Our First Guest Blogger…Welcome Sunni!

I’m so excited!  We have our very first guest blogger today…Sunni from Love Affair with my Brother!  She’s going to share a tutorial that uses the Moda Salt Air charm pack.  For those of you visiting us for the first time…Welcome!  I hope you enjoy the tutorial.  And a little birdie told me there will be a giveaway in the near future {Monday}!

I’m Sunni from Love Affair with my Brother. No, I’m not immoral. I just have a close relationship with my sewing machine, a Brother!!

I live in the Pacific Northwest with my husband and two little girls. I spend my days at home, playing, crafting, sewing and blogging!

When Vicki asked me if I wanted to try out Salt Air, I was really excited. I couldn’t wait to try out an easy project using these adorable little charm squares! And for some reason, I have been really into kitchen accessories lately. So I thought a sweet kitchen towel would be perfect.

For this project, you will need:
plain kitchen towel ready for embellishing
6 charm squares
Easy dresden ruler or template
sewing supplies

I love the Easy Dresden ruler!

It’s as simple as lining up the marks and cutting.
Then just flip it over to cut your 2nd blade.
I cut all my fan blades and laid them out to be mirror images. Alternately, you could go scrappy and use 10 different fabrics.

Fold the blade in half longways and sew 1/4″ seam across the top.
Clip the corner so it lays a little flatter.
Turn the point out, and press, being very careful not to distort the fan blade.
Continue this process for all 10 blades.
To make the quarters, line the blades up at the top and sew 1/4″ seam down each side. Join 5 blades together for each quarter.
For mine, I ironed the seams open, because that is my normal thing. Iron your seams in your usual manner and be careful not to distort your fans.

The Easy Dresden ruler comes with a circle template, but I used my circle cutter and cut a half circle out of my 6th charm square.

I cut the half circle in half again, and attached each quarter to my fan quarters.
You can see that I used 2 different decorative stitches. Just lay it over the top, pin and stitch.
Using a ruler, I squared each side of the fan. This step is not necessary when making a dresden plate, but since the edges will be turned under and sewn to the corner of the towel, I wanted it to be a true 90 degree angle.
When you square it, just make sure that the diagonal line on your ruler lines up with your center blade point.

Turn the seam allowances in 1/4″ and press.

Line up the point of the fan and the corner of your towel. Lay the other fan blade underneath. The fans will be wrong sides together, with the towel sandwiched in between.
This photo illustrates that a little better. See why I made the fans as mirror images? Make sure that the points of each blade are matched through the towel.

Sew through all 3 layers using 1/8″ seam allowance, making sure that you are sewing down both fans simultaneously.  Do only the pointy tops and leave the sides open.

To reduce the bulk, cut out the part of the towel in between the fans. Matching up the sides of each fan, sew 1/8″ seam along the remaining unjoined sides.

I also added a little bias tape tab to at the top of the towel to hang it.

Sunni is so creative!  I’m extremely grateful to her for taking the time to put together this fabulous tutorial for us!

7 thoughts on “Our First Guest Blogger…Welcome Sunni!”

  1. What a great idea. I love this. I have a ton of dish towel blanks in my sewing stash too. I think maybe some are going to be just like these. Thank you so much Sunni.

  2. Very cute tea towel. I was wondering how that ruler would work and make nice finished edges. A friend just bought one and I couldn’t figure it out. Thanks for the instructions.

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