Sewing With Nancy

There are many ways to create quilts with impact; one of my favorite techniques includes enlarging the quilt blocks and using bright colors. I call it super-sizing quilts! During this second episode of "The Best of Super-Sized Quilts," we went back into the Sewing with Nancy video archives and selected clips, featuring my favorite big, bold designs. First you'll be introduced to the Drunkard's Path block. Generally, it's made in a 12" square, but consider making a 32" block, making it big. Plus learn how curves are created without stitching those difficult opposing seams. I will show you an appliqu technique that practically guarantees exact results. "The Best of Sewing with Nancy 's Super-Sized Quilts," that's what's coming up next. 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 90 years. Amazing Designs and Klass needles. The traditional way of making a quarter-circle block as you saw in the Drunkard's Path design is to have two shapes. I've taped my fabric to my templates just so that you can see that they have two opposing curves. These have to be seamed together. You pin them together. When you do that, you will pin them at the ends and once in the middle because it's hard to pin them together in this area and usually-- always, I should say, the outer curve seams longer than the inner curve. So to do the sewing for this with 1/4" seam allowances you use, kind of some finger pins. First get started, and then "pin" with your fingers to get those edges to meet. You have to kind of move that around. Remove that center pin and then go for the home stretch. This is a very traditional way of making any curved shapes. I have to say, it works. It certainly works. If you have templates like that at home you can use them for the projects. But you know, sometimes it's hard to get that shape exactly perfect. I didn't do so bad! This is one I made yesterday. I had a little problem, giving a bowed area on the side. You press the seam allowances there and you'd have the block. Another option, the carefree option that I'm going to share with you and this has not been completely sewn but you cut a complete square for the background. A fusible interfacing technique is used and you get a smooth curve every time. This will later be applied into place. You can make it in many sizes. The template that I'm going to be using you can make these three sizes, from 4" to 6" to 8" blocks. You use one template. In this program, we're going to use this template to make quarter-circle blocks and whole circles. This is a two-part series. In the second program, we're going to make a very crazy name, the Hearts and Gizzards block. It's a very traditional block but again, to get those curves, rather than sewing opposing curves together we're going to use a template that will give five sizes. They can also make a fan shape, a circle shape or a wagon wheel shape. This is called a fan shape. You can make five difference sizes with smoothness, the carefree technique. That's what I'll be detailing now. The quarter-circle block has so many options for design layout. You saw the Drunkard's Path. We'll see that again. But this is called Mohawk's Trail. There's a 16-block section in the middle and on each end, I have four blocks. It's a tummy-time quilt for little kids learning how to creep and crawl. It could be on the floor. We will give you the instructions to make this specific design in the book that accompanies the program. Behind me is the same block in a very contemporary look. It's a block in process. It's going to be a dramatic wall hanging and made of the quarter-circle blocks. You can see, there's one block. They're just flipped and flopped to have the motion. To make these, I'm going to show you the details. You saw the interfacing in the sample earlier but how do you get there? You can make it using the traditional templates. You're certainly welcome to do that. But if you'd like to make quarter-circles you can start by tracing a circle. On this template there are three different options for sizes. On the side of the template that shows the quarter circle you just read how you should cut squares. Not circles, you're going to cut squares. You'll cut a 9" square for the circles. For this particular block, it's 6-1/2" background fabric. I'm making a little smaller one for the sample. If you're wondering, why such a big block? Well, I'll show you in a minute but I also must mention that of the same size you cut fusible interfacing. I have the smooth side facing the right side of the fabric and then the fusible side to the underside. You place the template on the square. You don't have to cut these perfectly square because we're going to trim this a little bit later. Then you trace in the die cut areas all the way around. Also trace the marks down the quarter areas because we're going to be cutting this apart but we'll sew once, cut after the fact. Then mark all these areas, as I mentioned. The two layers of fabric are going to be sewn together. It's a little light to see but when I'm at the machine you'll see that I'm going to stitch around the curves, the circle. Here I have my machine set at a "2.0" stitch and I'm just stitching that continuous circle. I've already done it on this sample. It's easier to see on the interfacing side. From this side, I have marked and there are little quarter marks on each corner because that makes it a lot easier to do the cutting. You're going to cut this apart in vertical and horizontal. One cut-- This one, I'll just cut separately. And then two. Then some trimming takes place. Here's my quarter-circle block, or portions of it. You could use a pinking sheers or a decorative blade and trim around the edges so it's nicely graded. Then, with a scissors, you're going to trim. Let me grab my scissors. We're going to trim leaving about an 1" or an 1-1/2" on the inside. You may want to save this. You never know when you might need this. Now, the interfacing is going to be pressed toward the underside. Use a bamboo creaser or a hera marker to make this curve nice and sharp to bring that edge smooth to the outer area. Then do some pressing. Roll that with your fingers a little bit. You can make these en masse. You can just cut and press a whole slew of these quarter-circles at once. Then you get a nice shape. The block was cut 6". I'll show you that block. You're going to place it in one of the corners. Pin it down, and then do some stitching. All of our blocks have been stitched with clear monofilament thread. You put this in the top, and matching thread in bobbin. You stitch around the edge, a straight stitch, zigzag or blanket stitch. Here I'm using dark thread so that you can see the contrast. Stitch around these edges. You can stitch, as I mentioned numerous blocks at one time. Clear thread is the magic element. No one can hardly see that stitching up close. That's how you make these blocks whether you make them small to large using that template or templates you have at home it's really pretty easy with this technique. But then, the layout. That's what gives you such creativity and so many options. I have a different set of fabrics to show you how they're laid out. The Mohawk Trail is behind me. It's made with one block, not different blocks. I'll show you a little bit later that you sometimes need an equal number with changing the background and the quarter-circle. But this is made all in one. I'm just going to lay out one-half of this for you. Honestly, when I'm doing this, I have to look at a picture. But I think I can remember how to lay this out. I'm going to start by placing the blocks with the squares to the center. Then I'll just peek around and check this out. Let me move this down a little bit. Then, I'll place the quarter circles so that you can see what we've got going here. I'll just continue to do the layout. I'm doing half of it and you can kind of get the idea of how this is laid out if I did it correctly. I think so. Then, this would be flipped around. I would just continue. You can kind of see how the movement starts. This is all one color. But as we flip this up the next design is called Fool's Puzzle. This puzzle is made with two different color combinations. Perhaps you can see that we have the same block that I just worked with, but then the reverse where the background becomes the quarter circle. So here are three of one design put together. Let me do that. One, two, three. Then, I'll move this and grab the opposite. Sneak a peek at what you have there so you can see to make sure the design is correct. I'm going to go like this. This gives you one-quarter of this area. This is one section that's laid out. The trickiest one is the Drunkard's Path. The most common quarter-circle design that people like to make and see. I've made this once; I've made it twice! But to lay it out I'm just going to show you that you need equal numbers. You need eight blocks, in this instance with the background of one color and eight blocks with the back, which was red here is red in the quarter circle so that it's flipped and flopped as it goes around the quilt, so that as the design the Drunkard's Path name, really comes to be. There are some very simple designs to create. Those are made with, many times, equal numbers of the blocks in opposing colors or opposite colors. Here we have made four blocks from one circle, pretty common, and then also four blocks from the other color. I have them stacked here somewhere. Here we go. We have two there and two there. You can make a Mill Wheel simply by changing out the opposite corners. And pretty dramatic and fun. I mean, really fast. You can see what fun that is just by doing that flip and flop. With this template you get three different sizes of circles. You can put a smaller circle in the corners. I did this on this sample. We're using batik fabrics in some of these very brilliant samples. They really are dramatic. By using two different sizes of quarter circles you can place all one size together but then notice the smaller circles that appear in the corners because there's a lot of room. Then, what if you flipped this block? That's what I'll show you next. You get a propeller type of look. The way that you can layout these blocks makes it great fun. Notice here that you get movement again, because you have two large and two small meeting together. As you create the block you'd have more movement and more propellers. Use your imagination when laying out a quarter-circle block. Traditional quilt blocks often have unique names. This Hearts and Gizzards design, a quilt pattern from the 1800s, features a gizzard shape, opposing the recognizable heart motif. Over a hundred years ago, this design was created with difficulty and in much smaller scale. Now learn how fusible interfacing makes it easy to create curves while sewing jumbo-sized blocks. Let's start by taking a close-up look at the Hearts and Gizzards quilt. You can see part of it on my board. The block is on point and I have two sizes of hearts. This section is known as the gizzard shape. It's relatively easy to put together a carefree method but in years gone by, it wasn't quite as easy as the way I'm going to show you. One of the traditional ways of doing it at least as of late is to cut a piece of freezer paper that presses onto fabric the finished size of the heart of half of the heart shape along the top. Then you can see it's cut straight with the shape along the sides. This extra width at the top that you cut, about a 1/4" is pressed under to get the shape. Then the freezer paper is removed. After you peel it off and I'm going to assume that you can figure that out. Peel that off. You have to double check that it's still pressed under. Then position it onto the half-square triangle. You have to do a little manipulating so it all fits into shape. What I'm going to share with you now instead of using paper or freezer paper is to work with fusible interfacing. It's kind of a sewing technique or sewing product. It's going to be stitched around the top trimmed and turned, and pressed to the wrong side so you have a nice, round shape. It follows in line. If you missed our first program in this series you can watch it online how we did quarter-circle squares or making a Drunkard's Path, for example. I'm using a template. You can use your favorite template. This is the one that I'm going to be using that has five different options from big blocks. This is a 16-1/2" block the same size that you see behind me with two same-sized hearts placed into it. It goes down to a 14-1/2". You can see the gradated sizes. Then, four blocks create a design. As I place these four blocks around you also can see-- This is sometimes called a Dutch Windmill. There you can see the windmill. A block by itself has the hearts and gizzards shape. It's kind of pretty. I like it. Contrasting colors work great for this. On this particular template it tells you exactly how large to cut squares and rectangles. No curves are going to be cut, but geometric shapes. To make this smaller 8-1/2" block, which finishes to 8" you're going to be asked to cut 8-7/8", kind of an unusual amount, square. Two squares, one of each color. Then, cut from point to point so that you have four half-square triangles. You can see those right there. So that's set. You have these half-square triangles. Now you're going to make the heart shapes. With the template, it says on here that you can cut a 6" crosswise cut. It's really hard to read, but I can see it for this very smallish shape. I've started to do some tracing with a marking pen or pencil, a fabric marking pen. This one happens to wash out. I align the top of the template with the top of the strip and trace the sides. And also, trace the curve. It kind of looks like little ice cream cones. Then rotate, do the alignment so that the red line at the top aligns with the fabric, and trace. After you've traced a whole slew of these, quite a few you're going to do some cutting. For the cutting, use a rotary cutter, ruler and mat. I'll grab my cutter. Don't cut the curves, just cut the straight lines. You're going to have triangular shapes. I have to admit, you could cut two layers of fabric at once. But I usually just take the little extra time and cut them singularly. I have all these shapes. Now comes the interfacing. Cut strips 2-1/2" to 3-1/2". For these large ones, we cut 3-1/2". The instructions will be given to you. This is 2-1/2" of interfacing. I've seamed them. Just overlap them together. Now, place right sides together. I'd place the edge along one, rotate it. Give yourself a little space. Pin it, and keep on doing this. Pin the fabric triangle to the wedge. Now it's time to do the sewing, trimming and finally, the pressing. I took a little time after pinning the triangular shapes to the fusible interfacing to snug them a little closer together. The next step we're going to do is some trimming. You don't have to leave as much space. If you have the ends or the sides meeting then just make a cut between the two before you do the stitching. You'll have many sections that you're going to be sewing around that curve that ice cream cone shape at the top. Now it's quite a steep curve. So to do that stitching, to make it easier and smoother what you're going to do is set your stitch length and it's just a straight stitch to "2.0" or "1.5", so that you can easily maneuver and just follow the tracing that's on this area. You'll sew many, many shapes like that. Just sew around and around and around or curve, curve, curve. You could make small shapes, you could make larger shapes. In the feature quilt, I used two different sizes. You can see perhaps that here's one of the largest sizes and a medium size. It gives it a nice proportion that's not always the same. That's totally up to you. By the way, the instructions to create this quilt type are in the book that accompanies today's program. But you can make any size that you'd like. Now for some trimming. Use a pinking sheers, or a rotary cutter with a decorative blade. Trim around the outer side of all the pieces. Then trim in the interior. If you saw our first program in this series it's much the same way. I'm going to try to make that a little bit smoother. I have kind of a bump in the road there. So, smooth that out. Make sure that it's double the width of the seam allowance. Then, turn it right side out. This is a batik fabric so it looks kind of the same on both sides but you can see the start of the shape. Run a bamboo shape, or this is a plastic hera marker around this curve, to reinforce that shape. That will help get it nice and round. Just shape it out. Then move to your ironing surface place it down, and press. After you've pressed it, when you pull it up it's nice and curved, and shaped just the way you'd like it. You'll need two of these for each half-square triangle. You'll put the lighter green on the dark fabric and you guessed it the reverse for the other side. You'd pin it to each corner. Now it's time to stitch this into place. Normally, in all my quilt samples my staff and I have used monofilament thread clear thread in the needle and matching thread to the fabric in the bobbin. But I'm going to use black thread so that you can see it a little bit easier. I'm going to shorten the stitch length to 2", or 1-1/2" even because you want this pretty straight. With the clear thread, you can't see it at all. Then just topstitch. Topstitch to each corner. We also sew along the sides. I'm just going to do this topstitching along the edge. Just sew and sew around that edge. After you've done that stitching, and you can see, you're just using black thread so you can see. You'd use clear thread to stitch it all into place. You could also stitch the sides. You'd stitch four of these shapes, two to the dark and two to the light, in opposite colors. Here we have the opposite colors together. You guessed it, you're going to put them back together. You've cut that square apart and now you sew the side seam. Press it open. I like to press these seams open rather than the traditional pressing a quilting seam to one side because of the bulk. You have a really interesting quilt block. If you'd like to vary it you could put a heart on a square. Seam two halves of the ice cream cone shape together as we have here, and then place it on a quilt block. Here's the little seam. Place it on the block, and there you have a variation. Whether using bold, bright colors for quilting or more subtle shades, I think you can see that super-sizing the design is a great way to create quilts with star power. Fusible interfacing is the key factor in making what once was difficult to piece, into a streamline appliqu. I hope you'll enjoy using these quilting techniques as much as I enjoy sharing them with you. If you'd like to re-watch this episode or many seasons of Sewing With Nancy programming, go to NancyZieman.com and watch at your convenience online. Plus I invite you to join the sewing and quilting conversations and education on my blog and other social media platforms. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now. Nancy has designed templates and written a book for the projects referenced in this program and more. The complete set of all four of "Nancy's Super-Sized Quilting" templates and DVDs is $99, plus shipping and handling. The book is included free with purchase. To order this set, call 800-336-8373 or visit our Web site at sewingwithnancy.com/3005 Order Item No. SWNSSQ Su per-Sized Quilts templates and DVD set. Credit Card orders only. To pay by check or money order call the number on the screen for details. Visit Nancy's Web site 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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