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How the laser light on the Brother BQ3050 saves time on prep work

How the laser light on the Brother BQ3050 saves time on prep work

by Jean Boyd

Yesterday I showed you how to sew your own crazy quilt fabric, embellish it with decorative stitches and cut out house and sky shapes. So let’s put it all together to make a table runner.

Now I get to use another great feature of the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 machine – the laser light guide.

Press the laser light button on the LCD screen. A red laser line shows on the fabric. By default, the laser light is in the middle, but it can adjusted to the right or left by pressing the + or – buttons.

For this project, the laser light should be in the center position.

Laser light button on the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 LCD screen

  • Place a white square over the top right corner of a crazy quilted rectangle, right sides together.
  • Line up the laser line with the corners of a 2½” square.
  • Stitch a diagonal line across the square, following the red laser line. Keep your eye on the line, not on the needle. Now there’s no need to draw a line before sewing. What a time saver!

Line up the laser line with the corners of the square to show the stitching line.

  • Cut off the extra fabric from the seam allowance. Usually, I just cut the extra fabric from the square, but because I’m using white fabric, the background fabric would show through, so I trimmed both layers.
  • As you can see in the picture, I decided to make houses of different heights, so I just cut a bit off some of my 4″ x 6″ rectangles.

Trim extra fabric from just the square or from both square and house fabric.

  • Sew another white square on the other side of the house to finish the sky and create a roof for the house.
  • Cut 6 – 4½” squares from white. Sew a square to the top of each house block.

Completed house block

  • On a design wall, arrange the houses as desired.
  • Cut 7 – 1½” x 10″ white strips.
  • Sew 1 strip between each house and at each end. Because the houses are different heights, the house row will look something like this.

Row of crazy quilt houses

  • Trim the row to the desired height. Mine ended up being 7½” high.

Trim row to desired height.

  • Measure the length of your house row and cut a white strip 3½” x that length for the snow at the bottom.
  • Cut a gentle curve along one long edge of the strip. Lay the curved section on top of the house row.
  • Pin in place.

I used a blanket stitch from the character/decorative stitch group to top-stitch the snow in place, but you can use a different decorative stitch if you wish. There are lots to choose from on the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 machine!

Place snow fabric over the houses.

Machine applique snow fabric to houses using a blanket stitch or other decorative stitch.

  • Turn the row over and trim the excess house fabric from the seam.

Trim excess house fabric.

Be sure and come back tomorrow to learn how to add the borders and use the MuVit dual feed foot that comes with the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 machine to quilt the house table runner!

This is part 3 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 2: Crazy quilting and decorative stitches make a clever holiday table runner

Go to part 4: How the MuVit dual feed foot of the BQ3050 helps your quilting efforts

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2 comments

NancyB from Many LA October 28, 2019 - 9:41 pm

this is adorable!

Reply
Jean Boyd October 29, 2019 - 7:03 am

Thanks Nancy!

Reply

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