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Buying a bundle of precut fabrics is like buying a bag of colorful candy. You never know what's inside until you open the package, but there's one guarantee. The fabric will always be a tasteful combination of color and design.

Then there's the question

What to do with a bundle of fabric? Well, Maria DeGroot is my guest for the second program on this topic and has some great answers for that question. Maria, welcome back. Thank you so much, Nancy. I love to walk through the store and pick out my new pack of fabric to create a quilt with. The first treat in this episode is the "Chocolate Cake with Sprinkles" Quilt. The use of 10" fabric squares, sometimes called "layer cakes," and the chocolate-colored fabric create a great bed quilt for guys or young teens. "Precut Fabrics for Speedy Projects," that's what's next on Sewing With Nancy.

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Right through the holes. So we're marking the stitching lines now, so you don't have to worry about a precise 1/4", because it's marked for you, and, Maria, while you're marking, I'll just show our viewers at home that this sandwich shows the same concept with marked lines and then right sides together, meeting the solid fabric and the accent fabric. And when you stitch-- here's a close-up of stitching-- just follow those lines, and you'll have all the accuracy that you need right at your disposal. But then, Maria, after we've done the stitching... There we go. We'll fast-forward to finishing the stitching. We have two samples where the stitching has been complete. Let me find them both, and they look relatively the same. They have the same four rows of stitching, and then you have the honors of doing the cutting. Great, Nancy. Because it's a 10" square, I need to go 5" from the edge. And if I've stitched properly, I'm gonna slice my intersection right in half. Use both your ruler and your mat when you're measuring. Correct. I like to do it that way. Some people like to use the marks on their ruler. This one's not wide enough to have a 5" mark on it. Sure. -

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So I first cut that north-south, east and west, and then you can go back and cut these apart, and the square hasn't shifted. And out of that 10" square-- or two 10" squares, you'll end up with eight half-square triangles, which is... amazing how fast those can happen. And with the 10" square, they're a nice size to handle. They're not such teeny-tiny... - Yeah, right. Sometimes they get pretty small. And then when pressing, we like to press everything to the darker color, to the chocolate cake color.

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So that's what you can do next. Okay. Press it flat to set those stitches, and then open it up and press toward the darker fabric. And carefully push it over. You don't want to drive the iron too hard...

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And for these, I sometimes like to press this seam open, because depending on what block I'm gonna put together, it makes that assembly a little bit easier too. So either to the dark fabric or to press them open is a good suggestion. There we go. And what you're going-- what you see in the quilt behind us is just a menagerie... what may appear as a menagerie of half-square triangles, but it's really not. Yep, it's actually blocks, but I scrambled the colors up in each block to give it a modern look. And different configurations. - Right. So we'll show you how she made the 16 patches, 16 half-square triangles, in a variety of arrangements, giving this unique look. So... You can't really-- you can't make a mistake with this. You can't. The layout can be whatever you'd like it to be. And we didn't practice this. What layout are we gonna have, Maria? Just zigzag around on the board if you want. Okay, let's do that. Want to help me lay this out? - Sure. So you'd laid four across, four up and down, so a total of 16 blocks. Find some different arrangement. Oop, maybe I want a different color in there. Yeah, yeah, you can audition the look however you'd like it. Maybe not two yellows so close together. But if they end up together, it's really okay. Yeah, it's like sprinkles on your birthday cake. It doesn't matter at all, and then we're going to... If you want a big chunk of color, you can put them together. Sure. And as we did in the first program of the series, we worked with the traditional quilting techniques of meeting second column to first column and then sewing down the right edge, and here's a close-up of sewing down the right edge, and after you've sewn that whole column, you'd sew column three and four together, and then sew the rows, and that's how you get these manageable mini quilts that go together. And when you put enough of them-- piece them together, you have a quilt top that has great charm and great impact. Thank you, Maria. - You're very welcome, Nancy. The Log Cabin is a quintessential quilt pattern, and it's okay to remodel the design. Maria's next quilt features just a quarter of the traditional block. A stack of 10" squares provides just the right amount of fabric, plus offers a great variety of prints to give the quilt visual appeal. If we take a close-up look at the quilt that was made with the-- with the stack, the 10" stacks of fabric, plus, obviously, some-- a light fabric to use as the set-in triangles and the set-in corners. You see the blocks, and if you think about a Log Cabin, if you're familiar with that block, it has usually a square in the center with logs all the way around. This one has a square at one point and logs on two sides of the square, so a Quarter Log Cabin, and, Maria, you chose a very sweet color combination, and here is the fabric stack, the fabrics that you can get all in one stack, and when you cut this into sections, you used every single inch of the fabric. So you start off by cutting a 2" square-- excuse me, 2" length from one side, then a 2" length from the lower edge. From one side, 2", the lower edge, 2", 2", 2". So you end up with seven pieces, six of them, 2". And you have them all laid out now. I do. Here is the 4" square that you're left with at the end. There's the first set of logs, the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, and you'll notice that two and three and four and five are the same length, so we're gonna have to do some trimming when we get done assembling the block. And you've shuffled the color combinations around. Yes, yes, I like to do that so that the colors appear everywhere, instead of all together. So to assemble it, I'll have you stitch log one to the center. Now, generally, you could chain-stitch all the pieces together, but we'll just make one block for you. And I would; I would feed them all in one right after the other. And you're using a standard 1/4" seam allowance. I am. I've got my 1/4" foot on there. And I'm gonna just do a little finger-pressing here and pick up log number two. I like to align the top corners so that I've got a square block building out, and all those extra pieces end up on the ends here. This block goes together relatively quickly. Very quick. Takes longer to trim, I think, than it does to sew them together. -

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And you're adding a block only to two sides of the square. Correct. It's kind of an off-centered look to it. Sometimes I look at the precuts-- instead of finding one that fits a pattern, I try to find a pattern in the precut, and that's what I did with this. I mapped it out a little bit as I looked at that 10" square to get the parts... Mm-hmm. And decided it would make a great Log-Cabin-looking block. And you're really not paying any attention to putting a light-colored fabric next to a dark color. It's just random. - Yep. And sometimes I have to count. One, two, three. I'm up to four. -

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Very methodical sewing. -

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Very relaxing. Number five coming up. - Number five. So alternating on the sides. Correct, and then you get that woven look to the block. While Maria keeps sewing this block, I'll just show you what the finished block looks like after adding all six blocks to each side. Looks a little bit like a tulip. Yeah. Edges that come up. These are the length that's needed, and you'd-- using a rotary cutting mat and ruler, you would trim-- with your rotary cutter as well, trim it so that it's a perfect square, and this is the Quarter Log Cabin with the big square in the middle. And Maria laid these out point to point, laying them so that in one direction, the squares are all going up, and the second direction, the next column, they were going down. So let me show you the finished block one more time, or the finished quilt. It's a bit of a big quilt to handle. And you can see here, we have the squares at the top going way down, and now the squares are in the lower corner going in the opposite direction. Giving it visual movement and using just that 10" layer cake square. A tote is an ideal project to feature the fabric coordinates that started out tied together in a bundle. Maria cleverly used 5" squares from a bundle plus an accent fabric that worked in harmony to highlight the beautiful batik fabrics. The big tote is ideal to take on a road trip or to a quilting class. Now, Maria, this is one handy large tote. I love it. It has foam in the middle, memory foam in the middle, so that it is flexible, holds its shape-- yet holds its shape, and features the 5" squares of a batik fabric, this time, that came in a bundle. And you started to lay out one half of the tote. I did. I constructed a 3x5 piece to do around the front and the side of the bag and the same for the back of the bag. So you're gonna make two 3x5 little mini quilts like we have pieced together here. Correct. And then cut a 5" wide strip of your accent fabric, and on this piece, we have the 5" wide strip sewn across the top, cut to the length of the mini quilt, and pressed, and you'd do the same to the corresponding piece. So both of them would have a 5" wide strip at the top, but now here comes the very, very clever part... -

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And this is where Maria put the two together, and on the bottom of one of the totes, you're gonna cut an 18 1/4" section and just sew it to one, two, three, four of the blocks plus 1/4". So it's four of the blocks plus 1/4", and then attach the other quilt in place. And I'll have you move these, Maria, out of the way. And it would be aligned so that there's a little jig-jog here, as you can see. Is that a word? - It is. But I think you know what I mean. It starts at the right side and then ends 1/4" into this area. This is a big piece. It's hard to grasp how this looks, so we made a mini-scale with using 2 1/2" strips, and here you can see that band across the top, band across the other top, and this becomes the base, and these are the side areas. They are. So you've pinned this to some foam. Yes.

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It's actually fusible on one side, so we could take it to the iron and iron it down so it can't go anywhere. It's very cushy. And then you're gonna mark some stitching lines. Correct. So with a ruler, Maria's just gonna line it and mark some stitching lines across, and... And it's really easy to just go corner to corner. Mm-hmm. And I'm even gonna extend it across the band, especially up here, so I can quilt the band and the bag all at the same time. Maria will continue to mark this, and then we'll go stitch the tote. The machine setup throughout this series is very simple, and the quilting setup is what you have on your machine right now, Maria. Correct. I have chosen the zigzag stitch on the machine, and I've taken it almost as narrow as it can go, which, on this machine, is a 0.5 for the width, and I've enacted the pivot feature by just touching that. So that your machine will stop with the needle sunk down while you are stitching. Correct. Ready to stitch? - Mm-hmm. You like to pre-mark your lines. - I do. I like to use chalk or a marking pen to mark the lines I'm gonna stitch on. Sometimes as you quilt, the size changes a little bit, so the guide isn't always as accurate. Sure. And with those drawn lines, I can turn corners on the edges when I get there instead of breaking the thread every time I come to an edge. And I believe that's what's gonna happen next. Exactly. Right there. Turn my project around, do that next line. I think of this as very therapeutic sewing. -

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It is. Just slow, but you accomplish things. And it's a very simple grid work that we're quilting, so it doesn't take a lot of thought or energy to make it happen. And because the machine is stitching through the fabric and the foam, it sounds a little bit-- you can hear the stitches, but it's-- because it's the loft of that foam. While Maria continues to sew, I want to show you a finished sample-- or not quite finished sample but a sample that has been quilted. The extra foam was trimmed away from all the edges, and straps were added. Now, in the book that accompanies the program, we'll give you all the dimensions and how-to, but you can see, it's partially sewn together. On the sides, you're going to-- you know, you have this little jut. You're going to meet the cut edges together, and stitch from the top of the bag, and stop 1/4" from the bottom, and because Maria stops sewing-- starts sewing, I should say, at corners, you could just stop as your machine needle hits that quilting stitch. You'll know exactly what I mean when you stitch that together. And on this side, the pin marks where the stitching has stopped, which allows me to pinch those seam allowances together and to meet them, and I'm just going to faux-sew right now. Just pin along that cut edge, and then you can see, when I turn this right-side out, I have a real great base. A quick gusset with just two little seams. Very clever, Maria. Well, I wanted the squares to wrap all the way around the bag, so... Which they certainly do, and then the prairie points are made, just very quickly, by folding a 5" square in half, folding the ends to the middle, and pressing, and then you place them around the edge. You do; put the lining in there first and pin those prairie points around the top edge and finish it all off with a couple strips of binding. So a 5" pack of charms fabrics and a contrasting fabric and a little sewing know-how, and you have a speedy project with precut fabric. Make It With Wool contest is an annual youth-centered sewing competition to promote the beauty and the versatility of wool fabrics, yarns, and fibers. It's sponsored by the American Wool Council, the American Sheep Industry, and the American Sheep Industry Women. Here to share her story about her sewing adventure is Kelly Krause, a state winner of the best-constructed garment of the contest. Welcome to Sewing With Nancy, Kelly. Hi. Thanks for having me. It's a treat to see your beautiful ensemble that you created and to hear more about Make It Yourself With Wool. Tell me, when did you start to sew? I started to sew about four years ago when I started in 4-H, and there was a bunch of other people who started sewing, and they really got me hooked onto it. Well, obviously, you have caught the bug, and you've done a nice job. And you're a senior in high school. Yes. And so you entered this contest. We're recording this from Wisconsin, and you're the Wisconsin state runner-up winner. Yes. And you'll be attending the national conference. Yes, I am. And tell our viewers a little bit about your ensemble. I have made a three-piece garment ensemble, where I have this gray cape, as well as a navy blue sweater with-- matching my blue and gray printed skirt. Now, the skirt fabric, you told me you came by as a prize. Yes, I'd won it from the last year's competition. So then you matched the flannel for the cape. Explain how you made the top. I had found this old men's sweater that was extra large, and I wanted to make it into my own, so I cut it down, and I made it into, like, a 3/4" sleeve, and I made it fitting for my size as well. Well, you not only started with fresh fabric, but you recycled fabric. What a novel combination. What are some of your favorite ways of working with wool? Why do you enjoy working with it? I really enjoy working with wool because there are so many different uses that you can do with it. It's not just knitting a sweater or making a hat or mittens. You can also make it into a dress, which I did last year, or a skirt to wear, as well as, like, a sweater or a cape as well. Any challenges that you have come across? My hardest part was finding wool that matched all the-- everything. Mm-hmm. - So I had to work to find that. And, you know, that's not just with one type of fiber. I think that's what we all experience when sewing, is just getting the right color combinations. Yes. Now, you're a relatively young seamstress, and you have a love of sewing wool and making great ensembles, but you're going to go on to other things. Yes, I'm hoping to go to college next year somewhere in Florida to study marine biology. So do you think you'll keep your sewing active? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Oh, okay, that's great. Now, Make It Yourself With Wool has an annual conference, and that's what you'll be attending soon. Yes, I'll be going to Denver this year. And tell us what happens there. All the-- there's 40 different delegates from each of the states around the country... And we all meet up there. And we're all judged individually, as well as a group, to see how our different outfits compete against each other. So do you have judging as far as construction and of how it appears on you or... Yeah. Are there different categories? Yes, how you present yourself, how it is made, like different construction techniques, and as well as how it looks on you as well. Well, I wish you well and hope that you'll continue your next venture. Do you have an idea for your next wool ensemble? I have not started yet, but I got this beautiful maroon piece from this year. So you'll just have to ponder that and see how that works for you. Yes, I will. Well, if you are interested in joining the Make It Yourself With Wool, you can go online at NancyZieman.com, and you can click on this interview, and we can send you to a link to get to the right spot. Kelly, I really appreciate you being with us. And any final thought if someone is going to-- would like to work with wool or enter the contest, what would be your best suggestion to them? I would suggest, always stay true to your style and enjoy making it, 'cause it's always a fun way to sew. Well, that couldn't be a better closing. Thank you for being on our show. Thank you for having me. - You're welcome. I hope you've enjoyed this second of three-part series on "Precut Fabrics for Speedy Projects." Maria and I will be back next time for the third program of this three-part series. If you'd like to re-watch this program, this interview that I just had with Kelly, go to NancyZieman.com and you can watch a variety, many seasons worth of Sewing With Nancy programs. Don't forget, when you're at the site, to join us on our Facebook, Twitter, and our Pinterest pages and follow along the sewing and quilting community. It's nice to communicate and see what we're all working on and sewing together. As I like to say at the end of each show, thanks for joining us. Bye for now.

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Pr ecut fabrics are so easy to collect and admire. Nancy and her guest, quilting professional Maria DeGroot, transform fat quarters, jelly rolls, charm packs, and more into a variety of beautiful quilted items. "The Precut Fabrics for Speedy Projects" book is $14.99 plus shipping and handling. To order, ca ll 800-336-8373 or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/3101. Order item number BK3101, "Precut Fabrics for Speedy Projects." Credit card orders only. Visit Nancy's website at NancyZieman.com to see additional episodes, Nancy's blog, and more. Sewing With Nancy, TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman,

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