Sewing With Nancy

During today's Nancy's Corner segment, I get a personal lesson on longarm quilting. Please join me. Quilting is a time-honored art and tradition, but now there are high-tech innovations that change the look of quilting and the speed of quilting. With me is Kay Capps Cross, longarm quilter, fabric designer, author, educator. You do it all, Kay. But this-- Kay, this is especially-- longarm quilting is for you. Yes, I absolutely love it. It's changed quilting completely for me. Longarm quilting used to have a stigma attached to it. Yes, that it was cheat-- - Exactly. Cheating, mm-hmm. - It was cheating, yep. We were accustomed to stretching the quilts out on that big wooden frame, stapling it down, and then either tying it with yarn or sitting and hand-stitching. Right. Well, we don't all have that time anymore. So having a machine like this allows you to finish way more quilts than you ever could hand-quilting. And the style of quilting has changed too-- not all feathers, not all scrolls, but some linear designs. Exactly, I love to use linear designs in my quilts. Wait till you see this technique of working with linear designs. It's so easy. To do lines, you can use computers. You can use special gizmos to hook on your machine. You could use rulers, or you could use something that you carry with you all the time, which is this. -

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Okay. Let's see you do this. That's my preferred method, okay? Okay, I like this idea. I can just push my machine and let gravity do its work... And do a straight line. I can also go up and down. There we go. That's a better one. Easy. - Yes. I think you should try it. Okay, okay. One finger. - One finger, okay. One finger. - One finger does it all. Okay, so I'll-- Excellent. Oh, my, this is-- Isn't it freeing? - It--very--very freeing. And it--I mean, I have done free-arm quilting-- or, excuse me, free-motion quilting and forgot to breathe. Exactly, exactly. This allows you time to breathe, time to relax, and time to really enjoy your artistry. So this is kind of a traditional look to quilting, but then you have other options. What if some-- what if you at home would like the traditional feather or swirl? Oh, absolutely. It's great. It's as if I'm just drawing on a piece of paper. So if I wanted to do something traditional... I just move it like it's a pencil and start making a feather. Go down the other side. Now, I do something a little bit different when I'm doing feathers. I'm not thinking that I'm making a feather. I'm actually saying, "Ear and an ear and an ear," to myself. Ear, ear, ear. - Yeah. It tricks me. - Oh, sure. Okay. It tricks me into being able to do it. Sure. - And I'm not intimidated by thinking, "I have to make a feather." And then you can add to that feather. Yes. - Or to the ears. Yep, add to my ears. And I've also found that when you add little elements like this, you aren't focusing so much on the individual feather. Oh, sure, you're-- And you're gonna be much more comfortable. Element to element to element. - Yes. So you're gonna have a much bigger picture to look at. And you're gonna be much happier with the results. And if you would check my shoulders, I'm not tense. I can actually breathe.

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And I'm having fun with it. No tight shoulders. Well, the fact that you are talking, stitching sidesaddle, kind of like what I do, stitch sidesaddle or sew sidesaddle, shows me that this is easy to do. So the equipment in quilting has changed over the years. The process--needle, thread-- you still are tactile. Absolutely, absolutely. - You still are using color. But how you put it together really doesn't matter as long as you're enjoying it. Exactly, and that's so much what I believe and what I teach, is, it's not about exactly what it looks like when you're done. It's the process. - The process. Enjoy the process. - Exactly. Well, Kay, you've given me a greater appreciation for longarm quilting. I'm gonna try this finger technique. Yeah. - Yeah. I'm going to do that. I think I'm probably gonna find you over here later today quilting a quilt. Okay, you might. You might. Thanks for being with us. - Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. Special thanks to Kay Capps Cross for the special lesson on longarm quilting. I hope you've enjoyed this first episode of "10-20-30 Minutes to Recycle Jeans." I've shown you four different projects. I hope you'll try one. Next time, we'll be back with four additional projects. You can re-watch this episode as well as many other Sewing With Nancy programs online at NancyZieman.com. Join us on Facebook, and join me on my blog for all things sewing, quilting, and embroidering. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.