Sewing With Nancy

Welcome to Sewing with Nancy. I'm Mary Mulari, Sewing with Nancy's first guest host. Nancy is taking a well-deserved break while I share with you my new ideas for "Appliqu - Large & Small." My first new creative option uses silk leaves or flowers from the craft store. The large version is an ivy wreath great-for-wall decor or make a small version with floral appliqus on a little girl's shirt. "Appliqu - Large and Small" that's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program

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What's so nice about this is your appliqu shapes are already cut for you. You simply peel off the leaves from their plastic stems. I would press them flat first, so they lie nice and flat. What I like also, when I peel off the leaves I find different sizes so I can make a really nice arrangement here and plan it all out. When I've decided that I like how everything looks together I simply would take out the glue stick rub that on the back of the leaves a little bit and that holds them in place so that when I get ready to sew, they're going to stay there. After arranging everything my next sample shows that I've done that part already. My leaves are arranged. You can make this as dense and as full as you'd like. But now it's time to take out the paper ten-inch circle. Here you'll see me sewing around it with a running stitch on a machine. This creates an interesting look to secure the leaves. This is the first row of stitching. After that, I'll do more to secure the edges. Then we move from large to small. Our small example is a little girl's t-shirt. Here we have just some tiny, little pink flowers and an initial. When I buy these sprays of flowers I find sometimes that the very smallest flowers fray easily. So I'm going to treat the edges with a fray-stopping liquid before I remove them. But I need to cut them off the stem. I'm going to use my wire cutters. Or, I would use, perhaps an old pair of scissors to remove the layers of flowers and the leaves. Then I'd arrange them on the t-shirt. Again, I could use the glue stick. When I want to sew these in place I would sew a circle around each little flower. My sample shows that I finished the flowers off with a button in the center to gives the design some more dimension and interest. Then I added a letter. In this case, the letter is from the lower case alphabet that's with today's reference materials. I've traced that off just as you would on paperbacked fusible web. Lift the corner, so I can later peel it off more easily. Fuse it on and sew around the edges. This creates a tiny, little small design perfect for a little girl to wear. So that is our first example of "Appliqu - Large & Small." Knits and appliqus are a perfect duo. I'll give you tips on choosing fabrics that have compatible stretch as well as ideas for using new stitching ideas and fusing techniques. This t-shirt has two large designs toward the bottom. What we need to consider if we're going to appliqu on knits is that the fabrics need to stretch when we put this on and when we wear the garment. I've chosen knit fabrics that also stretch for decorating this shirt. I like placing things off center, as well and turning them a little, to add some interest. When I prepare this design I've traced it off the reference sheet for today. I've done a little cutting inside the lines so that I'm going to get rid of some of the fusing material in the center of the design. Here's what it looks like after the trimming. It's not very impressive. It might be easier for you to understand this by looking next at this flower design which we'll be using a little later. I've trimmed from inside this paperbacked fusible web to make the flower look like this. When I fuse it to my t-shirt, my knit it won't be solid in the center. After fusing this on then I use my new favorite stitch which is the stem stitch. Here you'll see what this stitch looks like. It's kind of an off-center, zigzag, slanted in a way. It goes around corners. It's easy to guide around corners, and curves, and edges. You might like to give that stitch a try. My next garment is a camisole with a slightly different problem to it or something to consider. This fabric stretches in two directions horizontally and vertically. So I used a Lycra fabric that has that same type of two-way stretch for my little design here in the front. I did the stem stitch for this as well. I just made it a little narrower. I always find that matching the thread to the appliqu fabric is a great way to get a professional look. It kind of hides a few little glitches in case you have any when you stitch. The next garment and sample is a sweater. This sweater is a very fine, thin knit, so we have to consider that, as well. In doing that, in preparing my designs and stitching them I placed on the back a cut-away stabilizer. I don't really want to rip away here. Ripping could ruin some of the stitches. With my scissors, I'll carefully cut around to get rid of the excess stabilizer that's on the back of the designs. I think you'll want to do that and you'll like that option of the cut-away stabilizer. In case you're interested, I got my appliqu fabrics from a leftover piece of sweatshirt ribbing. You know I've talked a lot about sweatshirts on Sewing with Nancy, so I have lots of leftovers. It's fun to use them in different ways. This simple little single design we're going to put into the kaleidoscope and make it larger, as we have here on this apron. To do this, it's very simple. You trace the single design on a folded piece of paper. Then when you cut that out this might remind you of elementary school cutting you'll have this larger design. I have traced this on paperbacked fusible web. It's going to require some cutting and then some stitching all the way around. But I guess, in some ways I've taken the lazy woman's way around and I have just straight stitching in through the centers of this design. This is another way to do it. Also, I've placed this off-center. Two other examples are here on my other samples. This small, simple design is on a pocket. When it goes into the kaleidoscope with the folded paper we have this larger design, which is a table topper. Fabric shapes cut on a fabric cutter machine are perfect for appliqu artists, as well as quilters. Fabric is first fused and then cut on the machine with specially designed dies. There's no scissors cutting needed. With this time-saving device we can get right to the creative business of appliqu. In the last session, I showed you a design that required a lot of cutting. This time, we're letting the machine do all the work for us. Here are three shapes cut on a die in a machine. I used those same shapes to decorate the front of this apron. They're displayed here in a slightly different pattern. But gosh, that really saved me a lot of time from all the cutting needed to create these designs. I'd like to show you how you create these on the machine. We start with our die. In this case, you can see the shapes that are here. I'm going to place my fused fabric down on the die add the mat to the top. Then, at a slight angle, if possible I'm going to pass these through the machine. The machine is doing all that cutting. We're going to be ready then to peel off the paper backing on the design shapes and fuse them to our fabric base. Here are the designs. We loosen them from the fabric base. This is going to be a really colorful one when I put this together. This is how you create the shapes. Next, we'll talk a little bit about how you sew around these shapes. When I worked on my apron I decided that I wanted a zigzag stitch. I would use either clear thread a clear monofilament thread or pink thread that would exactly match, if possible. Once again, a really close thread match makes for a very attractive and kind of an invisible stitching line. You see the beauty of the design rather than any, perhaps stitching flaws that you might happen to make, just in case. So, when we use this machine we can also use it in a different way to create a smaller design. This time, I want some black dots. Here the die features lots of floral and leaf shapes but it has dots in one corner. I don't have to do all of the designs. I can simply place just a square of fused fabric and send this through. I'm going to have dots for the next project that I'll show you. Here were ready to work on this project. This apron skirt features kind of an abstract, twigs and rounds design. For this, I used black bias tape. My sample beneath shows that I've kind of loosely arranged five longer strips of bias. Then I'm going to add branches. I stick the edges of the branches underneath. I make an arrangement, but then I want to add those dots. I'll peel the fusing material off the back and position as many dots as I feel I want to complete my design. This is going to be a pillow cover. Then, an easy way to secure these would be to use this mini iron to fuse those dots in place. That's another large version. Here's a small version of that same idea with quick-use bias and red dots. The red dots are sewn with a cross pattern through the center. Enhance simple appliqu shapes with a prominent textured edging created with wool thread. This is your chance to experiment with a variety of decorative stitches on your sewing machine. You'll be impressed by the extra dimension and stylish stitches. Here is that table runner you just saw. The shapes on this are an assortment of paisleys and some swirl shapes. The decorative stitching really makes these designs look way more interesting than if they were sewn on just with plain, ordinary thread. Here is a sampling of the difference. The wool thread is of this thickness. You can see that the standard sewing thread is a lot thinner. We're going to use a topstitching needle on our sewing machine to work with this wool thread as top thread and then a regular bobbin thread. To build this design, to make it large I use the design shapes in the reference material. This is a stack of four paisley shapes and two swirls. I would next trace them individually and cut a bunch of them from fabric so I have a stack of shapes. I'm going to plan my design here on this piece of fabric. This is going to turn into a tote bag. I'm going to give it as a gift to Nancy. Here is the large shape. You might like to layer a shape like this over the top and place this here. My suggestion then, after you arrange what you like is to take a piece of tracing paper and roughly with a pencil, sketch your design. Maybe your memory is better than mine but I really like to have this sketch on tracing paper so that I can build the design after I've cut out my shapes from fabric. I'm going to move these shapes out of the way. I'll show you how I've built most of a design already on the other side of my tote bag fabric. You can see some of the stitches are in place. We're going to add that swirl design. I've traced it on the paperbacked fusible web which is fused to fabric. Then let's go ahead and press it in place. Here at the ironing board, I'll peel off the paper backing and discard that. Then I'll fuse it. When you fuse it, it's not rubbing the iron. It's pressing and holding for a number of seconds and then lifting. Your design is fused in place. That's easy to do. Then, for the stitching, you can experiment here. In my experiments, I really like to test first. This isn't very fancy but it is a scrap of the table runner fabric with different design stitches. You can see I have little notes here because I wanted to mark the settings. I found many of the hem type of stitches to be great. But I altered stitch width and length in some cases. So my notes are really helpful when it's time to stitch. Here you'll see me stitching around the orange shape on my tote bag front and then this variety of appliqus here in small. Create and appliqu with an impact with a grouping of three floral designs in different sizes. Or choose to make a single-layer flower on the corner of a scarf. Let's explore the possibilities. This is a pretty simple flower shape but it really adds a nice accent to the bottom edge of a scarf. I used silk fabric, and I couldn't resist another piece of silk for the flower center. The stitching is straight stitching. That attaches the flower, but edges are raw. They're allowed to perhaps ravel or fray a bit. I think this adds dimension and interest to a design. Then we put all three of the layer together on this tote. Here you'll see that the middle layer is a faux suede fabric. It's just cut from fabric. We add an impact in the center with a large button and some extra stitching to bring in the green color of the tote. The design is shown in the reference material with the layers one on top of each other. The center, or middle layer of the flower is indicated with a dashed line. We're going to trace that particular middle layer to build the design for the t-shirt featured here. Earlier, we talked about this design already and showed you that this was the pattern traced on paperbacked fusible web. Then we cut away from the center so that we're not adding a lot of extra bulk or stiffness. We fuse the edges of this design to the edge of a V-neck t-shirt. Now, once again, we're allowing the give to happen here with our design and the stem stitching that attaches the design shape. I think every flower needs a center. So you can do it this way with the pattern or a button, as shown in the other example. Let's build this large layered flower. This time, I decided rather than like I did for the tote bag I'm going to back my design into a corner and have some straight edges. The first layer has been fused and sewn already. You can see the stem stitching here on the edges. I used a high-contrast color of thread. Then the middle layer, simply cut from fabric is placed in this way on top. No sewing required. But we're going to sew on our top layer. The smallest layer of fabric has fusible interfacing on the back, a light-weight variety. I've traced the design on and now I'm going to cut out the shape from the fabric. This is a little different approach. After cutting it out, I'm going to pin it to two layers of water soluble stabilizer. Here you'll see the sewing of this shape on the water soluble stabilizer. We want to kind of cover the edges of this design and make it nice and strong. We'll add this after we finish. We're going to then remove the water soluble. We're going to tear or cut some away or melt it away otherwise. Here is what we're left with, a nice, small flower. That now, will be placed here on top of the yellow, bright flower. We're going to add a larger center here and finish off our layered flower. I like the fact that the edges of these two top layers are loose so they can raise. There's a little bit of extra dimension that's built into this design. When we do these layers, use these different kinds of sewing techniques to add some extra interest. That now, is a large version of the layered design. You might prefer the small or the medium but you can add them all together for a lot of impact with appliqu. It's time for the Nancy's Corner segment with me, Mary Mulari, the guest host for this series. I'd like to introduce the founder of Rethreaded. Her organization helps women sew a new story. Kristin Keen joins via Skype from Jacksonville, Florida. Welcome Kristin. Thank you. It's great to have you and to have you here sharing your story with us. I like your slogan of "Sew a New Story." I'd like to have you tell us what that means for the women you work with. Sew a New Story is that, we work with women who've been affected by the sex trade. So women who are coming out of human trafficking and prostitution. We're teaching them a new job skill. What we do is we hire women to up-cycle t-shirts. What happens is people donate their t-shirts to us and we take our employees for a four-month holistic training period where they're trained in art, design life skills and sewing. At the end, they're able to take this t-shirt and they're able to sew it into a new product. That's great. We always like to talk about recycling. Your story does actually begin in India. Yeah, I spent five years in India working with women who've been affected by the sex trade there. We ended up starting a business there, as well where they took saris and they make them into new products. That business is called Sari Bari. It's up and running beautifully now. It employs 85 women. What do you think is the best part of helping people with sewing? How does that help them like improving their self-worth? It's amazing what sewing teaches. This first part we love is that it teaches creativity. When you come out of traumatic situations your brain function literally moves to the front of your brain. You operate at a survival mode. When we teach a new skill and we teach creativity it triggers new parts of the brain. It actually is a healing for our employees. It helps to reconnect the connections in the brain. Sewing allows for this beautiful process of healing and restoration. I'm sure everyone watching the show knows how good it feels when you make something and when you're able to take something and make it into a beautiful product that people can use. You involve lot of people besides the women and people in Jacksonville. You have a really interesting graphic design here of how your cycle works. Yes, in this graphic-- We want to break the cycle of the sex trade globally and locally. So the first global piece of it that you see is we've partnered with 12 different companies around the world who give women freedom from the sex trade through business. We buy products from them. We re-sell them online, at our warehouse and at special events around Jacksonville. All that money goes back into the company that we started in Jacksonville. We take those women in Jacksonville through the four-month holistic training period where they receive healing. Then they're able to make products, then we sell them. Basically, the more product we sell the more women, in our own community in Jacksonville and around to world have freedom from the sex trade. Gosh, it's a very encouraging program that you are working on. What would you say are some of the most popular kinds of items that you're making that people like to buy from the t-shirts? Our most popular t-shirt item is by far our scarf. It's called a Grace Scarf. It is the first thing that the women learn how to make in training. It's simple, it's versatile, it's in beautiful colors. Yeah, it's our best seller. You can wear it during the winter, during the summer. It goes cute with a cute t-shirt or you can dress it up with a sweater. That's by far our best selling product right now. You also have a children program that you've started. Yes, we've just started our children's line. We hope it's prophetic that we're taking the greatest violation someone can experience and we're having it redeemed through the greatest hope which is our children. We've started this amazing, colorful, vibrant original, unique children's line. Well, thank you very much. We're really encouraged by what you're offering. You can find more information about today's Nancy's Corner guest re-watch this show online and connect with Nancy at her website at nancyzieman.com. It's been a pleasure being the first guest host on Sewing with Nancy. Thank you for watching. Mary Mulari has written a fully-illustrated book entitled "Appliqu Large and Small" Item Number MP43 That serves as a reference for this series. It's $19.95, plus shipping and handling. To order the book as well as notions used during the series call 1-800-336-8373 or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/2712. 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