Sewing With Nancy

Do you have a variety of fabric scraps that don't seem to coordinate? I'd like to introduce you to a system of making scrap quilts that incorporates all sizes, shapes, and prints. Please welcome my guest Judy Gauthier, whose ingenious method of sorting fabric scraps will make scrap lovers of us all. Welcome back, Judy. Thank you, Nancy. Today, we're gonna talk about areas in your quilt that you can incorporate of neutral fabrics or negative space that help you to match large prints with small prints or things that ordinarily wouldn't work together. My design "Aromatic Rings" features many prints in the ring that would usually clash if neutral fabrics we ren't used in the background. You'll soon see that scraps of fabric with large, medium, and small prints can effectively be used together. "Rainbow Quilts for Scrap Lovers," that's what's 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. Fuller Brush Vacuums, dedicated to keeping homes clean. Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. Since we're working with scraps, we're gonna give you a quick review of Judy's system of organizing scraps. I have a large color wall in my sewing room, and it has cubbies, and so all of my fabric is organized according to color. And then the smaller pieces that you have left, you put them in bins according to color. And this isn't a bin per color, but it gives you the-- the rainbow shade. And what's nice about this is, it allows you to put a big, contemporary print with a traditional print, and it works because of the color. Yes, yes, it does. That's the phenomenal part about this. So let's take a closer look at the quilt behind us. "Aromatic Rings," nine big rings, 25" blocks, and this orange block, lovely coral colors. Yes, so every single one of the pieces in this quilt is done with a 5 1/2" template, and the thing that makes the quilt work is that they are arranged in color families, in color groupings. And there is so much negative space in between that even though you're close to a purple, you're close to a turquoise, it blends very well because you've got enough negative space, and you can put something very, very modern next to something more traditional. And no one would be-- no one would think twice about it because of the negative space, the background, and also off-white next to white... Correct, that's one thing that the modern quilt movement has contributed, is that we are now comfortable using off-whites with whites in the same quilt. Anything goes. - Mm-hmm. Within reason. - Yeah. I mean, it helps you to visually get it correct. So during this program-- if you missed our first program, you can go to NancyZieman.com and watch it online, and we explain using 5 1/2", 4 1/2", or 3 1/2" squares. This quilt is all 5 1/2", and you can cut any size, shape, whatever you have left over of fabric. Right, this is specifically for people who have odd-shaped pieces left over. So for example, this round piece was left over from a circle theme in a quilt that was done or even the top of a hat. I'm not remembering which scrap that was. But the 5 1/2" template-- you couldn't use this to strip quilt. You would just end up getting rid of it or something, but because you can use a template, you can put that template down right on top of that piece and cut around it very easily with your rotary cutter and have a salvaged-- oops-- have a salvaged little piece. So each ring, if I haven't said this before, has 16 different fabrics or cuts. You could repeat a fabric now and then or just use 16 different ones and cut to your heart's content, cutting your fabric scraps into 5 1/2" squares. Now you're gonna do some marking. Yes, so now, to get the shape that we want to get for this quilt, we're going to mark in 1 1/8" from the upper right-hand corner and 1 1/8" in from the upper left-hand corner. Okay, and then we're gonna take it back to the cutting board, and we're going to connect those dots with the opposite corner here... And cut, so there is a tiny little bit of waste but not much at all. And now there's that dot and the opposite corner. I don't think you waste much fabric, Judy. I don't. I do not waste almost... hardly any fabric, yeah. Okay, so that will leave you with that. Now, if you've ever made a Dresden quilt or seen how a Dresden Plate is made, you're going to fold this wedge right sides together, meeting top edge and lower edge, and then give that center a press, finger press or iron press, and then you're gonna do some stitching. Correct, you're going to stitch one 1/4" seam along the top here and one 1/4" seam along the bottom there. Here's a close-up of just chain-stitching. You'll see that I've already stitched one half of the lower edge, and now I'm just stitching the upper edge, and just chain-stitch these together as you normally would for quilting, and then snip apart your individual pieces, and, Judy, then you can just do some pressing. Finger-pressing works. - Mm-hmm, yes, it does. And you can nip off, clip off, the corner so that you're getting rid of some bulk in these areas. Then we'll turn this right side out, and you have this unique shape. Now, here's a hint you taught me. To press-- to get it balanced, you press it to that crease mark. Right, so the seam allowance... Your center stitching line should match where you've pressed, with your finger or with the iron. Now, if I put this down, you'll see on the next samples, they've all been pressed, and they get this really unusual shape. And you kind of get them around in a ring till they get the curve, as you see... This is going this way, yeah. - Oh, we got-- The larger section goes up. Well, thank you. There. - There you go. Then you're gonna meet right sides together and sew a 1/4" seam. And this one has the 1/4" seam stitched. Now, this must have taken you a little bit of figuring out. It was-- what were we joking about yesterday? "Trial and angle"? That's what we said. Trial-- instead of, "Trial and error," we said, "Trial and angle." So once you get all 16, it makes a circle, and then let's get these positioned around here. And you... We have 25 5 1/2" blocks sewn, and this is the background, and they're not necessarily positioned exactly right, but you take some time to get them centered. Right. You would. And then you can topstitch it in place. Right. Now, you could use clear thread. You could use matching thread to the color scheme, and, as you see here, we're just using a straight stitch and stitching around the edges after securely pinning this area. And, presto, you have another one. Oh, I like this color combination. Again, it's the green.

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Baby Lock

Yes. And here, one of nine blocks that's been created. This would make-- if you just want to do one, it would make a great table topper, great pillow. Great way of using up scraps. "Circus Comes to Town" is a quilt design that features a combination of trapezoids and circles, giving the design a sense of motion. Contrary to first impressions, this is an incredibly easy quilt to make while accommodating a wide variety of fabrics. Judy once again turned to her fabric stash to combine various sizes of prints and colors. Now learn how to break the rules resulting in colorful, inviting designs. This is appropriately named, Judy. It certainly does look like a circus. It's a riot of color.

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Baby Lock

Very much so, and you have triangular shapes in the prints and then the opposite in the light colors going in the opposite direction. You know, because of the color, that negative space looks larger, doesn't it? Right, it does. It comes forward. But it's the same size. - Mm-hmm. If you look at one of these triangular shapes, you would never put a magenta with-- I wouldn't-- a gold and a plum and all these sizes, but yet they work. Right, exactly, and something so incredibly traditional here, an old piece of fabric, with something very, very-- much more modern. Mm-hmm. - Much more modern, so... It all works, and this is a square quilt. Many of your quilts are square. Yeah, the reason for that is that my husband oftentimes makes the bed in the morning, and if I have a rectangular quilt, invariably, he will lay it the wrong way on the bed, and I will come home, and it will be the wrong way, so if it's square, he can't make a mistake. Anything goes. So we're again going to use the 5 1/2" squares, and you have some cut already. Correct, so these are all, believe it or not, made with 5 1/2" squares. So what you're going to do is, you're taking your prints and you're laying them right sides together, okay? So again, anything goes. - Find a pair. Find a pair, right sides together. Now, you're going to take and mark in-- from the upper right, you're going to mark in once again 1 1/8". And from the lower left, you are going to mark in 1 1/8". And then you're going to join these with a ruler, join these two marks... Cut, and then that's gonna yield the trapezoids. So the same marking that you did practically with the last quilt, 1 1/8", but this time, on opposite corners, and you get two trapezoid pairs. Right. So for each triangular shape, you need three pairs. And you're going to stitch these together. Right, so you're going to stitch them on the angled edge, so that is on a bias edge, so you're gonna be careful not to stretch. And once you stitch them right sides together, it makes that shape. So here we have three of these shapes where the trapezoids have been sewn together, and you meet these short ends, and this is where it takes just a little trick of sewing this together, and so we're gonna take this to the sewing machine right now to show you the seams that are needed to make this all happen. To sew these three pieces together, Judy has a few tips. Okay, so I'm sewing a lower edge together, and I've got my seam allowances nested. And I'm gonna stitch a 1/4" seam.

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Baby Lock

And then I'm gonna stop right at the seam. Then open it out, and then you're going to place the next one short ends together, once again. You start sewing right at the cut edge. Right at the cut edge. Don't go any further than your seam. You're making a 1/4" seam, but you're gonna stop right at that seam line. Now, this is a slight set-in seam, so what you're doing here is, you're taking it, and you're laying it together like this. Pull this other one up and out of the way. Now you can flip that over. You're gonna do the same thing where you're gonna stitch along that short edge, and you're gonna stop right at that seam. Always sewing the outer edges toward the middle. Right. And it's a great way for a beginner who's not used to doing set-in seams to get accustomed to a set-in seam. It's quite a gentle set-in seam, meaning, it's not a straight seam. All the ones are not straight, so when the seams are pressed, you can see, bingo, it all comes together right in the middle. And you're going to be creating the prints as well as the neutral fabric, the background fabric, the negative space, whatever you'd like to call it, a number of quilts. But yet, when these go together, there is a little opening or a little hole at the top, and in the book that accompanies today's program, we give you the size of the appliqu that fits right over the area. We'll be making an appliqu. We've done this in a couple of other Sewing With Nancy programs using fusible interfacing and the fabric, and you trace the shape of the fusible interfacing, and then you stitch. You have the smooth sides together, and you stitch around the edge and trim around the stitching and then trim a doughnut. And then we have-- the fusible is on the outside. You turn this right side out. You might want to take a little bit more time than I'm doing, but you turn this around, and ta-da. After you press it, here's the doughnut pressed down. Here's the appliqu shape. Then it can be positioned right over that opening and gives it that festive look of the... Circus hats. Circus hats in "Circus Comes to Town." So this is a great way of finishing off the quilt with these 5 1/2" squares that have become trapezoids and then triangles all through the creativity of using lots of scraps, using negative space, and some creative sewing techniques. Select a slice of color from the rainbow to feature shades of one color area for your next quilt. Judy found herself with an abundance of pink and coral scraps th at were the perfect candidates for the "Blended Hexagons" design. As the last quilt in this miniseries, learn how to sort and combine monochromatic fabric colors and then piece them in this unique hexagon shape. Just ask Judy what her favorite color is. Yes, definitely the warm tones of the color spectrum. And it's right here, and you can see that this hexagon has that same little center that we just finished with, but you had a lot of fabric in one shade area. Right, I did. I have a lot of-- I have three girls, and so there's a lot of leftovers from, you know, skirts, pajamas, things like that. Lovely, and very attractive and fun. And as we have done throughout this whole series, we're always starting with squares, and 5 1/2" seems to be the most predominant one, and here we go again. Yes. So to make each hexagon, you have... You're gonna have three pairs of 5 1/2" squares, so you've paired them. And you're going to take them to your cutting surface, and you're going to mark a 1 3/16" mark. Now, you really only have to measure 1 3/16" one time. Right, mark it on your ruler. So write on this tape measurer-- usually you'll need a tape measurer because a ruler doesn't usually have a 16ths. Not at all times. - Right. So in opposite corners... Opposite corners, upper right, lower left, and make that mark. Then you're going to connect those two dots once again with your ruler. And you're going to give it a slice across that spot. So we had three pairs of the same fabric, and when you do this, when you cut this, make sure your same fabric is on top each time because you want to keep the orientation the same. Sure, you don't want two of the same color next to each other, so I divide-- we had these precut, and you can see that we have-- we have a lot of trapezoids, but they're paired up together. The last time, we had the same kind of trapezoids, and you seamed them together along the long, angled edge. Right. Now you're going to do a different seaming. Right, you're going to seam them along the long, straight edge. So on this particular sample, they've all been stitched, the long edge-- you can-- the straight edge. And let's just lay these out, Judy, because this is pretty simple. It's amazing what can happen slicing and dicing a square. And especially when they're scraps as well. You know, you just-- you don't even have to think about it. If they're all monochromatic, you're not really thinking too hard. And you're not worried about design. You're just worried about color. - Right. And you don't even have to worry about it. You just think about it. - Right, there, so... And then they are sewn together now along the angled designs-- angled lines, excuse me. Now, pressing seams, you know, traditionally in quilting, we press seams to the darker fabric, but here... We're going to press them open, and the reason we press them open is because it makes it easier when you actually start linking those hexagons together. There are some slight set-in seams, and so then you know that you're going to stop with your needle right where that seam comes together. So what this means is, we're gonna take a close-up look at-- you're gonna create rows of hexagons. So assume this is a row. We'll just move this out of the way a little bit. And if you--we'll take a close-up look at... When these two hexagons were stitched together, Judy started stitching at the seam, so 1/4" of this was not stitched. You'd lock your stitches. - Mm-hmm. And then you'd stitch all the way to the other end and stop sewing, again, 1/4" seam. Ignore this piece. It's not supposed to be there right now. And then when you add your second section, you'd lay one on top of the other, and, again, stitch from point to point, from seam to seam. Seam to seam. - Seam to seam. And that's what's happened here. We've stitched from seam to seam, so it makes it easy, then, to just-- here, this has been stitched. Then we just flip this over and sew from seam to seam, and we will have the seam created. So the pressed-open seams give you-- even out the bulk as well as a place to stop and start stitching. Now, I did not stitch this, but I think you can figure that out, and it just shows what a interesting design it is. Use those little circles from the last quilt we've just made, place them in the center, and you really have a scrap lover's quilt. I'm always amazed and enlightened when I hear about volunteer sewing groups that use their talent to help others. Please welcome Deborah Michie, who is one of the unselfish stitchers and part of the Stitchin' for Kids group in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Welcome to Sewing With Nancy, Deborah. Thank you very much. Delighted to be here. Stitchin' for Kids is a remarkable organization of dedicated stitchers, sewers, knitters, and give our viewers a little history-- or history as well as what you do for children. Okay. We've been doing this for about nine years. It was started by a woman named Caroline Archer, who, through a series of events, wound up winning a Jefferson Award for them, for the project. She started making the clothes and taking them to hospitals, and it exploded from there because the hospitals were so glad to have them. They're for children who are in the hospitals for long-term stays for cancers or heart transplants. Sure. And the nurses have said that they're perfect for the children's healing. They're very important for the children's healing. They play. - Sure. And especially if they don't have hair, they can comb the hair and, you know, that kind of thing. So you purchase little dolls. We buy the dolls, and then we make the outfits. We have probably 25 people or so at this point who are sewing the outfits. And these are not small tasks. - No. Because they're very detailed, because, like, this is a swimwear outfit. You have a cap, little swimsuit, a cover-up. There's even a beach bag. - Mm-hmm. So they're very complete. - That's right. And then-- I will just hold these up to everyone. You can give a little... - Okay. These are... Individual people make these things. So someone will maybe make a lot of pants and a lot of tops, and then someone will make something like that. And we'll put them together into outfits. So everybody has to make every little piece of the outfit. And what we're not showing you is that there are shoes, there are handbags, there are little accessories that work out so well. And whether they're interested in knitting... There's a tam and a little Scottish-- a little tartan plaid and a top. What a way to pass time and heal while you're doing this. Yes. Yes, absolutely. It's good for the people and the children. -

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Baby Lock

It's good for everyone. Now, explain what all goes into a box to a child. Okay, so... the child will get a doll, one of these dolls; they're 14" dolls. And they will get a box full of 12 to 14 individual outfits, all with shoes and jewelry and purses and whatever goes with it. There's also a sleeping bag for the doll. Sure. There's a quilt that goes into the bag. A doll-size quilt that goes into the box. There's a tote bag so they can carry things around. My goodness. We make boxes; we hand-make the boxes that will hold shoes and hair accessories, and there's a little shopping bag with flowers in it-- I mean, little things that they can play with. That all goes into one box for the children. And you donate about twice a year, April and October. April and October. And we give eight boxes, plus eight dolls, to four different hospitals in the Bay Area twice a year, so that's 64 boxes and... A lot of... - 64 dolls. And it figures out to over 800 complete outfits. But then, little boys... - And then little boys. We have a cute little racing car area here. Let's open this up, and the race cars are gonna kind of zoom right out, but they have a track. There are pockets for the race cars. And they can zoom around and play. You have fish, and also we have a little snake here on the side that's really sweet. This is a comfort snake. Comforts kids around-- we put it around their neck or whatever. And these are all so well made. Yes. Yes, the quality is amazing. One of your goals is to go beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. Yes. Yes. Yes, we do have a hospital in Seattle at the moment. But I would love to see it go across the country and, you know, have people do this for children in the long-term stay hospitals in their cities. But we need to have sewers and knitters and... Sure. Sure. Organizers. Well, I'm sure the word will get out, Deborah... I hope so. And that they can contact Stitchin' for Kids and... Yes, stitchinforkids.org, yes. Dot org, and we can also-- on the Sewing With Nancy site, we will be able to give all the information. Thank you for being our guest. - My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. - You're welcome. I know you've enjoyed this program, especially our interview, as well as our program with Judy Gauthier on "Rainbow Quilts for Scrap Lovers." You can re-watch the program or many other Sewing With Nancy programs at NancyZieman.com. And you can also join us on our blog, Facebook, and other social media outlets. So as I say at each program, thanks for joining me. Bye for now.

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Nancy and her guest Judy Gauthier transform fabric scraps of all sizes, shapes, and prints into beautiful scrap quilts. Judy's book Rainbow Quilts for Scrap Lovers features 12 quilt designs as well as helpful hints to manage your stash. Get the book, plus a DVD of highlighted tips, for $23.99 plus shipping and handling. To order, call 800-336-8373 or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/3111. Order item number BD3111. 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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Baby Lock, Madeira threads, Koala Studios, Clover, Fuller Brush Vacuums, Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. Closed captioning funding provided by Riley Blake Designs. Sewing With Nancy is a co-production of Nancy Zieman Productions and Wisconsin Public Television.