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Landscape quilting is not a new topic on Sewing With Nancy. It's a technique that piques great interest. Many of you have embraced this art quilt idea and created beauty of nature for yourself. Others have voiced a hesitancy to begin. Taking the challenge to further streamline the process, I've invited my quilting buddy, Natalie Sewell, to return and we're going to present a series on landscape quilting from a beginners perspective. Welcome back, Natalie. Well, it's nice to be here, Nancy. And I think we have simplified the process for beginners. Mm-hmm. First, we'll show you how to create a simple fall scene. My quilt "October Evening" features dramatic trees and simple foliage. Instead of showing you how to make this specific design, we'll show you how to easily create trees with my raw edge applique technique. "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. For your first landscape quilting project, you only have to work with a few fabrics. Natalie, "October Evening" has only four fabrics in here. Right. And that includes the background. It's a very simple scene. Great for beginners because you learn all the techniques of landscape quilting without a very complicated scene. There's no ground cover. Mm-hmm. And we found these wonderful trees. We used a photo for inspiration, but we left the photo behind very soon because we did find some of these wonderful leaves, of course, much closer up than the photo. Now, you saw from the inspirational photo that we used that it had a day, it was taken during the day. I took the photo, I know, but Natalie did it beautifully in an evening scene. And you can change your scene just because of the fabrics you used for the background. There are so many choices. There are wonderful batiks that make good backgrounds, and those are readily available everywhere. Here, this is a batik. I'm sorry... got that mixed up. Yes, and then there are these wonderful hand dyes that are now more easy to find. Mm-hmm. And more people are dyeing fabric, and it's a great background. The dappling of light really does half the work for you. Yes it does, it does. Now, the trees, we're concentrating on a dark colored tree, and we usually don't use one fabric for trees. Often it's very nice to use, makes a shading by using lots of different colors on the tree trunk. These are some choices of tree fabric that are wonderful if you cut them the right way. Speaking of cutting, we're using raw edge applique, and Natalie's going to show you a messy cutting technique. Yes, never use a rotary cutter when you're making a landscape quilt because it's too straight and everything will look like a telephone pole. So what I like to do is cut with just a scissors and starting with a sort of fat bottom and working my way up to-- So, I'm not careful because trees have a lot of irregularities in them. They have a lot of character. Yes, they do. And this is easy to do and fun. And you just have to give yourself permission that you can cut poorly. Yes. Messy cutting is the key to landscape quilting. Here's a tree that looks like a mess, but when we get it on the scene, it will look just fine. A glue stick, paper glue stick is the key next to pin, not literally, but baste it down into place. Right. And Natalie, you have your basting station next to the table, and you're going to glue the back. Right. I'll start with one of these trees that I've messy cut, and I'm going to glue the back. Now, on a batik like this, the back and the front are exactly the same. So it doesn't matter which side. And I have a glue stick right here. Glue sticks will not gum up your needle. We get asked that question all the time. Yes. It dries clear. Think of it as a stabilizer. It's just fine. It's the kind of glue stick you can buy at a drug store or an office supply store. It's just a paper glue stick. And while Natalie's gluing, I'm just going to roughly put up some tree trunks, Natalie. I don't know if I'm following your design. Oh, it doesn't really matter. We can convey the idea easily. And it's nice to put a little wiggle in the tree. Sure. Just a little bit. A little gnarly. Yeah. Sometimes, I do admit, that I pin it up just to make sure I like what I'm doing or where I have it positioned. So, I don't have any glue here, but then go back and do some gluing. Right. After I get it down. Now, these trees, as you can see, have darker areas. So we used a darker fabric. And cut little... And cut little slivers. Mm-hmm. To shade the tree. And I'll put these on here. Okay, you do that. We're going to do some tag-teaming. As Natalie is doing some positioning to give it shading, to give it depth, I'm going to cut this great leaf fabric that Natalie found, and it's a little bit larger than maybe than maybe the leaves need to be. So you can cut the leaves down, make them smaller. This is raw edge. We're going to eventually, in the third program in the series, show how we stitch this down. Right now, this is the designing process. And we'll stitch them down but right now we'll just position them. And, Natalie, you're getting some shape there. It's looking quite interesting. Oh, good. And I'm going to cluster some leaves. We don't have a branch there yet, but we'd add a branch and cluster some leaves down. Let's put a branch in there. Okay, good. And you can kind of see how this process, you're building the way you see it, and there we go. I'm just going to stick some on here. You don't want to have it evenly spread out because-- Here we have a falling leaf. We have another falling leaf. It's almost fall. Yeah, they're falling down. Well, as we're working on this, we'd like to show you two other images that we've created, or Natalie's created. One called "Windy." Right. "Windy" is a very simple quilt. I fell in love with the fabric. It's gorgeous leaves, and I simply put them on wonderful background fabric, and that was a landscape quilt.

And your oak design

really stately trees strong with a lot of shading and different colors of fabric in the middle. Yeah, it was fun to make the tree trunk. I have a lot of oak trees around my house, and they were my model. So you get a hint of what we're doing. We're applying, gluing down the fabric, adding some shading with the fabric. Natalie added a branch. We'll show you later how to shade the branches, cluster some leaves, but you can see from a very short time period how you can create a beginner landscape quilt. When you'd like to create a landscape featuring white birch or aspen trees like Natalie's design "Old Friends" some of the same designing principles apply, along with a few new tricks. In this design, we'll detail how to create depth and shape and also how to improvise when you can't find the exact leaf fabric you'd like. Now, Natalie, this is a work in progress. Yes. You haven't stippled it yet but the designing is perfect, and the white trees, the birch scene, summer scene is impressionistic and inviting. Oh, thank you, Nancy. It was a fun one to do, and I found wonderful birch fabrics. I can show them. Yeah. It doesn't say birch fabric on the salvage, but wow! I think it's meant to be storm, but if you cut it. Sure. You can see how easily it can look like a birch. Now, there are other options that you can choose. Right. Remember that when you're using birch fabrics, you have to make horizontal lines. So make sure you cut this direction, not that direction. Mm-hmm, so that the little lines that are in the birch trees-- Right. Now, this actually is supposed to be snow fabric, I think. I know. We've used this for snow a lot, but it also would make a nice birch if you look carefully at what the little lines show you. So you don't have to get things exact. It doesn't have to-- we're not technically correct this series. No. We're just giving the illusion of pretty nature. Right. Right. And the design is summer. Natalie has chosen a hand-dyed fabric. In the second program, we're going to learn about ground cover, but we just put some up there for the look. And because here's our inspirational scene... Right. Two trees, nice summer day, and we've made the design much like it with putting two trees down, and, Natalie, branches. We'd like to show our viewers how you shape. We cut a skinny, skinny piece. Mm-hmm. And we're going to just put it-- Do you want a little glue on there? Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, here, we'll just put a little dab of glue. Usually we do a little bit more, but not today. So just have it go here and run off. Make sure you've got curves, and have it... It can run right off the fabric there. Now I think we need to shade our trees. We do, and shading is really important. We're using markers, permanent markers. All available at office supply stores. Yes. Permanent make sure, so it doesn't run. And we're going to make believe that the sun and light is coming from Natalie's side of the quilt. So, we'll shade on dark on this side. Right, Natalie? Right. It makes a huge difference. It adds such depth and dimension when you do some shading. A few lines are good too. It rounds it off right away. I'm just going to darken this branch here to show it's a little gnarly in there. Oh, good. Yes, yes. Excellent. And we want to define between the trees here. It doesn't take much to give some shape. I think we're going to go on the bottom of the branch to shade it. Yes. Next time I'll glue that down a little bit better. And we're going to stitch this down later on, don't get me wrong. But in this temporary time period, we're just going to hold it down like that. And then we have black and we also have some gray. Sometimes if you want a little bit more gray, you can use a silver permanent pen. But then... the magic happens when you do some drawing. Drawing of the fine leaves. Yes. Natalie is the master. This is a little scary for beginners, but let me show you how easy it is. You take your pen in your hand, I use the black first, and you wiggle it. Just give it a wiggle. And start branching out. And Natalie's branches always look better than mine, but I'm working on it.

Both laugh

And your oak design

And then you can highlight them to give them depth with the silver pen on top. Isn't that right, Natalie? Yes. That gives a lot of definition. These little markers here are just wonderful for making the branch look realistic. That's the magic of beginning landscape quilting. Now, for an impressionistic leaves, Natalie chose a batik fabric, and then this yellow fabric. Oh, my goodness! Not your normal landscape quilting fabric. Nice cluster of bananas. And while Natalie is cutting that, I'm just going to quickly glue up some shapes. You use bananas because of the shading. The shading is wonderful. Uh-huh. And so I just cut a leaf. I'm going to stick it right here. If we look back at the original, you can see how she's clustered these and they're not evenly dispersed. Added a few lines through the leaves to get them more realistic. It's playing with fabric. Playing with markers. Tremendous fun. Yeah, it is. We have some showcases to show you. "The First Day of Summer" features one big tree as a focal point. A lot of shading on this with gray and black markers. And then I also did a scene called "Blue Birches." That fabric is-- Birch trees aren't always blue, but it's a winter scene. Well, it depends on the light and that makes a tree blue. So we've taught you just some basic principles of shading with markers, drawing in branches. You can cut fabric that isn't meant to be leaves, to resemble leaves. Baste them down and you have the beginning of a great design. Winter landscape scenes pose new design opportunities. "River Birch Trees in the Snow" by Natalie showcases the stark contrast between snow and trees. We think you'll be slightly surprised to learn all the fabric options when your inspiration comes from snow-covered ground. We'd like to show you landscape scenes in various stages. And, Natalie, you've finished designing this, but it hasn't been stippled or layered. Or layered. Right. And the scene or the inspiration came from a snapshot after a winter, stormy day. And here you can see some river birch trees and how the snow drifts up at the trunk at the base, and you will show our viewers how to do the same. But first, let's just talk about tree fabric because you're not going to go to the fabric store and say, "Where is your tree fabric?" Right. Because you're not going to find what you need. And this is what you found. And it is exactly what you needed. And I didn't know that when I bought it. I just thought it was an interesting piece. But when you look at it carefully and put your hands like this, you can see that a tree emerges. And it could be various shapes of trees. Right, right. So, that was a real find. And then, I just found this the other day. What a nice oak tree this will make. You can see my hands going. The bark is so much like an oak. And that light and dark... Right. The dapple shading and you didn't use this fabric for the two distant trees. Right. And this really is a natural. I won't need to shade this much at all. Mm-hmm. As you can see from the original, it makes a perfect tree, and I used these to show a little distance. We should say something about the snow. Yes. This is a hand dye, and notice that it isn't white. Mm-hmm. It's got a lot of shading of light and dark and blue snow, which is really more realistic. But it does read as winter. There's no doubt about that. Right. We thought it was important to do shading again. Because we just gave you a taste of it, and it's so crucial in beginning landscape quilting, or advanced landscape quilting as far as that goes. And the light, we're going to have the light come from your side Natalie? Okay, good. Light from my side. We're going to shade this side with-- We're using black markers, the kind you buy at an office supply store. They're permanent so you don't have to worry about-- Once they're on, they're on forever. And then, you know, we can do some lines, like Nancy's doing right there. The fabric, whoops, the fabric helps do that, but we can add a little more. And the shading, this is a lot of fun. I hate to say this, but boy I just-- Some people relax by reading. I shade trees.

Laughs

And your oak design

Shading trees is very scary. I've been teaching for a long time, and I know that shading is probably the scariest thing for beginners. But look how easy it is. Now, it's winter so in our scene we had, I think we had in our scene some snow gathering in the crux of the elbow of the branches. Right. And I was careful not to find a snow that was snow white. This has lots of shading in it. Sure. So what we're going to do is put a little piece right here. And we glued this down, I have to say. But we're just kind of putting it in there. Yeah, we do glue. But you can see the look there. And then we'll quickly do some drawing. Right. How about I do the brush and you do the background trees, Natalie? Okay. It's just like the branches. Only we will make it look like the shrubbery that is left barren. And here, we're going to have distant trees. I'm using a little bit of a silver, and then I'm going to use the black. And at home, I'd take a little bit more time in this, but you get the concept. You can just draw right on this area. Now, we have two more scenes, winter scenes to share with you, and the first one is a joint project that we did together. Natalie found this snapshot or this photo in a newspaper. Right. Right. Three basic trees, a man walking away, and then we created "January." And we did it in 45 minutes because it is such a simple tree, simple scene. I couldn't make the man, but that's Dick, Natalie's husband, walking away, and I think it's just a great scene and the fabric makes you shiver. Doesn't it? Now, the inspiration that you see next is from summer. It's a stately tree. Yes. I had a lot of fun painting and designing and marking up that tree. But you made it not in a summer scene but in 10 below. Yes. Yes. And it is a very cold, cold-looking scene, as we all know from experiencing winter in Wisconsin.

Laughs

And your oak design

Yes. So you can take elements from one inspiration, put it on a winter background. You did that, Natalie, so you didn't have to put so much background foliage in. Right. So simple. It allowed me to focus on the tree. Winter is one of the simplest scenes in a landscape scene to design. So today, in this program, we've done a white tree, white and winter, and fall, giving you the basics of landscape quilting. Redwork embroidery hand- stitched on white cotton fabric gets its name from the colorfast thread developed in Turkey more than 200 years ago. I think we can just about picture dish towels and quilts adorned with this embroidery. Today's Nancy's Corner guest, whose quilts were on display at the Quilt Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, pays homage to her past with her amazing handiwork. One of the very traditional types of quilting includes embroidery, and Deanna Waltz is my guest who's going to talk to us about Redwork. And, Deanna, Redwork in quilting as an interesting history. Could you give our viewers a little synopsis of that? Redwork started in the 1870's. Before that, there was embroidery, but the red thread would often bleed. Mm-hmm. So at that time, in Turkey, they developed the floss called "Turkey red" and it no longer bled. It was a safe floss to use, and that was the start of Redwork embroidery. And it became very popular. Right. And it still has many people using this beautiful embroidery technique. Yes. Yes. It's had a resurgence, just lately even. You started a few years ago. Yes. Tell our viewers how you began doing this. When I was about nine years old, my mother taught me how to embroider. And many of us started on a dishtowel with a little piece of fruit embroidered on that. And I've been embroidering ever since and I love doing it. So most of my quilts have some embroidery on them some place. Now, the quilt behind us is spectacular, and it includes many designs, embroidery designs from the past. Yes. Yes. And this pattern is made from a reproduction. It's a reproduction of an old coverlet. Some people have bought these coverlets, taken the patterns off of them. And I happened to get it second hand. I'd been looking for it for years, but was lucky enough to find it in a quilt shop. And it's the only quilt that I've ever kept track of my time on, and it took me 487 hours to put the patterns on and do the embroidery, and then 57 skeins of floss were used in the quilt. Then you have a friend that helps you do the quilting. Right. My friend Barbara Hochstetler, an Amish friend from Northern Wisconsin, does most of my hand quilting. It's a spectacular design, and I think what's fascinating about it is the designs include portraits of presidents, presidents' wives. Yes. Interesting motifs. Right. History. History plus maybe there will be a crane or an animal depicted, birds. I think the peacock is especially showy. It's very flamboyant. Yes, it is. Now, I couldn't help but notice but Deanna goes every place with a little embroidery. Yes. Because I embroider in such a tiny hoop, it's real easy to take it with me. I take it to the doctor's office. I take it wherever I go, especially in the car. And I get hours of embroidery in. Now, you're using Bluework this time. Blue on blue floss. On off-white. On off-white. And your stitch that you use primarily is? Is a backstitch. So tiny, little backstitches that are traditionally done. It's hard to do in front of the camera, but, boy, beautiful work, even, even consistency. Thank you. But of course, you've had a little practice. Yes, a long time. Not always do you have just a whole cloth. Right. Right. Usually I-- that's the only whole cloth I did. Okay. So here we have some traditional piecing with the "Churn Dash" and then a little touch of embroidery. Very sweet. Oh, thank you, thank you. Yes. Now, the other quilt that we'd like to showcase is an "Amish Christmas." Right. Right. Now, tell our viewers about the designs along the perimeter are traditional Redwork. Right, right. And those patterns came together in a package, and I did the embroidered blocks. And then I asked a friend whose daughter is an artist if she would make the center piece for me. And she drew the Amish scene, a Christmas scene, from just looking at those other blocks. So I get patterns from many different places, and that happened to be a hand-drawn pattern there. Well, Deanna, your works are works of art, and what a treasure. Thank you. Good to see such intricate designs, such wonderful execution of an art. So, thank you for being an embroiderer and a quilter. Thank you so much for having me, too. You're welcome. Thank you for joining us today for the first episode of "Beginning Landscape Quilting." If you'd like to re-watch this program or any recent episode, go to

www.NancyZieman.com

And your oak design

and watch online. While you're there, sign up for sewing and quilting updates on my blog and join us on Facebook, plus a host of other social media platforms. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now. Nancy and Natalie Sewell have written a "Beginning Landscape Quilting" book. It features a photo showcase of all the techniques taught in this three-part series. The book is $14.99 plus shipping and handling. To order this book, call 1-800-336-8373

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