Hi everybody. It's Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt company and November is Alzheimer's awareness month. It is the sixth leading cause of death. More than 6 million people are suffering with Alzheimer's. Every 65 seconds somebody is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. One of every three of our seniors dies with Alzheimer's or dementia and Alzheimer's kills more people than breast and prostate cancer combined. In addition, there are 16 million people in our country who are caring for people with Alzheimer's. We lost my mother-in-law in the year 2000 to Alzheimer's, so this is something that is near and dear to my heart.


A while ago there was a gal who sent me one of these flowers and this is the flowers that they use in the Walk To End Alzheimer's, and it's called The Promise Garden. They come in different colors and each color means something. So this yellow right here means I am supporting or caring for someone with Alzheimer's. There are blue ones and you would have that if you have Alzheimer's. Purple means I have lost someone to Alzheimer's. So that is this right here. This, for me, for my mother-in-law and orange means I support the cause and I can see a world without Alzheimer's and how we wish for that world.


So today we're going to, we have actually created a template that matches this petal so that you, in turn, can make a quilt in honor of or for someone you love that is suffering with this terrible disease. So to make this quilt what you're going to need are two packs of five inch squares and we have used Amethyst Royale by Wilmington and we're also going to need some white. And we chose this white on white patterns and this is also by Wilmington and it's a set of 10 inch squares and you're going to need another background. And I wanted mine all to be solid. I wanted the background of my squares to be the same and the petals to come forward. So we got this out of yardage and the yardage we used was one and a half yards and we cut them into 10 inch squares so that we could make our half square triangles.


You're also going to need your Clearly Perfect Slotted Trimmer to square things up. You're going to need some heat and bond that I have over here. We're going to need some border fabric right out here, we have a nice big six inch border on here and that's one and three quarter yards are backing, back here, also in the purple and it is three and three quarter yards. So let me show you how to make this because this is pretty simple and it's also really gratifying, one of those really sweet things.


So what we're going to do is, again, I chose the purple because I lost my mother-in-law to Alzheimer's and I mean, that's just something I want to honor her with. And so this purple right here, this lavender will allow all the colors in this purple, all the different colors of purple will allow it to just pop off here. So what we're going to do first is we're going to make our background square. We're going to put our white square and our purple square together and we're going to sew all the way around the outside of this. You're just going to line them up and sew a quarter of an inch like this and we're just going to... Hang on just a minute. We're just going to sew right down the side, there we go.


I had it set on another stitch so I wanted to get that off of there. All right, you can come to the corner and pivot or you can actually sew right off the edge. I made it just right so I pivoted. I never know actually if I'm going to sewing off or pivoting. There we go. Turn. Sew down. What you're mostly looking for on this quarter of an inch is consistency, so try to make this in the same on all four sides. So now what we're going to do is we are going to take our square right here and we're going to grab our 5x15 ruler and we're going to lay it diagonally on both corners. And you'll see right here, I have a little pleat here, that's not going to matter, I'm going to cut right through that so that doesn't matter. So we're just going to lay our ruler on here, cut diagonally both directions and then we're going to cut the other direction this way, so we line it up corner to corner again and we cut again.


All right, now we need to square these and I'm going to be using the clearly perfect slotted trimmer right here. And I want my squares to be about six and a half. Well, I want them to be exactly six and a half. So I'm going to line my seam line up with their seam line and hopefully you can see that right here. And then we're just going to trim off these little dog ears on the sides right here. And then I'm going to cut up on this side and down the other. And you could tell, I didn't even cut anything on that first side, sometimes they come out so close. So let me cut this one too. I'm going to cut off four of these. So again, we just line up that, their stitch line on my stitch line and trim up and across. I love how little waste there is. One more here, line it up. Sometimes you can line it up on these so that it goes all the way to one side and you really only have to trim one side. But if they're off at all, I just do both sides.


All right, and here is this right here and cut my little dog ear and come up this side, down this side. All right, so now what we're going to do is we're going to press to the dark side. So I'm going to lay these all dark side up right here. Now we're going to iron these and I'm just going to set all my scenes at once and then I'm just going to open these up and iron back and my darker side is going to be... My seam is going to be pressed to the darker side. You want to make sure there's no [inaudible 00:06:23] folds in these because that really matters.


Okay, so once you get your half square triangles made, then what we're going to do is work on the petals. Now, on my quilt right here, you can see I have these four petals and they're the same and that's because this particular line of fabric has two of each. You can make them scrappy, whatever you want to do. So I pulled out four fabrics that are the same to make my thing. Now, on the other little flower there are five and I did four just because I liked how they sat on there. I think you could do five if you kind of push them together and overlap them. But what I was interested in is what happened when I got these four petals on here like this? So I centered them on my block and it just framed up that little pinwheel center of the block and I just love that part. So I'll show you a little bit more about that in a minute.


But to do my petals what I did was I put my fabric right here onto the heat and bond. And you have to be really careful to do this, you can actually rough cut out a petal and put it on if you want. This was a little bit faster and I just kind of wanted to do it this way. What I did was I just carefully put my iron on here like this and I just kind of watch it so it goes right to the edge but not onto the sticky, you do not want it to go on the sticky. And so then I need to put one more on here and I'm going to do that down here on this bottom part right here because it's closer for me and make sure this is out of the way underneath. Just like this. Careful, careful.


So you can ahead of time cut these into five inch squares and go ahead and cut yours. But I'm just showing you how I did it and I kind of tend to do things, you know, sometimes like I'll do it and then I'm like, "It would have been smarter to do it this way," but this is just how it worked for me. So for right now, I'm just going to cut these up here. Make sure these are out of the way. We wouldn't want to make that booboo. We got these. And you can cut these with scissors, whatever you want to do. Let me get this cut in between here. All right.


So now what I wanted to do is there's several things you can do next to make petal, there's always more than one way to do things and my way isn't always the easiest way, but it sometimes it makes sense in my brain. So you can't actually stack these up and trace around this and just go ahead and cut them out all at once. But you know, I like to live a little dangerous so you can rotary cut around this petal just fine too. So I've actually got all four of my layers stacked up here and I'm just coming around this side, I'm going to flip this because you never want to cut towards yourself. So then we're just going to come down this side like this, and then we've got our four pieces done right here. And those are our petals.


So now what we're going to do is we're going to attach these to our square and we're going to iron them on. So you just want to fold this over and peel this back like this. And what I did was I actually eyeballed it. I looked it to make sure I had about a quarter of an inch on both sides right here. And then I just lined it up, make sure my centers was lined up, and then I pressed it with my iron. And you want to leave at least a quarter of an inch when you line it up because you got your seam. Don't forget you've got your seam right there. So now before I put this together, I went ahead and stitched all the way around it with whatever applique stitch you want, whether it's a blanket stitch or a little zigzag or you want to do straight stitch around it and you can actually stitch it up.


So a big part of this project is blanket stitching around this petal and I thought I'd show you that close up and personal. First you're going to pick the stitch you used and I chose a blanket stitch and on my machine it's number 24 and it's one of those that comes down and over, and down and over. Just like that. And my stitch length is just the normal machine setting on it, it's two and a half and two and a half. What I'm going to do is I'm going to lift up my needle and I'm going to slide this under and I'm going to start right here on this edge. You want to know where your needle is going to come down so it comes down right next to that fabric. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to sew straight across here like this and keep my stitches as close to I can.


Now, normally what I would do is I would use purple thread that doesn't show, I'm using gray thread. See, you can hopefully see this a little better and I just slow way down when I get to those corners and come around the side. Now, you can make this stitch go in further or out further, however you want. And I like to just sew along this edge and once you've done this a little time you can get pretty quick at it. I kind of just use one hand to do all my turning and my steering. If I'm smart, what I'll do is put my glasses on so I can really see this, I find myself struggling a little bit. So make sure you take time to do those things if you need to. But you can see on this how this is stitching ever so carefully. We're coming down here to the home stretch. I didn't start right on the very edge of this so I'm going to go ahead and flip this and take a few stitches on the other side.


And we're done. And then hopefully you have a locking stitch so that you can just go ahead and finish that up. So again, I just want to go over a few tips on this one. You'll want to practice and sew this on a scrap piece of fabric to make sure it's the width and the length that you want it because all of this is adjustable. You'll want to make sure that you're using the thread color that blends, unless you want to outline like this and then that works. You want to make sure that you can see well, you've got your good glasses on. And when you get going, go nice and slow and it will just... You know, don't rush through this until you get comfortable with it, then it'll just make this nice little petal that's sewn on and you'll be able to sew all four of these together, and I hope this helps you with your machine applique.


I have some that are done over here so you can see it. So these are done and they're all stitched on like this. And then what we're going to do now is we are going to put four of these together to make a pinwheel. Now, this is important because you want your pinwheels to match. You want them to go the same direction. And so as we put these together, you want to make sure that you have white to color, white to color, all the seams hitting toward the center like this. Now you can see on this one I have, I have two and two different pieces to show you, so really it's however you want to do it. Whatever works for you.


What we're going to do now is we're going to lay these on top of here like this and this one on top of here like this. We're going to sew a quarter of an inch down the side and we're going to leave this connecting thread right in the middle of the two of them. So we'll go right over here and we're going to sew a quarter of an inch right down the side. I'm going to leave this on here, this is chain piecing, and attach this one, slide this one in right under the needle, still keeping my quarter of an inch. And then these are now attached by a thread and it should keep them in line so that we have it all going the right direction, and we do.


So we'll fold that on top of that and then we're going to sew a quarter of an inch down the side. Now, what you want to match on this one when you're coming down the side is that middle point. So we're going to come down here and we're going to make sure that one seam is going one direction and one seam is going the other. Feel that with your fingers, make sure that there's no room in between. Sew to that and over it. And then come down this side.


All right, now we're going to open this up and we did really good. Look how good that looks. All right, let's press this open. Now you want to make sure you have a nice flat block. All right, so here's our block and look how pretty that is. Now, you'll notice right here in the middle, these aren't all perfect. I didn't get them exactly perfect because I was eyeballing them but it looks great, I think. And let me show you how we put this together. So we're going to go to this quilt back here and we're going to look at, let me move this chair. We're going to look at these one, two, three, four. We actually have 20 blocks on this quilt. And so one, two, three, four, five, 4x5. And we just put them together like this, one row, so we make the whole block, put the row together.


Now the only thing you have to worry about what you're going to match up is where these two blocks come together right here. And so again, just like we centered this one, you're going to want to center these. You're going to want to lay them on top of each other, make sure you have one seam going one way and one seam going the other way. And your quilt will come together just really smoothly and really easily.


So many of us are affected by Alzheimer's. And we hope that you use this template or the free PDF to make quilts to donate or auction. Can you imagine the impact we could have to bring awareness to this cause if we all banded together? So on that note, I want to dedicate this video to my mother-in-law, Irene Doan.