And so, with this being 9 years that means next year is my big 10 year anniversary. And as I considered this, I decided I wanted to do something special leading up to that big 10!!! I thought for a while and I decided to do a new little feature here at Happy Quilting :) It's called Tutorial Throwback Thursday!! Staring next week, and every Thursday leading to July 2020 I will share one of my Happy Quilting tutorials. And I plan to share some "bonus features" on each of the tutorials. Some more of the story of the quilt, the design inspiration, or just some funny introspect that I realize now after writting for 9 years ;) My hope is that for a lot of you who joined in on the Happy Quilting journey somewhere along those 9 years, that you will get to see a little throwback from the past, and hopefully some "new to you" tutorials that inspire you ;) And for those who have been with me from the start, well, it will still be a throwback and I hope you will be equally inspired to try something from "yesteryear" :)
And what better way to start off a Tutorial Throwback Thrusday that just happens to be on the 4th of July than with a Star Spangled Tutorial!!! So let's throw way back to 2012 when I shared my Star Spangled Table Runner Tutorial!!!
And then you just start cutting a wavy curve, and it cuts both pieces with the same curve, making it easy to sew together. And when I say easy, I do mean easy. Because these are improv curves and they will be trimmed, it doesn't even matter if your ends line up, just start stitching and see where you end up, and then trim the ends straight. So fun and easy and a wonderful way to start learning curves because you can't go wrong!!!
And then add some machine applique stars and you have a cute table runner!!! And if you have never done applique before, I did a video tutorial over here that walks you through all of the steps of applique. So you can possibly try two new things with this tutorial, Applique and Improv Curves!!
And another reminder that this particular tutorial is quite a throwback, I am quilting it on a home machine, and it happens to be my very first sewing machine ;) I actually posted about Bernadette back here. I still have her and she is a great little machine for teaching beginning sewers on. I just love that!! And speaking of the quilting, I did some all over Stars and Loops, which is a design that happens to be in the 180 More Doodle Quilting Designs book that I posted about over here ;)
And how about that for our first Tutorial Throwback Thrusday!!! That really was so much fun :) So to make your own Star Spangled Table Runner just pop over here to the free step by step tutorial. And when you are done, I would love to see it!!! !! You can email me a picture at happyquiltingmelissa@gmail.com, post it to social media with #happyquiltingwithmc or or add it to my flickr group here ;) I can't wait to see your Star Spangled Table Runners!!!
And right away, the fun thing I realized with sharing these throwbacks is that with older tutorials comes older pictures as well. These pics are at 200 pixels, which means sorry, a little blurry when I try to make them larger ;) Another thing that I learned with time. But I did try and spruce up the color a bit ;)
Anyhow, this tutorial is such a fun one to make!!! I learned to do improv curves at a retreat and enjoyed every second of it. So I incorporated what I had learned into this tutorial. You make the improv curve by stacking your strips on top of one another with an inch overlap.
And then you just start cutting a wavy curve, and it cuts both pieces with the same curve, making it easy to sew together. And when I say easy, I do mean easy. Because these are improv curves and they will be trimmed, it doesn't even matter if your ends line up, just start stitching and see where you end up, and then trim the ends straight. So fun and easy and a wonderful way to start learning curves because you can't go wrong!!!
And then add some machine applique stars and you have a cute table runner!!! And if you have never done applique before, I did a video tutorial over here that walks you through all of the steps of applique. So you can possibly try two new things with this tutorial, Applique and Improv Curves!!
And another reminder that this particular tutorial is quite a throwback, I am quilting it on a home machine, and it happens to be my very first sewing machine ;) I actually posted about Bernadette back here. I still have her and she is a great little machine for teaching beginning sewers on. I just love that!! And speaking of the quilting, I did some all over Stars and Loops, which is a design that happens to be in the 180 More Doodle Quilting Designs book that I posted about over here ;)
And how about that for our first Tutorial Throwback Thrusday!!! That really was so much fun :) So to make your own Star Spangled Table Runner just pop over here to the free step by step tutorial. And when you are done, I would love to see it!!! !! You can email me a picture at happyquiltingmelissa@gmail.com, post it to social media with #happyquiltingwithmc or or add it to my flickr group here ;) I can't wait to see your Star Spangled Table Runners!!!
Thanks so much for popping in today and each and every day!!! I am so looking forward to this entire year of Tutorial Throwback Thursday's!! I really think it is going to be a fun feature that has a lot of looking back over the Happy Quilting journey ;)
