The Best of Sewing with Nancy

If your sewing machine has an embroidery unit that you can attach, most likely you've added monograms to towels or a cute design to baby clothes. But did you ever think that your embroidery unit's hidden talent is to quilt layers of fabric together? Please welcome Eileen Roche, my friend, as well as an embroidery and quilting expert, who'll show us the double use of our sewing embroidery machine. Welcome back, Eileen. Thanks for having me again, Nancy. It's great to be here. Embroidery isn't limited to a design that is created by thread-dense stitches. Swirls or geometric shapes can also be embroidered. For example, the squares, circles, and hexagons as featured in my sampler pillow can easily be quilted with an embroidery machine. The end result is the appearance of stitching that was done by hand or a longarm machine. "Quilt with an Embroidery Machine," that's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy.

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For the love of sewing. Madeira, specializing in embroidery, quilting, and special effect threads, because creativity is never black and white. Koala Studios, fine sewing furniture custom-built in America. Clover, making a difference in sewing, quilting, crafting, and needle arts for over 90 years. Pellon, dedicated to providing se wing innovations in interfacings, battings, fu sibles, home dec, and more. Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. During the first episode of the series on quilting with your embroidery machine, Eileen and I worked with stippling the background, creating the appliqu, and then piecing the blocks together. The stippling and the quilting were stitched through all three layers of fabric. So it's a really unique way of working with your quilting and embroidery unit. If you did not catch that first program, you might want to go to NancyZieman.com and watch it online, because we then reviewed the basics of top fabric, batting, and backing fabric. And they're hooped and ready to go. This is just a sample from that first show. But we're now working with the sampler pillow, advanced to-- let's say you pieced a quilt that had a shape-- hexagon shapes, square shapes, or circle shapes. You could layer your fabrics, all your quilt sandwich, and then stitch them all together with the stitches that are programmed in the machine. And, Eileen, you have the sampler pillow ready to go, and explain this great process. Right, so it's already hooped. I have just batting and the top fabric because it's a pillow top, and I don't really need to back that with anything. I have an embroidery-- standard embroidery hoop selected that is larger, of course, than my embroidery design. And the flange that surrounds the pillow top adds a-- kind of like a leader fabric to give me more area to hoop. So I have a circle template. This is a shape template, and I'm going to position it right over my circle, and with the laser foot attached, I'm going to move my design so that the needle or laser light is positioned directly over that crosshair. So now I know that my embroidery design is centered perfectly within my appliqu. And there are-- usually when you think of embroidery machines, like my shirt, it's embroidered dense, heavy with stitches, but the embroidery stitch that you selected is made to look like a quilting stitch. And it's a beautiful run stitch. It's just one color. It's gonna take about eight minutes to stitch, but that block will be complete once you finish that color. It has tiny little stitches that are very hard to duplicate by hand-controlled machining. And the reason I like this technique is that I have quilt tops at home that, I enjoy making the quilt top, but I don't enjoy as much the process of sewing all these layers together. So this way, it's like, how do you eat a elephant? One bite at a time. You can quilt your quilt top one section at a time through all three layers with just touching it and making sure that you get the embroidery to go in the center of the design. That's right, and it is all about landing the embroidery in the correct place, and a shape template would help you do that. It's, find the center, put the needle in that position, and then press Go. So we'll just let this stitch until it's almost quilted. Well, Eileen, the design is almost stitched, so that block of the quilt is almost completely quilted. It's amazing how quickly you can finish a large project on an embroidery machine. After this is done, we'll trim the thread, we'll remove the hoop from the machine, and advance the fabric to the next block, and do that four times to do all four blocks. So if you're looking to quilt your quilt top, whether it's small like a pillow or even large like a lap to queen size, you can use this bite-by-bite step, using quilting designs that were designed to go into blocks. Not heavy, dense stitches like I have on the sleeve of my blouse but running stitches that are appropriate for quilting. And you can get things exact and as well as get your quilt tops quilted. If you've pieced a quilt top but never taken the time to quilt all the layers together, Eileen's all-over quilting with an embroidery machine technique is for you. The quilt sandwich is hooped section by section. Templates are used for perfect placement, and then stitching begins with the touch of a button. We're showcasing this technique on a lap quilt, that you can see, that's beautifully geometric. But, Eileen, the embroidery is swirls. It is; it complements that strong, graphic patchwork design. It doesn't compete with all these lines. So the embroidery is row-- are rows and rows of this swirl design, and they're about 6 x 10. And then, after one row is stitched, then the subsequent rows are nested in between the first row. And it gives that all-over quilting technique, so each embroidery design is a new hooping. Mm-hmm. But you can see we've-- "we've." Eileen has embroidered to the very edge, so you can't fit that fabric in the machine, so what we are suggesting on our little sample is that, when you need wider fabric, you add a leader. And this is just basted on, and we're-- it will be removed after the quilting process. It's a piece of muslin fabric. And the design is 6 x 10, so you need kind of a gauge. Right, and this-- you're gonna draw a grid that is 6 x 10, and, really, that's happenstance. It doesn't have to be that, because you're not going to place templates on the grid. You're just going to use the grid as an alignment guide with your templates. So for instance, our first hooping would be about this location. We want to make sure that this vertical line is parallel with our grid. And as you are in the middle, it's just a strong reference point. And we used a marking pen that disappears with the heat of an iron. Or you can use whatever favorite marking pen you'd like or chalk or whatever the case may be. Imagine that this is a big quilt. It's a long table runner, really, and we're using solid fabrics to show this technique. If you've ever basted quilts together kneeling on the floor, we have a solution for you. You're gonna like this. It's a lot of fun. It's a pool noodle that we've actually cut in half to demonstrate here on the set. But at home, if you have a big quilt, you would use one noodle or maybe two and tape those noodles together, and you're making a nice long tube to roll your quilt top around. So the quilt top was rolled right side up, and then the quilt back is wrong side up. And we have a W there for "wrong" side up. And then you'd have your batting, which I have here. And-- pool table, dining room table. Don't crawl on the floor. - Right, save your legs. So we're gonna get the batting to... Cooperate. - Yeah, here. We got it doubled here. Somewhere, we do. Where is it? Here we go. Here's our other end. - I knew it was somewhere. So we'll just smooth that and make sure it's all flat and smooth, and then we take our quilt top, and we place that and line up the edge. Mm-hmm. - And then begin to unroll. And just section by section. - Mm-hmm. And so if you're on your dining room table, this would be at one edge, and then your quilt would be extending over the table. Now, I have a basting gun that I'm using to insert these little plastic tabs. And I'll continue to do the entire quilt. Pins are-- safety pins are difficult to remove on a hooped quilt, so this type of basting is helpful. You could do hand stitches. You could do temporary spray adhesive, if you don't mind spraying that in your dining room. So section by section, you just keep on keeping on. And assume we've just basted the whole thing. Then you'd hoop your first section. Right, and let's go ahead and do that now. We're going to use a magnetic hoop on this project because it's just so easy to advance the fabric as we quilt. So I want to make sure that my fabric is secure-- or laying over that metal frame, and I just position that top frame and make sure that it's lined up. Now, I can make sure that fabric is nice and smooth and taut in the hoop. And that the lines are marking-- measuring up to the markings on the hoop. And now we're ready to transport this to the machine. All right. And you'll soon see how to quilt with all-over quilting. Eileen has transferred the embroidery design that is a quilting design into her machine, and it's a quick one to stitch. It is. It's only two minutes. It's about 1,200 stitches, one color, so I don't have to even change the thread. What I do want to make sure is, I'm going to use my editing features to move the hoop so that my needle is centered right over the crosshair on the target sticker. Now, the template that you have positioned there is kind of sticky. It is. It's a great, you know, thing to use because it stays exactly where you want it until you're ready to move it. So I'm gonna lower my presser foot, and I'm gonna use the trace feature to move to the far right and far left. And I'm just verifying that the-- that horizontal crosshair is in the center of the hoop each time I do that. And it is, so I'm gonna remove my template, and I'll advance to the first stitch. I'm just gonna pull my thread to the top. And that's why I'm advancing to the first stitch. So I'll just hold on to it for a moment. And this gives you a pretty back. You don't have the excessive tie-offs on the back. And off we go. So now-- it was all in the planning. It is all in the planning. Seems to be the most difficult part, and pressing Go is the easiest part. Sure. So, again, this is just a running stitch, just like it would be if you were free-motion quilting, but only, every design you stitch is identical to the previous or the next one coming up. That's right. They're all about 2.2 millimeters in length, so they're identical, just lovely. Now, we're using high-contrast thread, and if you have a pieced design, most likely, you're going to use thread that matches the background. Yeah, and then if your nesting loops do not kiss perfectly at the horizontal mark, it's okay. No one's ever gonna see that. You know, quilts require a lot of hoopings. You may do 50, 60 hoopings on a quilt. So don't fret over every little connection. You know, it's a big job. But it can be a manageable job. Absolutely. - That's what I like about this. Rather than thinking of handling-- now, you-- handling all that fabric. Now, speaking of which, the fabric, you have to kind of deal with. Yeah, so on the inside of the hoop and between the head of the machine, you're going to roll that bundle. You could clip it. You could pin it to keep it from sewing into this-- falling into the sewing field. But also behind the hoop, where the excess part is, you have to maintain that weight and bulk also, Nancy. While Eileen is finishing stitching her first motif, I'd like to show you our next sample. The top row has

three embroidery designs

one, two, three. And if we look at where the nor-- the east and west sides of the motifs come together, they just about meet, or maybe they-- as we said earlier, maybe they just kiss together. Subsequent rows are-- the embroidery design is nested inside the design. And again, you place the template, whether it has a sticky back or it has paper that you're gonna pin into place temporarily, you align it and get it positioned. And just like Eileen used before, she checked the cross marks to make sure it was parallel in the hoop. You'd place this in your hoop and then in the machine. You'd move the needle so that you're going to sync it right at the intersection where everything meets. Take the first stitch, bring up the threads, and then stitch this row. And you keep stitching and stitching hoop after hoop, and it takes two minutes to stitch a design, so, really, not very long. So when it's done, you have an all-over design that complements a geometric design, and you've done it in your sewing embroidery machine. If you're a quilter first, hand embroiderer second, you no doubt appreciate the look of quilts that have been stitched with a continuous design. If your machine has an embroidery unit, you can accomplish that same look that is generally reserved for longarm quilters. It's rather magical. You don't have to make big projects. You can start on a smaller project like Eileen's table runner. And if we look in the negative space, the black area, you can see the continuous stitching that looks like it's connected, but actually, it's motif after motif after motif. And there are many advantages to this, Eileen. It's a very forgiving design. There are no straight edges, and it's con-- kind of concave and convex, so it nests up to each other. But we will connect from stitch to stitch. But it's really very forgiving and easy to do. Let's take a look at the template that-- I'll show you the template that I have, and Eileen has one just like it. Shows what the stitch is like, and it only takes two minutes to stitch out. And the L refers to-- that you're going to stitch from the left to the right, and it has all the grid marks in it. Plus, you can see the design, and you have it already on your screen, Eileen. Yes, I brought it up. And you can see that it's a two-color design, because in order to show that L, it has to actually be stitches. You're never gonna stitch that L. So it's-- Or if you do, you'll only do it once. You'll do it once, and you'll know right away it wasn't intended to be there. So I have my design selected. And in fact, I've already stitched the first design for this quilt-- table runner. So I'm going to remove the magnetic top and advance my fabric. And I will get my template in position and just slide that under the needle. And I want to focus on connecting... that line of stitching on the template with the previously stitched line. And I smooth that in place. Remember, that's a sticky paper, which is just wonderful. And I'm going to drop that top frame back in position. Now, one of the beauties of a magnetic hoop is, it lets you manipulate the fabric right at the machine, right underneath the needle. So I can make some minute adjustments without taking the bottom hoop off. But you definitely could use a standard hoop. You sure can. Mm-hmm, so I'm going to get to the beginning of the design, and then I'll move so that I can be right in the center of the design. And it looks like I'm right at the top. So now I'll advance by one stitch. And it-- I didn't quite nail it. So look how easy it is to do with a magnetic hoop. I could just lift that top frame, reposition the fabric, remove my template, and embroider my design. Now, if you don't want any tie-offs, you can pull that thread-- bobbin thread to the top and just give yourself a little thread tail, lower the presser foot, and off it'll stitch. Now all those thread tails will be on top. You won't have any nasty tie-offs on the back. And you can-- you can sync those with the needle later on, you can-- however you'd like to tie off those threads. Mm-hmm. - And just stitch away. Now, you may be working with a large quilt top, batting, and backing, and there are several ways that you can handle the bulk of the fabric. When you're working on an embroidery machine, you have to control the weight and bulk of the fabric because that's gonna drag out of the hoop. So there are quilt frames that are made specifically for embroidery units that you can put underneath your machine, and it'll hold it up above. You could add a table. You could have a beautiful sewing table like this, an ironing board beyond your machine. Whatever you have, cover it with a vinyl tablecloth so that it's slick and lets the fabric just glide over it so it doesn't get snagged. So in the sample that I have, you can see that-- well, you'll soon see-- there were three designs stitched across the top, and they look continuous. And then there was one stitched at the left side. And now I would, again, snip off my little basting tacks and get those out of the way. And then align the stitch from the new template to the last stitch of the previous design. Get this positioned. You may want to straighten it up a little bit, but then again, when I put it underneath my machine, I'd make sure that I was parallel, perpendicular, and sync my needle right in the middle. Remove the template, and do the rest of the stitching. So all-over stitching to quilt fabrics together is one way of working with your quilt tops and getting them completely stitched. What happens when an artist who specializes in painting discovers the virtue of fabric and thread?

The answer

amazing artwork. Please welcome Gina Phillips, who joins us via Skype from her studio in New Orleans. Nice to see you, Gina. Hi, Nancy, great to meet you. Thanks for inviting me on the show. You're very welcome. I saw your work of art "Fort Dirt Hole" at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. I studied that image for what seemed like hours. It was so impressive, and I knew you had to be my guest. Why don't you give our viewers a little history of your works-- how you work in art? Well, I started out as a mixed media painter. And I grew up in Kentucky and really-- my grandmother was a folk artist, and everybody in my family worked with their hands, so I had a lot of raw materials on hand to make art with. And so I started out as a painter, and I moved to New Orleans in 1995 to attend graduate school at Tulane University. And I started paring down my materials and focusing on layering fabric, painting on fabric, and then at a certain point, I kind of made the leap and started using fabric as my palette. And I have to say, I don't really know how to sew properly, and I actually watch your show and learn a lot of practical tips, but I'm kind of a renegade quilter. I use a longarm quilting machine, and I use it like a drawing-with-thread machine. And I start out with an underpainting-- an underdrawing and an underpainting and then I appliqu all kinds of fabrics and materials and almost anything goes, and I sew it onto the surface. And your surface has a lot of texture. That's what I was so impressed with, and I like the term "renegade" sewer or quilter because that describes it, but also, you're a master at it. Now, your works of art are not small. The-- the art piece that I appreciated is large. Explain how large it is. Yeah, this is the largest piece I've ever made. It's 13 1/2' tall by about 24' long. And even though my longarm quilter is-- you know, works on a very large frame, even this piece was too large to fit on the frame, so I had to divide it into three sections and work on it in parts, and then at the end, I hand-sewed all the three panels together and made a huge piece. And it was originally shown at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and then it was in the State of the Art show in Bentonville at Crystal Bridges, which was an amazing show, and that was two years ago now, in 2014. Gives me chills, just remembering the beautifulness. Thank you. Now, you work with a longarm quilting machine, as you say, in a kind of renegade form, but that came about from a tragedy. Yes, that's true. I've been living in New Orleans since 1995, and I had purchased my first home in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood of New Orleans in 2004, and a year later, my house flooded in Hurricane Katrina. So all of my equipment-- and at that time, you know, like I said, I was never really trained to sew properly, or-- and so I was just kind of devising methods on my own and I was just using a regular household sewing machine at that time, and so because I lost all of my equipment, the silver lining in that was that it forced me to re-examine my working methods. And I didn't even know anything about longarm quilting machines, but I learned about them and tried one out and could see the potential for-- the way I use the sewing machine, it's my dream machine. I use it like a drawing machine, and it's very versatile for me. Some of the other-- explain some of your other favorite works of art that we can share with our viewers. Well, there's a portraiture series that-- there's actually an example behind me, a portrait of my dog, Daisy. Mm-hmm. And so I've done several portraits of people and animals or people holding their dogs or their babies or-- and it's-- you know, I'm very-- I try to be very bold with my color choices and in my choice of materials. For example, the portrait of Daisy behind me is made almost entirely of... wigs, wig hair, and hair extensions that you would buy at the beauty supply store. And so there's amazing colors now that-- in fake hair, essentially, and so I use that as my palette, and so anything goes, an d I'll sew it on the surface. Well, your workmanship is admirable, and I love the fact, how you combine-- you basically paint the background a little bit, then you add fabric, stitch on fabric, and make it jump off the palette. That's true. I do-- I start out with an under painting. I use Golden Fluid Acrylics, a very highly pigmented fluid paint. It has-- it doesn't have a body to it, so it's very easy. It kind of acts as a stain or a dye on the fabric. And then I use that as kind of my guide, and then I appliqu all of my fabrics on top of that. That's kind of my road map. Well, Gina, thank you for being with us, and I'm sure others will enjoy seeing your works of art at museums. Thank you again. Well, thank you-- thank you so much, Nancy. Thank you for joining us at home. We'll be back for more programs of Sewing with Nancy next season. Thanks for joining us. Bye for now. Learn tips and techniques inspired by free motion quilting in Eileen's book, Quilt with an Embroidery Machine in 8 Easy Lessons. Included is a multi-format CD with more than 20 quilting designs for 6" x 10" and larger hoops. It's $29.99, plus shipping and handling. To order call 1-800-336-8373 or visit our website at se wingwithnancy.com/3025. Order item number B K00127. Quilt with an Embroidery Machine in 8 Easy Lessons. Credit card orders only.

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