Hi it's Jennifer from Shabby Fabrics
back with another June Taylor project with the pre-printed batting and this
time it's a casserole caddy. Now how many times have I been invited to a potluck
and I had something warm and I wanted to keep it warm and not have it slipping
around in my car as I'm driving to the party? This is such a practical, wonderful
project to make and it goes together quickly using the June Taylor
pre-printed batting and I'm going to show you how that works today. I'm just
going to show you the casserole caddy. It has velcro. I love that! So let's say I
have a lid on my casserole of course I would have either aluminum foil or a lid
so that it's not making a mess on my fabric keeping it warm. This allows it to
be bigger if you have a lid on there or snug it up if it doesn't - if it's
nice and compact. So I'm going to show you what that looks like isn't this
fantastic? And you know also when you're looking for maybe a housewarming gift,
someone's moved into a new home, or maybe it's a couple that's just gotten married,
things like this make a wonderful gift. Now that's the Rosewood Collection by
Three Sisters from Moda Fabrics. I love this collection. It's got all the
pretty florals, the paisley, the tone-on-tone, all the things that I love.
Now this is also a great precut project! You can use five-inch squares and
two-and-a-half inch strips plus a little bit of yardage and you have a project. So
if you've got precuts at home, or of course we have lots of those on our
website, this is just a wonderful project to use with those precuts. We have a kit
available if you want to do that in the Rosewood. Of course it might look
beautiful in other fabrics too. So let me show you what the batting looks like.
When you open your package you'll see the pre-printed batting here. And what I
love about it is the numbers tell you what to do. Now, I've recorded some other
videos on the June Tailor Quilt-As-You-Go batting projects and this one starts just the same, so I'll quickly get you to
the step where this one's actually a little bit different than the others, so
I'm not showing you the same thing I've already shown you in all those others.
So let's just lay this out - it's a little bit big for the table that I'm on, but
you can see the numbers here starting with number 1, 2, 3, & 4, so you would just
lay out your fabrics where you want them to go and that's always fun too, is the
arrangement, and I do recommend you lay everything out before you sew it
together so that if you do want to make changes you do that before you start
sewing. You're just going to lay your squares out and you're just going to sew
those together per the instructions that are included with the package of batting
and then you'll be putting on your strips here. But that's where it actually
starts to become different after that. Now let me get you to that stage real
quickly. I'll bring out what we've done thus far. Now, and I've jumped ahead just
a little bit because I'm always excited to show you guys! The first thing that
you would want to do when you actually open up your package is you see how you have a dashed line and the solid lines. You have a lot of extra
batting here. Go ahead and roughly trim around that and you're going to want a
backing fabric. We used a basting spray on the backside of that backing fabric.
We just sprayed and then we put the batting on top of that and then you
start sewing the squares down. Let me show you what I mean. This is another
fabric from that same collection. So we roughly cut around
our shape, we went ahead and basted that with a basting spray to our backing
fabric, but here's another important step. I got a little bit ahead of myself, and
let me show you what the other important step is. Let me move this. You will end up
trimming what you've done. In order to know how to trim, on the front of this
you have the lines of the batting. You're going to sew along that - it's basically
the footprint of the casserole carrier - in a contrasting thread.
Don't pick a coordinating thread because in the end once we sew all
of this to the batting we're gonna come back and we will trim away the excess
backing fabric and if you have a coordinating thread it's going to be hard
to see where to cut, and you'll be cutting directly on that line.
So just to recap: once you cut out your batting, roughly cut around, you baste that
with a basting spray to your backing fabric, you're going to go ahead and
stitch around with a contrasting thread, and we'll pick it up later why
that's important. And like I said that's where you'll actually be cutting. So this
has gotten you to the place. We've gotten you to the place here, like
you've done on any of the other June Tailor's if you've watched any of those videos.
And by the way if you haven't already subscribed to our YouTube channel I
encourage you to do that. We're always coming out with new projects, and a lot
of times we do refer back to other projects so it's good to be a part of
our - Subscribe to that - so you know when all of those videos come out and you can
refer back. We put our squares down and sew them down per the instructions and
we also put our two-and-a- half-inch strips. This is a very typical thing of the June
Tailor batting projects, but with this casserole carrier this is where it
becomes different. On these two sections of the project you pre-stitch your
5-inch squares together and you can see this grid here, and you'll just line
up - see those seams right there? I'm just gonna - You'll literally flip that over and
I'm gonna line up that seam allowance with that dash line right there, there,
and there, and stitch. Now let's get some pins and let's get that going. I'll be
using the Bernina 770 today and I'll be I'll be engaging what's called the dual
feed system and that's right here. I am using a presser foot anything with a D
that has a nice open foot is great for you. The D is the dual feed. I want that
to be bringing everything together and this is a wonderful feature of the
Bernina. I love that. It's basically a walking foot. If you don't have a Bernina,
no problem, simply grab a walking foot and it's probably not necessary, but
when you have more and more layers I like to feed everything in together, and
that way you basically have feed dogs on the top and the bottom. You make one more and then let's go ahead and take that and you'll see how beautifully that
Bernina just plows through this fabric without any hesitation and you'll be
doing the same step of course over on this side where you're pre-assembling
your 4 five-inch squares, quarter-inch seam allowances, pressing your seams to
the side. Just scoot that up just a touch. That's where I want to be right
there. Okay, here we go. *Sewing sounds* So let's have a look at that real quick.
I love these Clover pins. They are just - They're patchwork pins. I used to think
pins are pins are pins, whatever, buy the cheapest pins! What's all the fuss?
I've learned what the fuss was. These are so sharp, the head is glass so when I touch
it with the iron I'm not melting that. Some of my other pins
were plastic and I didn't realize that. And they're super sharp, so it feels like
when I pin things together it doesn't disturb the fabric as much as some of my
other pins which are much larger in diameter, and when I put the -- you
know pins shapes together, layers of fabric together,
you definitely have this almost ruffle. It's definitely a disturbance. I love how
it just kind of pierces the fabric and doesn't really disturb it. Now as you'd
expect, you're going to press that to the outside, and with your additional strips...
I'll just show that real fast. Naturally that's going to go there and yes your
strip is longer than that, but we're going to come back and trim that away, so
I would just come here, sew that, come here flip that. And I'm going to go ahead and
do that off-camera so when I come back we'll be
at the stage where we're ready to go and trim our project up and finish up our casserole caddy.
I've attached my four pieces of the five-inch squares and my strips
and so now my shape looks like this. This is where the contrasting thread comes in and it's so important. You want to grab a nice pair of sharp scissors that can cut
through all the layers of the fabric as well as that batting. I'm using the
Clover Bordeaux Scissors. These are one of the sharpest, most comfortable
scissors I've probably ever used, and I'm just going to come in here at this point
and start trimming away along these lines. And you can cut right on
that line. You don't need to worry about cutting off to the side.
And you'll literally just cut out your shape. Okay so you can see this is
literally coming into shape and you will cut all the way around your shape and
then you bind it. So that's how you get the casserole carrier to the point where
it's a casserole carrier and the final step is to just add the strap. So let me
take you to this point. What we were just doing was cutting around that shape, as I
mentioned. The pattern has you create bias binding because you are going
around these curves right here, and that's the reason for the bias binding
versus a width of fabric strip for binding. You'll be going across
the grain at 45 degrees to get that stretch you need right there in those
kind of shoulder areas. Once you have put binding on there the last thing to do
really is to apply a little bit of velcro and then I want to show you how
they did their strap, which I thought was really clever! So I wanted to touch on
that and you'll be on your way with your casserole carrier in no time, and I have a
feeling that when you bring that to a party or maybe you have that in your
home and you're using it, that your guests will ask about it and they'll
probably ask if you'll make one for them! So be prepared to probably make more
than one. In fact, let me show you - Let me show you this outside with the pan out.
It's gonna be easier for you to understand this if you can see the
backside of this. I thought this was so clever how they basically just took some
of those bias binding strips, sewed them together, and then inside here it's a
cotton - it's kind of like cotton webbing - I think it's 1 inches wide. This is
available. Very readily available. So we just made a shorter loop, this is
obviously not the same distance as that, we just made a shorter loop so it's a
little easier to see on camera. But do you see how that's just a continuous
loop and you've sandwiched this inside, and you secure that from here to here, and
here to here, and it's good and sturdy. So let me move that to the side, I just want
to show you how they created that. So let's turn that out. One of the first
things they have you do is they have you turn an edge under by a half-an-inch, and
press, and in the past I'm always like well how do -- what's a half-an-inch? How do
I guess that? Clover came out with a Hot Press Ruler. I love this because of
course the rulers I have are normally plastic. I can't get heat near them!
This was specifically made for that! So let's say that that edge wasn't pressed.
I'm just going to bring my ruler up and when my fabric meets my line of 1/2 inch --
and you can see the lines and there's all -- there's quarter, half, three-quarter, one -- everything that you want in here. In fact, let me turn it to that side where you can
see the half. You just simply bring your fabric up to that line, you just adjust
your ruler, and then you come in with a good hot iron, and you don't need to be
shy. I use it on the linen setting -- the hottest setting! I always use it on the
hottest setting whenever I'm quilting or working with cotton fabric. You can heat
this little iron or this little ruler up all day long and you cannot damage that.
This is worth its weight in gold, especially if you're wanting to be
precise and I like to be precise. So that's how you're going to get your half-inch cuff up and that's going to be an important step and then they have you
bring in your webbing and place it just an eighth-of-an-inch to the outside. This
is a raw edge here. And then you simply take it to the sewing machine and you'll
sew all the way around. Now when you come around your loop and you come back
to meet that, as you get near it, before you are at that point, you will pause,
project where that's going to be, cut that at a 45, and you can just butt
those up to each-other, you don't have to sew those together, because the next
step will actually secure that. I am going to sew this down so that I can
show you the next step and take those pins out, so let's go ahead and take that
to the sewing machine and sew that down. And again, I'm using my dual feed. It's
wonderful how it just pulls this together. This would be another great one
for a walking foot if you don't have a Bernina. And you're just gonna continue
sewing this down. Now just for time purposes, I'll stop there and I'll come
back and show you what the next step is. All right. Then all you have to do is fold this around, fold this over -- isn't that so clever how
they did that? I just love how it's so secure it kind of wraps so
beautifully, and I use my Wonder Clips just to clip that. So of course you'd be
doing this all the way around and just clip it and you'll sew an eighth-of-an-inch here, an eighth-of-an-inch there, and as directed in your pattern, you'll lay that
out making sure you don't have any twists, and you'll simply secure that to
your casserole carrier, and you'll finish up your casual caddy. So this makes a
great and practical gift to give and of course it's wonderful to use yourself. Be
sure to pick up your casserole caddy kits available at Shabby Fabrics!