Sewing With Nancy

The color, design, and subtleties of Amish quilts fascinate those of us who sew and quilt. Perhaps you've even made a faux-Amish quilt. Today's guest has spent time working with Amish quilters making their acquaintances, swapping stories and learning the techniques behind many quilt designs. I'd like you to welcome Klaudeen Hansen. Klaudeen, your stories are almost as fascinating as the quilt techniques. Thank you very much for inviting me to share those stories. The techniques can be easy compared to the stories that go with the quilt. The history of that quilting process can be as fascinating as the sewing process. For example, an Amish girl's first quilt is often made by tracing around a postcard and cutting out the rectangles while learning her colors! The Postcard Quilt is the first quilt we're going to show. "Amish Quilt Stories and Techniques" that's what's coming up next on Sewing With Nancy! Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman is made possible by Baby Lock a complete line of sewing, quilting and embroidery machines and sergers. Baby Lock, for the love of sewing. Madeira, specializing in embroidery, quilting and special effect threads because creativity is never black and white. Koala Sewing Cabinets hand built in the USA by American craftsmen customized for you. Clover makers of sewing, knitting, quilting and embroidery products for over 25 years. Experience the Clover difference. Amazing Designs and Klass needles. With our program called "Amish Quilt Stories and Techniques" we are going to start with the story part of our first quilt, the postcard quilt. A little girl would make this as her first introduction to quilting and cutting. Yes, it would be. Sometimes even before they start school they would learn to trace around an actual postcard. The postcard here is full size and you have made yours miniature. It is much easier to display the miniature quilts in your home. So that was a more practical solution to making a postcard quilt. Little girls would also learn their colors and how to work with color. I think the subtlety of Amish quilts is what you see that they have the greens to blues the reds. I really like that little touch, that nuance. The color change is what makes them unique and different from quilts that are chain pieced today. So these were individually cut and placed, often by the child into an arrangement that they would enjoy. Then grandma or mom would help put it together. Absolutely. The story is pretty interesting, I think extremely interesting and then also the Amish choose colors to wear that are on 3/4 of the color wheel. The gold, orange, and bright yellow colors are seldom or never worn by the Amish but bright colors in the rest of the color wheel are definitely used especially on their children's clothing. So we have leftovers from the remnants of something that would have been cut out from a little girl's top. Then the little girl would... She would put her favorite postcard on and she would trace around it so that she could proceed to cut around this and make the shapes that she would need for her quilt. Now, the shapes that we have in this miniature are 2-1/2" by 1-1/2", so they are small. Yes, they are very small. Here are some larger pieces that will show a little bit about what they could look like. We'll just lay these here. This is the postcard size that we have and then after laying these out she would do a little sewing. Very simple. Yes, they would be stitched together with the short edges touching, and making it in long rows. So here's just a close-up of sewing those short ends. I think you can all manage that very easily. Then rather than sewing or chain piecing as we might do today their technique is to do two, then put it back do two, put it back. The child would be putting them back and learning to arrange them and keep things organized as they worked. They would then have help stitching the blocks together. Arranging the colors is part of the fun for the child. It keeps their interest long enough to work on the quilt. When the rows are stitched together you'll notice that the end of each of the rows has an extra segment. At that point an adult would help them cut that off so that the rows on the quilt end up evenly. Well, you've taught me, Klaudeen about when you've made acquaintance with Amish quilters that they don't work that hard at this. They don't do a lot of measuring. On a postcard the fabric may not be on grain or it may be on grain. They just utilize everything. They use the fabric they have. Then after it has been sewn together in columns after the rows have been created then the columns are stitched. This coloration that you have mimicked to an actual Amish quilt is pretty bold to have the red next to the purple. It's a powerful design. The colors give it the power. They give it the life, they are exciting to look at. But in addition to that we also have the quilting designs. The quilting designs in this particular piece varied in the stair step design that is here and the diagonals so that you have a little variety in the texture of what's going on. When we get to the outside edge, curved quilting often looks nice with all of the angular pieces so then the curved quilting is added to the edges. So in the borders as we look out further to the edge of the quilt the borders have a stencil. You are going to learn more about borders as we progress during this series. But notice that the little corners are a subtle color and the borders are dark to add contrast. This is really an amazing study in color. It's got lot of vibrancy, and as you said the power is in the color. So, the postcard quilt, an Amish child's first quilt. The Amish dress is referred to as "plain clothing." Yet the remnants from shirts, dresses, pants, and blouses that are used to create quilts are anything but plain. This miniature quilt features the Amish Bars design. The quilt is built from the center out combining contrasting fabrics in whatever size that's convenient for the quiltmaker. The focal point of the quilt is the hand stitching. That is what's valued in the Amish community. Then the fascinating way that the design is assembled. When Klaudeen first shared with me the stories behind these quilts it was a very simplistic approach to the way the quilts are put together not a lot of planning ahead. Not really. The bars quilt is especially pleasing when the quiltmaker has not decided exactly what size she wants to make the quilt. So she would use whatever strip sizes she could cut. And they could then be left rectangular, as I have here or they could be cut square depending on the finished size she wants the quilt to be. You mentioned to me that they might make the center section, put it on their bed to see if they want more bars or make it square or long or whatever they would like. Absolutely. Putting it on the bed is a good way to try out how it's going to look and determine what you are going to add for borders. We often audition fabric so they are just auditioning the size on whatever bed they are making this for. We have the miniature done here. Again, it could be in any size. You can see how it's built very simplistically but the combination of colors is intense. The colors need to be those strong, bold colors in order to portray that Amish influence on the quilt. So, this one has the bars and then this one has more bordering than some of the other quilts. It's very simple to do the long stitching and end up with the bars that are straight. Now they would sew these bars together with a treadle machine. And then the hand quilting, of course, is done. We are not going to be demonstrating hand quilting because I am not a good hand quilter. I have had friends and neighbors help me do the quilting. Pretty similar to the way it would be in the Amish community. We're going to show you the way of assembling them and then you can quilt them according to your desire. So we have cut these strips 1-1/2" wide and the length can be, just as in an Amish community any length you'd like. Then the borders are attached. Decided on first, then attached. The side borders would be attached and then the long borders would be attached. So it is kind of quilt-as-you-go. Decide as you go. It's a decide-as-you-go process. Now the first border is quite a narrow one and the next one is a little bit wider. It comes out like this. Black really enhances the colors that we have going on so far. It brings out the strength of the rest of the colors. If people have visited Amish communities or live near Amish communities they may just see that mainly they just dress in black. Yes, but underneath, and for the children it would be the brighter colors. You also mentioned to me the various different colonies will have different color ranges. There are different rules and slightly different favorites in different areas. Now, this may be the color range of the Pennsylvania Dutch. It's a little quieter color combination but it's working well to portray that Amish look. Deciding the size of the borders is not necessarily geometric. Oh no, sometimes there is a favorite stencil. The Amish stores would have many stencils to choose from and choosing the stencil first is a very practical approach to how big you want to make that final border. So, make the border fit the stencil not the stencil fit the border. Then a medallion is a very common approach to have a medallion in the center of the design. They might use a stencil that is way too large and only use the center section and that would be a way of adapting a stencil that they would purchase to the size of the quilt that they have chosen to make today. Finally, some of the shapes are just made by simple household tools, just by marking on this area. We are going to show you Klaudeen's miniature quilt once again to show you the stencil that was used in the border, the floral design. Then to radiate out to echo the design, a bowl was simply used as a marking tool. So the beauty and the value in the Amish community is the hand quilting. This certainly portrays this in this great miniature quilt. A 4-patch quilt block is nothing new to quilters yet a close-up look at this basic Amish design sewn in miniature shows the remarkable simplicity, vitality, and vibrancy that can be created from this most simple geometric pattern. Notice the subtle color changes within the block. A practical approach of using scraps that gives a unique, understated appearance. Now Klaudeen, when I look at your miniature quilt I always want to look further because of the subtle fabric changes within the standard 4-patch block. Yes, it does add a lot of interest. When the Amish sort their fabrics they would use colored groups, not necessarily color. So they would use many different pieces and then they would be working with those pieces and adding black. Adding black brings out those subtle color changes that make it more exciting to look at. The quilts we're showing you throughout the series are all in 3/4 of the color wheel. The blues, reds, no yellow or orange because that's considered too boastful. Yes. They're way too bold for that community. But yet, I have found when going to an Amish auction some quilts that were in those colors. Yes. They use those colors when making quilts for the tourists or for the auctions because they want them to look and perform in that average home like we would expect them to. So we are showing you colors that would be used in the traditional Amish tradition. Again, scraps from clothing would be used and here we grouped to make the red/pink range chosen some of the colorations that would be grouped together then detailed the sewing technique. The sewing technique is very simple. They are then attached to a black strip and use a short section, like these pieces of each of the colors. So they just butt the ends together... and keep right on sewing until they have a wide assortment of fabrics on the piece. Then they would press the seam allowance under the dark so that when they get ready to sew the four patches together the seam allowances will be easy to keep under control. Now, we've used, since this is miniature a 1-1/4" strip width of the scraps. They were very tiny, and they were fun to work with because they were so tiny. We will be straightening the edges before we start cutting and then we will cut the strips into the small segments that need to be used to make the four patches. So you would cut one strip with many little pieces and then you would match them up to get different colors in each of the blocks. So, you may find some waste because where you get the seam joined you may have some waste in this area. That is not a problem. Certainly not a problem when you are working with miniatures. No, not at all. So then they would choose... This has a little more of a cherry and I am going to match it with more of a burgundy. Well, then we would flip it around and then, as we like to say kind of kiss those seam allowances because they are going in opposite directions. The black goes with the cherry color and then sew them together. Here we are using the traditional way of chain piecing together pairs. After pressing open these pieces here are the blocks. They are some tiny blocks, but fun to work with. When you are looking at a small quilt you don't want big blocks because then it would be very out of scale. So I am going to do some layout. You copied these colors from a traditional Amish quilt and I have to say that I would never have chosen the pink to go with the red, but it's striking. It was an unusual combination but it was traditional in that culture so it seemed like a fun one to try. Exactly. Then the layout that we are using gray in combination, would be laid out. Probably they wouldn't cut half-square triangles. I don't think so. I think they would be more apt to be cutting the full square and then trimming off what's left on the outside edge. We'll quickly discuss the stenciling design. They probably, to get the circular shape just used a spool of thread and drew around the spool of thread shape. I am not really doing it, just giving the idea. This design gives some motion to the quilt. It enhances each one of those tiny blocks by having the curves come around the edge. So when I made another one I used a different color combination, a different format. This time I decided to use a different type of quilting so the quilting design on this one is very straight, very angular and does something totally different to the block. It makes it appear as if that little 4-patch is in the center of the gray square. So you get a lot of versatility using a simple technique and a great style as well. Amish quilts have great allure because of the harmony of color and subtle visual appeal that is attractive without being too overpowering. That description certainly applies to this miniature Amish quilt arranged in the rail fence design. The technique is a first cousin to the 4-patch design yet the image is truly unique of its own. Obviously, Klaudeen has worked with the miniatures. This could be made much larger but this design certainly shows the subtle colorations within the greens, the reds, and the blues. You mentioned, Klaudeen when you first did a study on these techniques it was to study the pattern, the technique. Yes, I thought I was going to be studying all of the different patterns that the Amish favored. I discovered that I was soon studying their color combinations. The subtle changes from one shading of one color to another shading certainly made the quilts' simple designs into something that attracts a lot of attention. A very important key to Amish-style quilting is the inner border. It's interesting, the inner borders are almost never a color that is being used in the rest of the quilt, and in non-Amish quilting we always choose those border colors. We certainly do. So, this one shows a different color in the inside border color. Kind of a brandywine color and truthfully I would have never chosen it but it works well together. This is a first cousin to the 4-patch design and the same sewing techniques. The exact same techniques, very easy to do. All straight sewing and useful for using up lots of little scraps. Then when they are stitched, they are cut into squares so that they can be turned horizontal or vertical into the final design. You started to lay out a design. This is one that really does have to be laid out or else it can very easily have mistakes in the piece. You have to watch this step going. I think I have it in the wrong direction. Do I? There we are going to go step by step down the rows so that when you are ready to quilt... That makes me feel better. There, I think that is the right one. It does look a little better that way. So, you have to lay it out. So that we have just certainly used the style that we have here. Here we have one that's put together and you can see this unusual color on the border on the outside, and then additional color was added the size of a stencil. So, the stencil width has been designed here. So, the 4-patch and the Rail Fence are working with the same design the same basic design of fabric but, oh, the different techniques that you can feature just by using some simple colors. I hope you'll enjoy. During the "Nancy's Corner" segment today you're going to hear an inspirational story about Quilters Without Borders. Piecing together a better future for Mongolian women. It all started with an email received by today's guest. I'd like you to meet Maggie Ball. Maggie is a quilter from the Seattle area and received this email along with 70 other quilters in the United States but Maggie was the only one that responded. Maggie, an interesting story. Yes, it all began in 2003 and I could have so easily clicked on delete for that email but I thought, "this looks interesting." It was a lengthy email about how awful the conditions are in Mongolia. There's very high unemployment, abuse of women, and alcoholism. There's no support system for the women. This young Mongolian woman, Selenge Tserendash had a vision to develop a community center where the women could come a safe place for them to be together socially and where they could learn to quilt. She had visited the states and saw quilts and thought this would be an ideal activity for Mongolian women because they already have the hand cranked Russian sewing machines. Even the nomadic families have those and they are very good seamstresses. They have clothing that they can recycle. So while this is not the traditional craft in Mongolia it's very suitable for them because they can get started right away without purchasing new supplies. You were the conduit to teach the women how to do the quilting. That's right, they needed some expertise. They had done a little quilting with one Mongolian woman who had worked for an American family and learned some quilting but she went to another area so they had just made one quilt with her from shirting remnants. Then they needed some expertise and help. You went there, but before you went there you did some research so the design that you chose to teach them was a very familiar design. Yes, they wanted to make items that they could sell to tourists so that they could raise some money. So I decided to teach this Mongolian pattern the lzii, a very traditional pattern which has been around for hundreds of years and is often painted on the door of the gers, which is the Mongolian yurt. It brings long life and prosperity to the people who live there and also drives away evil spirits and wild animals. So you adapted that design, the "ulgii." Am I saying it correctly? "Ul zee," and taught them at first how to piece together the design. That's right, I taught them the block and also taught them how to make the tote bag. The tote bag is made from the material that is used in the lzii. The canvas. The yurt is lined with this lightweight canvas and then has a thick layer of felting for insulation because it's very cold in winter and then it has a heavy canvas over the outside. This one is made of blue denim so the women have then developed to other products with this symbol. Also in Mongolia, they practice Tibetan Buddhism. In the Buddhist religion it means never ending cycles of life and death in the universe because it is a never-ending knot that goes on and on. Sure, and you taught them with hand-cranked sewing machines? Yes, the nomadic women have those and they are more comfortable with them than electric machines. We did have a sewing machine company send some electric machines over and we can use those in the city but power is a little intermittent and they are more comfortable with the hand-cranked machines. They are really very good seamstresses. You told me an interesting story about a woman you taught how to make the pieced work. You went on a little trip to the countryside and two weeks later she had made how many designs? She made 45 bags in just 10 days. I thought, "Oh dear, I've created a sweatshop here." She was very excited because their national holiday was coming up and she was able to sell all the bags at the national holiday. So you took it upon yourself to go there and live with the women, but that's not all. You have gone back two other times. Yes, the second time I went we had a quilt show in Mongolia. The first International Quilt Show there in collaboration with quilters from the United Kingdom and Japan. So Leslie Cole, a quilt teacher from England came with her sister. A group of ladies from Japan came so we had Japanese, American, English, and Mongolian quilts. Wonderful, well, there is so much to learn about this Quilters Without Borders from Maggie. Maggie is going to join us next time on the "Nancy's Corner" segment of Sewing with Nancy because she has done some amazing fund raising to help build a program in a center for the women. So, stay tuned, and we will also have more on Amish quilting on our next segment of Sewing With Nancy. Thanks for joining me, bye for now. Nancy and Klaudeen Hansen have written a fully illustrated book entitled "Amish Quilt Stories & Techniques" which includes all the information from this two-part series. It's $14.99, plus shipping and handling! To order the book, call 800.336.8373 or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/2323. Order Item Number BK2323 "Amish Quilt Stories & Techniques." Credit Card orders only. To pay by check or money order call the number on the screen for details. For more go to sewingwithnancy.com and follow Nancy on Facebook and Twitter. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman is made possible by Baby Lock Madeira Threads Koala Cabinets Clover Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. Closed captioning funding provided by Rowenta.