Selvage Stick People Tutorial

As promised, here's the tutorial for the selvage stick people like the ones I made for my Love-Serendipity-Family Quilt. This just may be my favourite use of selvages yet! This is more of a method tutorial than anything with exact measurements, as improvisation is part of the fun.

My apologies that some of the text on the photos isn't showing the best. Everything looked great until I loaded the pictures into blogger. I will clarify below the photo for anything that is hard to read.

So here we go! First, the supplies you'll need ...

Fabric with heads to fussy cut.
Scraps of background fabric. Solids work best I think. If you make a stick woman, you will need a teeny scrap of fabric for the skirt. You should have white thread as the stitching on the selvages will show.
And the key ingredient, selvages ...

And now to get to the making part ...
Prepare your selvages by trimming each so just 1/4 inch of fabric is showing above the white. You really only need a few small selvage strips, but prepare a few extras to give yourself some choice and have back-up in case you make a mistake.


Set your selvages aside and fussy cut the heads you are going to use. Cut them out into a square or rectangle for easy piecing. Be sure to cut 1/4 inch more than the part you want to show, all the way around. If you don't have any head fabric, you could use plain white fabric and draw on a face, or even laser print an actual photo of a family member onto fabric and use that.

Cut background scraps for the body. You will need a leg section and an arm section.

Cut selvages for the arms. Let the ends of the selvage go right off the edge of the fabric as you will be trimming later anyway. Carefully trim the edge that meets the middle line at an angle. When you lay the selvages out to sew them on, be sure the guideline is centered beneath each one.

Sew the arm sections on. Topstitch (regular stitch) really close to the edge of the selvage all the way around. It is like raw edge applique, except the great thing about selvages is that it isn't a raw edge, it is finished.

Be sure the leg selvages overlap at the top for a nice skinny waist for your stickperson.

Now it's time for final adjustments. Press and trim. Trim the sides to adjust the arm length. Shorten the legs by trimming too, if you like.

So that makes Mr. Selvage Stickman ... here are a few little adjustments if you want to make Ms. Selvage ...

Cut a little triangle scrap for a skirt.

Sew two little selvage strips for legs. The skinniest selvages you have are best. Make sure the legs are not wider than the bottom of the skirt.

Piece your stick person into a background. Voila! Now, add these into your quilt, pillow, placemat, mug rug ... the list goes on.

If you make any selvage stick people I would LOVE to see them.

Also, if you use this tutorial to make these and post your results online, please link to this tutorial as your source, since this is my original idea and content.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Selvage Quilting!

I'm linking up with {Sew} Modern Monday , Made by You Monday and Fabric Tuesday.

Love-Serendipity-Family Selvage Quilt

I've posted about this quilt several times while I was working on it, so there's not a lot left to say other than: YAY! It's done to quilt top form. (Click any photo to enlarge if you wish)

This quilt was not without its frustrations.
Let me see ... there were the two whole sections that I decided not to use, the time my daughter used the permanent laundry marker I use to mark my guide lines under the selvages to add a few doodles of her own (thankfully only on a border piece that wasn't yet sewn on), my iron water staining some of the fabric, sewing one piece of border in with the seams on the wrong side ... just trying to present an honest picture of my process here ;-)
I think I love this quilt, but I'm not 100% sure. I love all the individual elements of it, but as a whole I just don't know if I'm as convinced. The layout is very different from anything else I've done. I do absolutely, for sure, love the red with the white of the selvages.
The red is Kona Rich Red and it is fabulous.

This quilt is for the KVQG quilt show in the fall. The quilt show theme is Serendipity.
You can see my little selvage family there. That's my favourite part. And I haven't forgotten that I said I would post a tutorial for the selvage stick people ... coming soon.

I haven't decided on the quilting of this yet. I will be sending it out (it's huge, my six foot tall husband is standing on a dining room chair to hold it up). I would love to have it done in invisible thread, but that caused major problems last time, so we'll see.

My selvage fascination continues as I have a couple more selvage projects to start soon.

Thanks for stopping by!

I'm linking up to Made by You Monday... and of course Fabric Tuesday over at Quiltstory.

Work in Progress Wednesday

So it's Wednesday again and on Wednesdays Lee at Freshly Pieced hosts a linky called WIP Wednesday. It's a neat and unique linky because it is all about what people are working on, not just what's been finished. I enjoy seeing all the other links, because it's nice to know that I'm not the only one with several half-done things going at once!

And now onto to my half-done things ... above is a border for the Love-Serendipity-Family Selvage Quilt. It is very, very close to being finished to quilt top form. I had to order more Kona Rich Red, which is the background colour, to finish the very outside of it. Once that's here, I can be done in a matter of about an hour. I should have a finished picture of the quilt top to post soon!

I am making the binding for the Not a Wink Quilt. It is back from the long-arm quilter and looks great. I have mentioned before though that I am the slowest binder in the East. I am not kidding. This one will be a while.

Last night as I watched the hockey game, I sorted my I-Spy squares.

And for future projects ... Rosa gave me these selvages! Thanks!!

And Cathy of Blueberry Patch sent me the fabulousness above. It is rare that I ever have a new fabric right when it comes out, but look, some of the new Denyse Schmidt fabric. I feel so cool. LOL. Cathy also sent me the two bonus fabric pieces, just because ... thanks Cathy!

So what are you working on? Happy Quilting!

Meet My Selvage Quilt Family

I have had this idea forever, but I finally got it transferred to fabric! This is my little selvage family for my Love-Serendipity-Family Selvage Quilt. It's my favourite use of selvages yet. It was so fun to choose the perfect selvages for each family member. My husband has "Prints Charming," "Love U," and two selvage pieces that say "Brother Sister Design Studio." We have a son and a daughter (a little brother and sister) who he helped design ... hee, hee ;-) Here are Tess and Eli. Tess is almost 4 and Eli is 6. I made them the same height. Eli is a little taller in real life of course, but Tess is gaining fast. Her selvages are "Sugar and Spice" since that's what little girls are made of, as well as "Belle" and "Growing Wild." Eli has "Growing Wild," "Geniuses Grow Up" (Like most Moms, I think my kids are smart) and "Kids." I just used "Love" for me. I tossed some pieces quickly up onto the design wall. These are all separate bits not sewn together.

This picture is a bit better and less cluttered. In the real quilt the pieces will be well spaced and alternate between selvage sections and red.

So the selvage family is what I finished up for my first time participating in the Friday Night Sew-In. It was more like a Friday Evening Sew-In for me as I was all sewed out by just after nine o'clock. Oh well. I'm just not a late night sewer. These little selvage stick people were really quite easy to do, but I definitely picked up on a couple of things I'd do differently next time. I thought I'd write up a little tutorial ... lets say within the next few weeks ... the His and Hers Quilt Pattern will be my next post.

Happy Weekend!