Sewing With Nancy

Landscape quilting breaks many rules. It's okay to cut inaccurately. In fact, it's recommended. Glue sticks are used instead of pins, and the pattern isn't a pattern at all, just a photo. Natalie Sewell, my good friend, taught me landscape quilting many years ago, and I haven't stopped since. And she's back to give simple techniques for beginning landscape quilters. Welcome back, Natalie. Thank you, Nancy. I'm glad to be here. I've made hundreds of quilts over the years. Right. And in the process, I've learned to fine-tune the whole technique. In this series, we're focusing on specific elements within scenes. In the quilt "Prairie," which Nancy made, you'll see distant and close-up coneflowers. Designing a scene like this might seem daunting, yet you'll soon learn how you,too, can become a landscape quilter. Beginning Landscape Quilting, that's what's 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 Studios fine sewing furniture custom built in America. Clover, making a difference in sewing, quilting, crafting, and needle arts for over 30 years. Amazing Designs and Klass needles. Next, Natalie and I will detail the scale of flowers and how to add floral designs to your scene. The prairie with coneflowers and lots of weeds and grasses was inspired by this photo that you now see. Just a quick snapshot gave me the idea to make a quilt this way. Now, Natalie, in the first two programs of this series, we went through ground cover and trees, so we're not going to go through the ground cover. If you'd like to watch the first two episodes, go online at NancyZieman.com and watch them, but let's show our viewers some of the fabrics that we used. These are some of the fabrics that Nancy used for ground cover. And, as you can see, they are small scale because that's what she needed for the scene. And notice as she gets higher in the scene, she uses a little tiny bit of this in order to create distance. So that you can see the further away, the smaller; closer to, at the bottom of the quilt, then we used larger leaf prints. Right. We reviewed that in the first two series, but the flowers, we don't always use floral prints because you can't always find them. So often we have to adapt and adjust flowers such as these in order to make these. Yeah, tulips started out, but then, coneflowers they became. And it may seem a little odd, but if you like to cut, you are in for a surprise because I'm just going to show you the progression. I cut out some of these open tulips. This is the design that I cut out. And here's the open tulip. I cut off the top because a coneflower has the seed section. I cut it into petals. This is some creative cutting. And then, if you'd like to add some highlight, you can add some extra purple. Now, I must say, in the original design I used a pink color, but I didn't have as much of that left to make the samples. And, Natalie, I'm showing everyone that you can add some creative touches here and some highlights. Right. And it looks kind of like it. Now, we can put some of these up here to show how we go about it. Natalie, are you going to glue that for us? I'm going to glue these already cut flowers. And if you missed our first program, we're using paper glue. It's okay. Glue sticks. Just like you would buy for your children or grandchildren before they go to school. The nice thing about glue is that you can pull things off without damaging them if you change your mind. And I'm going to cut narrower, or down, cut down some of the flower leaves or petals to make some of those distant flowers, and that's what's really important. You can use the same coloration, the same print, and then put a dot up here. And it may not look like a coneflower to you, but it will read that way. So I'm going to make little small little sections. And just to give you an idea of how that was created. The stems were cut from a batik fabric. And you can see the diagonal. Natalie taught me this great trick. Cut narrow strips of the fabric, and I'm going to just add a little glue. We'll show you later on how to tack this down permanently. But, Natalie, it's really not difficult to add some curve to it. What's nice when you cut on the bias is that you can get a nice curve. And you can kind of see crudely how we're starting this, but this is how you work at it. If we take one more look at our scene, you'll see a variety of sizes of these flowers, and it's all just by cutting down. Right. Cutting down, coloring a little and you have any kind of flower you'd like. This next scene is sunflowers. I was able to find three different sizes of sunflowers. Using the same concept, sunflowers along the fence --that's one of my earlier scenes. But now we have a beautiful window scene, Natalie. A beautiful window scene that was actually my very first flower scene. And I didn't really know what I was doing so I had 50 different kinds of flowers pasted on here, and it was too much. So I realized that I would have to take them off and add more leaves. It's really important that you have one flower for every 20 leaves. Mm-hmm. Now, some of the fabrics I've used, not necessarily in here but in lots of flower quilts, come from fabrics that are quite dull, like these. With Magic Markers you can create any kind of color you want. By overcoloring and overpainting. Just simply by using a marker. And you can get a wonderful effect. Look at this very dull fabric here. Very boring, but the shapes of the tulips are really, really nice. And by coloring it, we have created lots of different, wonderful shapes. Add a little black in the center, and you have some very nice little poppies. For example, this is-- And then you just cut them out realistically. Mm-hmm. This is a good example. Yeah, let's put it right here so they can see this. Yeah, you just fussy-cut around the edges, or you could cut it down making it smaller. Right, it could be quite small. It's hard to give you all the ideas but what we want to express is that you can change the shape, if I can say that right, shape and size of the flower just by cutting, coloring, and adding it to your scene. So you have lots of flexibility. A trip to Rocky Mountain National Park was the inspiration for this landscape design. Designing a mountain quilt is a lesson in how to recreate great distance with fabric. I used hand-dyed fabrics, permanent markers, and oil pastels to create the majestic mountains. Natalie, we have a couple of things going on in this scene. Right. We talked about ground cover in previous programs. Mm-hmm. The ground cover is a very small scale. And now these wonderful mountains that are, I think, just wonderful, Nancy. Well, thank you. And the fabric that we're going to show you is hand dyed so it has light and dark. And I chose this because of the inspiration. Here's what I used for the inspiration actually came from a guide sheet or guidebook when I went into the Rocky Mountain National Park. Then, this kind of second portion of this design has some aspen trees in it. And to get the aspen trees, native and indigenous to this area, I used another snapshot from that trip. So I combined two snapshots. Now, I have to be honest, I used this from the guidebook or the paper that you get when you get into the park, and you're not going to copy things exactly from another artist. But mountains are mountains and this was a snapshot. And it's a wonderful snapshot and it helped you guide... It did....your oil pastels and your markers when you did the shading. The shading makes all the difference in the world. Exactly. And that's what we're going to spend time on during this segment is using markers and oil pastels and when we are working on our landscape designs, we usually pin or tape our inspiration... Inspiration. Right close by, and we're going to start with permanent markers to do some of the shading of the valleys. These dark stripes in the scene. And a good thing with mountains and trees, you don't have to really have something-- you can't really make a mistake. Maybe get a little bit more of a darkness here. Now, in the first two shows, of course, we did the foreground and we did trees, so we're not going to go over that now. Yeah, you can see. See how it's making a difference already? Getting it some depth. I'm looking at some of these mountains here. Good job, Natalie. I think I'm going into your territory. You just do that. Give me a little shape of the mountain in the front. Yeah. Make sure you have your scene glued down because that will help it as you are working on it. And now you can use gray or white oil pastels to make some of the snow. And the oil pastels are found at an art store. You taught me about these. And art supply store or they're available from various, lots of different companies online. And they're wonderful tools, which we didn't discover until we had done landscape quilting for about six or seven years. So gray and white, and it's just snow, you know? Snow on the mountaintop. Since the fabric has some white here already, even though my inspiration doesn't, I'm going to add some snow up here. And here, too, in the distant mountain. Sure. The distant mountain Natalie's working on is a lighter batik. The distance is lighter than what's closer to you. So, Natalie, as you're working on this, I'm going to tell our viewers about two other inspirations that we had for quilts. Oh, good. And the first one is "Mt. Rainier on a Clear Day." And this is one of my first mountain scenes that I created, and instead of using oil pastels, I used a lighter color batik fabric for the mountains. So you can use either/or. Right. "Peaceful" doesn't have a lot going on in it, but it's a lot of greens and blues. But, again, it's from Rocky Mountain National Park. So I must have enjoyed that trip immensely. You really did. You can see from the process, we've gone through various design elements, trees, flowers, distant leaves, so many other things and then rocks are in this design. We had, Natalie and her fabric stash, had this great rock fabric which from distant to close up rocks from one fabric. It's all in finding the right fabric. We put it together. Now, Natalie, we're going to show our viewers how to take the design, baste it down, and then do the stippling, quilting to put it all together. After designing your landscape quilt top, you're going to baste down the layers, then layer the quilt, and do stippling. And Natalie and I are going to show this to you, just giving you a brief preview of what's to come. The stippling is the overall stitching. It's done with clear thread. Natalie, in the sky, has some kind of overall stitch. But in the mountains, I have not sewn some areas. And that gives a valley look. This area has not been sewn down, and it helps with the dimension. On the trees, you taught me this great tip and that is not to stitch in the interior of the trees. Right, that sort of gives a little depth to the scene. On the reverse side, you can almost see where I've been, or what the design is perhaps, just by the stippling edge or the stippling design. It's random. It's kind of a fun part. But before we got onto this, I'm just going to tell you how to set up your sewing machine. Importantly, you need clear monofilament thread in the needle and thread that matches your backing fabric in the bobbin. Put on a foot for free motion stitching. It rises, as you'll see this with Natalie, rises above the fabric. It doesn't go close to the fabric. It gives a little space so that you can move it around. You'll have a straight stitch. The most important thing is to lower the feed dogs. Cover them or lower them. The little biting mechanism is not here. And I have used a needle, a sharp needle. About a size 80. You don't need it much larger than that for the stitching. First, Natalie, we're going to anchor down, baste down all those cut edge pieces. Right. These are just glued, and by sewing it down, I hold it in place so that later, I can actually do the stippling. So I'm going to just go to the outlines of... Just do the outlines of the tree trunk, the outlines of the branches. Coming back down, just making sure everything's in place. And you're holding the fabric rather taut. Yes. Because we don't have a feed dog here. Right, so I have to hold it in place, but following the lines, it's quite simple. Following the lines of the tree trunk. Of course, I don't need to sew down anything that I've drawn, so I'm really just sewing down these major trees. And just doing tacking the whole thing. Exactly. The whole thing. Just tack it down. You're going to press your fabric very flat. Right. And square it up. Right. If you want to add borders, then that would be the time to add borders. We can have that in the reference material that accompanies today's program, but today we're doing it without borders. Right. Then comes the layering. Quilts always have three layers. They do. This is where you go back to some traditional methods of quilt-making. You want to make sure that you've found a fabric for a backing that is the same intensity as the one in front. For example, you wouldn't want to use a black background fabric... Sure....because it would show through. So we've chosen a background fabric of backing fabric that's very similar to the front so that nothing will show through. And I like to use masking tape to hold my background fabric. Sure. Flat. Flat, my backing fabric flat and then layer. Always leave two to three inches on each side so that you've got room to sew, and then we pin. About a fist-width apart. Yes. And I use, we just use regular dry cleaner pins. We're going to share samples here, Natalie. Okay! Okay, I'll take this one, and you take the other. There we go. Natalie's going to do the free motion stitching following the design of the fabric, following the design of the quilt. "Old Friends" was the name of this quilt that we worked with in the first program of the series. And... Here it is. I'm going to start, it's layered, and I'm going to start the actual machine stippling. It's going to take several kinds of stitches. I'm going to do the grass up and down. I'm going to go along the sides of the trees and not into the tree trunk. I'll make little lines in the leaves. But the background is going to be stippled, and that's what I'm going to show you right now. Okay, and the needle down and then sew. I'm using little, tiny swirls. That's my signature stippling. Each person develops a style of their own. And mine are like little puzzle pieces. You get a rhythm. You move the fabric slowly. Notice I'm gripping it with my left hand. I'm a lefty, so you might want to reverse how you do this. And then you're going to outline the tree trunks. Yep. I'm making my way over there right now. This is really fun and can be very relaxing once you get your rhythm going. Up the branch. And now I'll show you a leaf. Down the middle, along the sides, onto the next leaf. It's rhythmic. And that's how we finish the stippling of the quilt. During this series, we've given you many design element ideas, and we've finished it up with how to layer and then how to do this stitching. Start with a small project, right Natalie? Exactly, and a simple one. Don't try-- maybe mountains aren't you first quilt.

Laughter

True. That's why we ended with the mountains. But a tree, as we did with the October Evening. Thank you, again, for being my guest. It's my favorite topic to teach. Oh, and so much fun teaching it with you. And I hope you'll enjoy landscape quilting. We all want to leave a legacy. Today's Nancy's Corner guest chose an independent project, which he dedicated to the preservation and the memories of Mexican indigenous textiles. Please welcome Bob Freund who joins us via Skype today from Santa Rosa, California. Welcome, Bob. Hi, Nancy. Thanks so much for having me on. It's a real honor. It's our pleasure. You're a historian, and you've chosen your life's work to gather textiles from Mexico. Explain to our viewers why you did this. Well, in 2000, I began documenting my large collection of textiles village by village, and as I went to these villages, I realized that the grandmothers were the ones that were wearing the costume and the granddaughters were in Nike T-shirts and jeans and sneakers. Sure. They didn't want anything to do with it. And so it was going to go by the wayside. So I decided that it was time to do an intensive study of this. I've done 750 villages, at least. And we have several to share with our viewers. First, from the ethnic group of the Mazateca. Brilliant colors, great running stitches, great hand stitches and explain this beautiful gown. Okay, that is called a huipil. It's a traditional garment that's, basically, hand-embroidered, originally hand-woven material. It's got cross-stitching and running stitch, depending on the taste of the embroiderer, and then they apply, across the chest and the bottom of the huipil, a series of ribbons which identify the regional-- or the town that they come from. Additionally, you don't see it there, but there's also a wrap skirt that goes underneath it. A red and white striped wrap skirt that's also hand-woven. Weaving, hand stitching, applique we're going to see it all. And this next image shows a beautiful coverlet, as well as shawl using the same stitching. Right. That's from the town of Hueyapan, Puebla. It's a Nahua Indian group, and they have a very traditional society there. They've become quite good at doing coverlets like that. And that's a cross-stitch. That one there is particularly cross-stitch. That's one of the larger types. They basically work on shawls for the most part, or what they call rebozos, which are done with a chain-stitch or a cross-stitch on wool, which is either hand spun or bought and woven on back strap looms or treadle looms. This is a project that takes, I would say, years to create something this large. I've been working on it for 15 years. But even the women, to create the garments. My, amazing. Amazing. In Santa Teresa, there's a festival. These women are attending the festival in their native gowns. They're the wives of the mayordomos or the leaders of the festival. Part of the responsibility is that they feed everybody in the village. Those buckets are full of food that they're giving. The garment itself is applique. The designer, the person that wants to have the piece made, basically picks out the material and then they cut it out and they give it to a seamstress who applies it. And it also has designs placed on there in a linear fashion by a treadle machines because there's no electricity in those regions. Sure. You've collected a great number, and you've donated the collection. Explain how others can appreciate and sometime hopefully see your collection. Right now it's in the process of going to the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane University, which they will-- anybody that walks in there can go see it. They have an enormous collection of textiles from Middle or what's called Mesoamerica. It's Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica. Mexico and Guatemala primarily. Anybody that wants to see can go there and just say, "I want to see the collections." They can just them which one, and they'll pull it out and show it to you. They're desperate for people to come and study this stuff. That's what it's there for. It's to preserve it forever. Well, Bob, I thank you for doing this so we can all enjoy it in the future. Thanks for being on Sewing with Nancy. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. I know that you can't always watch Sewing with Nancy at this time, and that's why my show is available on demand at

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