are 4 ". I'm going to make those using Method two, which we'll learn in the next lesson. So the sample I'm doing right now is not going to be used in the Ibloom quilt pattern. This is just going to be a sample. And to demonstrate method one, I'll just continue to use the same templates that we created in our earlier lesson and have been using along the way. So to begin, I cut two squares. The smaller square will be the inside circle, and you just want to make sure that this square is at least as large as the diameter of your larger half circle template. You can see I have about an eighth of an inch extra on either side. For the larger square, you can really cut it to be any size you want. I recommend making it at least an inch larger than the desired finished size. For this example, I made the larger circle about 3 " larger than the inset circle. I'll have lots of extra room on the sides. If you know what size you want the finished block to be, just plan to add an extra half an inch or an inch to the desired unfinished size. So we'll start with the inside circle, the inside cutout, so I'll set the background fabric aside for now. And the first thing I want to do is fold this fabric in half. Since we're using this half circle template, we're going to fold this in half and cut two layers together to get our full circle. So the first thing I'm going to do is fold it in half. And you can do a light finger press just to kind of give that a nice crease. Make sure all of the raw edges are matching. And then we can place our template. Remember, we're using the larger one this time since this is the inside circle, and we're going to line up the long straight edge of our template with the folded edge. Of our fabric. You might have been wondering why we didn't include a quarter inch seam allowance on the template, and this is why. When we're making an inset circle, we don't need to leave that quarter inch seam allowance, since this is going to end up being a full circle, and this edge isn't going to be sewn onto anything else. So we're going to hold this template in place, and I'm going to trim around my curve. And I can discard this outer portion. And when I open this up, I should have a perfect or a near perfect circle as perfect as we're going to get on fabric. So I'll set this aside for now and we'll work on the background. The background is the same idea where we're going to fold it in half cut. We just have to be a little more intentional on the background piece with placement to be sure that the circle we cut out of this larger piece is centered. I'm actually going to fold this twice. So I'm going to fold it in half like this and I can finger press just to flatten out that fold a little bit. Then I'm going to fold it in half again bringing the short edges together. And then I'm just going to kind of fingerpress right on the corner where the two folds match. Then I can unfold it, and you should have a little crease mark that marks the halfway point. Then using my smaller template, since this is the inside circle, we'll use the smaller template. And I'm going to line up my center mark on my template with that mark I just crease the center mark of my fabric. And just like we did with the inner circle, I'll line up this long straight edge of the template with the folded edge of the fabric. Hold that in place. And cut out the circle. And this should create a perfect or near perfect circle, cut out. And since this is the background piece, I can discard the circle that I cut out into my scrap bin to use for another project. Now, for the glum basting method, the first thing we want to do on both of our pieces is divide this into quarters. So going to fold with a circle, it doesn't really matter where we start. I'm going to fold it in half, and I'm going to mark just on the two corners. And for this, I actually do like to use pins, especially if there's little crease marks in the fabric. It can easily get confused, and you really want these to be precise. So I might just put a little pin right there, and right here and open it up. Now I'm going to bring these two points together and match them. I'll mark these other two points, dividing my circle into four quarters. I'll place a pin there. And I'll place a pin here. All right. Then I'll do the same thing with my background fabric. In this case, I'm going to bring those two straight edges together and mark these two points then going to unfold that and fold it the other way. Bringing these two pins to meet, making sure these raw edges all match. All right, so now both of my pieces are divided into quarters, and I'm going to use these as reference points as I base these together. I'm going to start with the top mark. And what I'm going to do is flip the inner circle over to match these two pieces of fabric right sides together at that top point. So flip it over. I'm going to match right here, and then I'm going to pin right at that point, so I can remove one of the pins and use the other one to secure these together. Now, this is the part where you just have to trust. It's going to feel like it's not going to work. It's going to seem a little wonky and crazy, but trust that it will. So next, we're going to bring this down and connect these two together at the next set of points. So keeping the right sides together, I'm going to bring these two points to match and pin them together, so I can remove one of these pins and use the other one. To pin them together. All right. It's going to start to look a little wonky. We're going to keep doing the same thing going all the way around the circle. So now we're going to find this next pin and this next pin, and we're going to keep following along the rot edge, keeping right sides together and match right where those two pins meet. I'll remove one of these pins and pin that together. This last one is always the one that's like, how in the world am I going to do this? But if you lay it out, you can see how this is going to go. These are pinned together right sides together. And so this last one, we're going to do the same. We're going to have to flip this down to match those right sides together. Right at the point where those pins are, remove one of the pins and then secure these together. So once you're all done, you do something that kind of looks like this. You can kind of see what the inset circle is going to look like. The next step is to glue baste, just like we did with our half circle. So I'm going to start at one of the pins, get my glue, and I'm just going to put a very thin layer of glue right along the rot edge about an eighth of an inch away from the rat edge. And I'll hold my two layers of fabric together and finger press those as I wait for the glue to set. For the inset circle, I don't generally use an iron. You could. I find it to be a little bit cumbersome. So this does take a little bit of time because you have to wait for the glue to set and dry before moving on. But take your time. It will be worth it. I'll add another thin layer of glue inside the seam and press and hold waiting for that glue to dry. And it is such a feeling of success when you get to the next pin and find that it has worked. Alright, so I have one quarter of my circle glue basted. I'm going to move on to the next quarter and continue all the way around the circle in the same manner. I'll speed up the video. Feel free to pause and take some time to finish glue basting your inset circle. So I've made it back to where I began, and now I'm going to bring this over to the sewing machine. Okay, so I'm at my sewing machine with the quarter inch presser foot on, and the stitch length is set to 2.0. I like to sew with the inset circle facing down. I find this helps to better control any tucks that may happen in the background fabric. For inset circles, you can start at any point. Just be sure to begin and end with a back stitch, which is a couple of stitches back and forth to secure the thread. Also slowly with a quarter inch seam allowance, stopping along the way to smooth out any bunched up fabric and to remove the pins as I go. When I get back to where I started, I'll secure the thread with a backstitch and then bring my fabric to my pressing mat. So I'm at my pressing mat, and just as we've done with all of our other curves, the first thing I'm going to do is use my thread scissors to snip into the seam allowance all the way around the circle. So I have seam allowance snipped all the way around. And because I have a lighter background fabric, if I press the seam towards the outside, there's a chance that it's going to show through on my quilt, and I don't want that. So in this case, I'm actually going to press my seam allowance towards the center, and this is a little bit more finicky than pressing it to the outside, but it works out and looks nicer in the end. So I'll just go all the way around my circle, pressing that seam in, making sure everything is nice and flat. Okay. And that is the glue basting method for creating an inset circle. You can go ahead and trim this square to whatever your desired size is. Since this was just a sample, I'm not going to worry about that step right now. With patience in practice, I promise that inset circles will become just as easy and natural as any other quilt block that you create. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you another method for creating inset circles. I'll meet you there. 10. Inset Circles: Freezer Paper Method: In the previous lesson, I showed you the first technique for creating inset circles using the glue basting method. In this lesson, I'm going to show you an alternative technique for creating inset circles using freezer paper. This is the technique that I almost always use for smaller inset circles, ones that are less than 6 " in diameter. So for this method, we're going to be using freezer paper. So here's a few things that you want to collect for the freezer paper method of creating an inset circle. First, you'll need a piece of freezer paper that is maybe an inch or two larger than your desired circle size. I have this 8.5 by 11 inch sheet. The one thing that you'll want to make note with freezer paper is there is a shiny side. And there's a mapped side. The shiny side is the side with the wax. As we're working today, you'll want to really pay attention to which side you're working on for the various stages. You'll want a compass or something that will allow you to create a perfect circle in your desired size. You'll want some paper scissors for cutting the circle out of your freezer paper. Also want a pair of fabric scissors for cutting fabric, your glue that you're using for glue basting, and I'll be using a ruler to find the measurement on my compass. So the first thing we need to do is create a circle, and we want to create our markings on the freezer paper on the non waxy side. So this is the shiny waxy side. I'm going to work on the mat side. If you're creating the in bloom quilt pattern with me, we're going to want four inch inset circles. So on the freezer paper, I'm going to create a circle that's 4 ". The way a compass works, if it's been a while since you've used one is that one side has pencil. This one has graphite, but has a pencil or pen, and then another point that marks the center of the circle. So the measurement between the center point and the pen or the pencil is the radius of the circle. Since I want a four inch circle, the radius is half of that or the distance from the center point to the outer edge, which is going to be 2 ". So with my compass, I'm going to use my ruler to measure exactly 2 " from the center to the outer edge. All right, there we go. Then I'm going to use my compass to draw a circle. I'm going to use my ruler just to check to see that that is indeed 4 " and that looks perfect. Great. Next, I'm going to cut this circle out and you can discard the inner portion. I'm going to use my paper scissors for this. You can just cut right into the center of this since we're going to be discarding this inner portion of the circle. This is something we're going to be able to reuse over and over. I like to label this. So I'll just put right on the edge here 4 ". I'm going to be working on my pressing map. I have a couple of squares cut and ready to create my inset circle. The circle that's going to be on the inside, I cut to be about an inch larger than the diameter of the circle. So since this is a four inch circle, I cut a five inch by five inch square. You're following along with me and creating the in bloom quilt, that should match what the pattern instructions indicate. Your background square can really be any size. It kind of depends on how large you want your block to be. If you're following along with the in bloom quilt pattern, you'll need a background square that's 9 " by 9 ". We're going to start with the background fabric. I'm using solid fabric, so my right and wrong side are the same. If you are using a patterned fabric or a fabric where there is an obvious right and wrong side, you want to be working on the wrong side of the fabric right now. So the first thing we need to do is find the center of this. So I'm going to fold this in half and press. Finger press is fine, and then I'm going to fold it again. And press and then I'm going to place the template that we created right on the center. And when you do this, you want to be sure that the shiny side, which is the side that has the wax is facing down. And I'm going to center this as best I can. If you like, you could measure to be sure it's 2 " from the center to the edge. I feel comfortable eyeballing it. And then you're going to take your iron and you're just going to iron right over the paper. And what will happen is the wax that's on the shiny side of the freezer paper will temporarily adhere to the fabric. So we can lift this up. I will peel off easily, but it's stuck on there enough for us to be able to work. So the next step is to cut out this circle. And I want to leave about a half inch extra fabric from the edge of the template to the raw edge. And we're going to be discarding that inner portion, so I can just cut, as I did before, into the middle using my fabric scissors this time, make a little snip in the middle. And this doesn't have to be perfect. You can just kind of rough cut all the way around. I and discard that inner portion. So this extra portion is essentially the seam allowance. It's a little more generous than the quarter inch seam allowance we generally use in quilting, and we'll trim that down when we're done. But it's nice to have a little extra to work with at this point. So what I'm going to do is take my scissors, and I'm going to snip all the way around right up to the edge. You don't want to go past to the edge. You don't want to snip into the paper. I like to go just a hair from the paper. So I'm going to snip and stop. Just a hair away from the edge of the paper. Now, for this next part, I find it helps to have some steam. So I'm going to fill my iron with water. But what we're gonna do is we're going to take all of these kind of flaps, these edges, and we're gonna press them over the edge and towards the paper. So I'll just do a little bit at a time, kind of finger press them down, and then with a really hot steam iron, press those out. Just keep going all the way around the edge, and you really want to get the fabric as tight to the edge of the paper as you can. That's what's going to help create a nice clean circle. All right. And sometimes they like to come in. The flatter you can get them at this stage, the easier the next step will be. And I'll even usually turn it around just to look and make sure that looks like a nice clean edge. We're going to take the piece of fabric that you cut out for the inside circle, and we're going to glue baste it to these tabs. So what I like to do is place my inside fabric right over the top, make sure that it completely covers the whole and the tabs. Make sure it's nice and flat. And then I'll just kind of peel back one part at a time. And with my glue. Make a little dot on each tab. I'll usually do five or so at a time. Press those down. I usually start at the folded edge and press outward, again, just to make sure that you have a nice tight fold over that paper. And I'll take my iron, kind of hold it over there for a couple of seconds to help dry that glue, and then I'll peel over the next corner. And you can kind of see where it's pulling now where that's adhered. And I'll do a few more. And I'll just keep working this way all the way around the circle until all of the tabs are glued to my fabric. And just be sure everything looks nice and smooth. That looks great. Once the glue has dried, you can go ahead and peel off the freezer paper very gently. Pull it off, and everything should stay in place. Next, we're going to bring this over to the sewing machine. So I'm over at my sewing machine. And the first thing I'm going to do is I want to switch out my quarter inch foot for my zipper foot. Alright, so I have my zipper foot installed. I have my stitch length set to 1.8. You could do 1.8 or 2.0. I like a little bit shorter stitch length for this. Sewing this takes a little bit of getting used to. It takes a little bit of practice. And my biggest piece of advice is just to go slow. Go slow, take your time. So what we're doing is we are making a stitch right in this crease right along this line here that was created by folding these tabs over the freezer paper. And we're using the zipper foot to help us stay right in that seam. So I'm gonna be lining up this left side of the zipper foot right with the seam, and that will help guide my needle to create the stitch right in that seam. So I'm going to get it right up there, put my presser foot down, push my needle down to be sure it's right in the right in the crease at that fold. And just as I did with the other inset circle, I want to begin and end with a backstitch. So I'm going to do backstitch forward and back, just forward and back just to be sure that that's locked in. And I'm just going to create a stitch very slowly all the way around this circle. Be sure to take time to pause and readjust as often as you need to. And when you get back to the place where you began, do a little backstitch. I'm going to lock that stitch in place and take a look. Next, I'll bring my block over to the pressing mat. All right. So I have my piece back at my pressing mat. The first thing I want to do is get rid of some of this excess fabric. So I'm going to take my scissors, and I'm just going to cut around about a quarter inch away from my stitch line. Be careful not to cut into your background fabric. And just as we've done with all of our other curves, we're going to snip into the seam allowance. Being very careful not to cut into your stitching. And actually, I find if you are pressing your fabric to the outside, the snipping is unnecessary since this inside piece is already snipped, and that's the one that's most likely to bunch. Since this piece is flat, anyway, you can go ahead and just press it flat. If you are pressing it to the inside of the fabric, be sure to go ahead and snip all the way around the edge. Oh And there is a pretty good four inch inset circle. If you're following along with the in bloom quilt pattern, you'll want to go ahead and trim this to 8.5 " by 8.5 ". And as you do that, just be sure that this circle stays centered. You've done it. You've officially created all of the curved blocks for this class. If you've been following along to create the in bloom wall quilt pattern, you should have all of the main blocks that you need to piece your quilt top together. So take some time to finish piecing your blocks together to complete your final quilt top. In the next lesson, we'll wrap up our class and talk about some next steps. 11. Final Thoughts: Well, we've arrived at the end of the class. By now, I hope that you find using curved blocks in your quilts a little less intimidating and that you've come away with some skills that help you approach curves of confidence. Sewing curves truly opens up a whole world of possibilities and really expands the different designs that you'll be able to achieve. Whether you've been following along with me and creating the in bloom wall quilt pattern or following another pattern of your choosing, be sure to take a photograph of your final project and upload it to the project section of this class. If you need a little bit of guidance, helping you finish your quilt, be sure to check out part two of the quilting for beginners series. In that class, I walk you through the process of basting, quilting and binding, helping you create a beautiful finished piece. If you loved this class, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review. Leaving a review will help others find this class, and your feedback will help me continue to create high quality classes in the future. You're interested in learning more about textile art and quilting, I encourage you to follow me on skill share. And this will help ensure that you're the first to know when I release a new class. I really look forward to seeing the beautiful work you create using the skills you've learned in this class. Thank you so much for letting me be part of your quilting journey. Bye bye.