Sewing With Nancy

We've all doodled, sketching with short pencil strokes or shapes in the margins of notes or even homework. I'd like to show you how to translate those doodles onto fabric with your sewing machine to create small works of art. The sewing is fast, the end result gratifying. Let's begin with doodling with a zigzag stitch. Queen Anne's lace flowers can easily be sketched with a condensed zigzag stitch and a little sewing savvy. You'll be impressed how using what's commonly known as a bar tack stitch can turn into an artistic design. "Doodle Stitching," that's what's next on Sewing with Nancy.

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0.5. And you can test-- do a testing, first of all, a pre-test, pre-doodle. But we now need to change thread colors. It wouldn't look too good in green, so I'm going to quickly change the thread. And go in this manner. You could also make a greeting card with this technique, maybe a 4" x 6" instead of this larger size, and stitch it to some paper, so you can have quick little projects that you can make with doodling. That's the whole idea, not-- we're not making quilts that are heirloom. We're making projects that-- little works of art. So let me see if I can get this threaded without glasses, which I can, and now I'll just start to doodle. Doodle with this zigzag stitch, stopping with the needle up. Move it, oh, 1/4" slightly turn the fabric... And you can see that you just fill in the blanks, fill in your doodle. Now, with white, it's really simple. You don't have to change threads, but if you were using a multicolor-- creating a colorful flower, you could use 1/3 of the stitching with a light pink, 1/3 of the stitching with a dark pink, and just let those thread tails... tail, be part of the design. And this is mindless sewing. It really doesn't take much effort or thought, and it's kind of enjoyable. So I'll just cut the threads and show you how this-- how quickly this fills in, and obviously, I have a little bit of work to do yet to fill this in, but it shows you how the design can be enhanced by all the stitching. If there are some thread tails you don't care for, just clip them away. Now, if you want to make a more predominant bloom, in our second little contemporary design, we had a large center stamen area of each flower. That's also made with a zigzag stitch. And I'll just show this to you on my sample here. And increase the width. Increase the width of the... zigzag, and you can keep the length very short, and I'm just gonna put it in the middle of this area. I'd probably do it at the end. But zigzag stitch-- and now it would be important-- I'm gonna go back to my screen and put the needle in the lowered position to stop with the needle down, and I'll stop with it in the center. We'll give it one more stitch. Raise the presser foot, rotate it, and stitch. Many years ago, I had a guest, Barb Prihoda, who taught me this technique. I learn from my guests, just like you learn from them as well, and I was really glad to have an area to show-- to demonstrate this again. So you just keep turning and rotating so that you can get a bigger bloom. In the book that accompanies today's program, we'll show you how to frame many of the various little art projects that we're creating, and you can make a variety of things, but you're not gonna spend a lot of time or work on this. This is just--as I said, the topic is doodling. And you can see, the center, how dramatic that can be-- again, with a zigzag stitch, stopping with the needle in the middle and just rotating it around and--simple as that. So straight stitch, zigzag stitch, short lengths, and if you are-- when you're done, you can make it like a little quilt, bind the-- edges--excuse me-- and have a backing that can slip over the Plexiglas frame, and you have a little work of art made with needle, thread, and a little bit of time. Odds and ends of silk fabric cut into squares and stitched to another fabric showcase my next doodle project. Learn to use a single motif of a decorative stitch that's already programmed into your sewing machine as part of the doodling process. Like the pencil-and-paper sketching, each sketch 'n stitch project will be its own unique work of art. When I started with this doodle process, I just decided, oh, let's sketch what I think is in my sewing machine or what could be for some decorative stitches. And you may have 10, you may have 100, you may have more, but chances are, these stitches that you have you don't use as often as you'd like, so this is the perfect project to look at, to work with, and to look at your machine, what you have available, and... here I have the decorative stitches pulled up, and I like the airy stitches more than the filled-in stitches, so you can see, rather than something heavy like this, I would prefer perhaps that we go back-- let's try the Greek key. It's open and a little bit easier to work with. See if you like it. Stitch it out on a scrap of fabric. And this is what I used when working with my sample, my work of art, my doodle stitch, and just let it stitch and see if you think it's too big, too small, you want it different than you have it, whatever you'd like, and then you can maybe make a note of what number it is so that you can reference it again. And here we have the Greek key, but I don't want two of them, so I'll go to my machine, and on the screen, I can just press a button so I get a single motif, and perhaps on yours, you'll have a different way of working with it, but regardless, just stitch out a single motif. If you don't have that function, you can kind of guesstimate where a stitch stops and starts. You kind of need to know that if you'd like to center the stitch in the square of fabric. And I'm gonna leave the thread tails long, so you can see that it started about 1/4" up from the center. Now the fabric... I used silk. I had scraps of silk dupioni in my fabric stash. You could use whatever you'd like, and you just want to have something that can ravel a little bit, and you can see that-- here's a square cut. You can ravel it, and because of the way it's woven, the warp and weft are of different colors, and you kind of get some interesting looks, so really fast to do. On my table, I have a piece of black fabric, silk fabric, and I backed it with felt so that it has a little bit more support. You could use interfacing. I just happened to use felt. And then I had a showcase fabric and then all my little squares, and I will just kind of use some-- a little paper glue stick and determine a layout, and I'm gonna do this quickly, but you get the idea of what's happening. Then for the stitching. So preparation is first, and I have a single motif up here, and I'll start a little bit above the center, or you could stitch on the diagonal, if you'd like, and just sew, let it stitch. It's kind of no-hands stitching because it takes care of itself, and it's tacked down. And after you have one tacked down-- whoop, we have some falling squares here-- you can go to another piece. Now, perhaps you may want to consider putting a-- tack down in a small little square, so I'll choose another design, in a single motif of it.

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And it's little. It's much smaller. So it would fit in that square. Sometimes you can even make it smaller by changing the stitch width or the stitch length of your machine; just play around with the machine and kind of stitch in that middle. Hmm, I didn't hit it right in the middle, but this is doodling; this is not exact sewing. So I'll do the stitching, and you can see, I have to trim some thread tails, but if you do more stitching, more planning than I just did in my little sample, I highlighted them-- the areas with a meandering double or triple straight stitch-- went back and forth, back and forth-- and then frame this on a stretch frame, which we'll show you in the project book that accompanies today's program. Nothing difficult to do, but rather fun to play with scraps of fabric, ravel them; you could cut the edges with a pinking shears. However you'd like to work with it, but it's a great way of featuring decorative stitches from your sewing machine. As I mentioned earlier, many of us who sew or quilt rarely use those decorative stitches built in our machines. These stitches, though, are just waiting to be tested and featured in an upcoming project. Nonchalantly testing out a variety of stitches on fabric without care or direction is what we're going to do next. Not only will you create an interesting art piece; you'll see what magical stitches your machine has in store for you. There are many palettes that you can use to feature your doodle stitches, and for this pillow, you can see the decorative stitches are in three of the quadrants of the pillow. You could also use this as a little frame piece, a greeting card. You don't have to make a big project. Before designing the pillow, I did some doodling. Doodling on paper just to see, what shape should I make the pillow? And I added some dividing bars to give the eye a break so that I could appreciate the decorative stitches in the various sections, and you can see, I chose this top section as the pillow design. And I cut a 12-inch square of fabric, divided it into sections, and added some seam allowances, and that's how I got the pattern, which we will provide in the project book that comes-- that goes along with the program. I've cut out the pattern pieces, that you can see, various colors of the fabric. We did add interfacing, fusible interfacing to the wrong side of each piece so that the thread would not embed in the fabric, and it would lie flat, but I also found, with these very heavy satin stitches, that to add a tear-away stabilizer works very well, so we have two stabilizers added to the fabric, and then on the fabric-- on some of the quadrants, I added some chiffon because I didn't have three colors. I kind of wanted a different look, so that toned down the red, and it gave me a nice look to use. You can see, I've started to do some stitching, and I'll give you some highlights of how I work with this; this is not difficult. This is easy. But just find some attractive satin stitches, which basically they all are, which ones go well together, and here I have on my screen, just some of the options that you can choose, and we're not going to do that one, but you can just see what we have available. There are just lots of options, and I'll just choose a stitch like that. Now, heavy satin stitching-- unlike the last stitches we did in the project. And you may want to do some testing-- not "may," I'd highly recommend it. Testing on some scraps of fabric. This had the chiffon added on the top, and I found that some of the thread colors that I chose just didn't cut it. You know, this gray did not work with the other colorations, so that allowed me to kind of single out which colors of thread I could use. We're using the same setup, using bobbin thread specifically for a bobbin in the bobbin case and decorative thread in the needle, and I'm-- We'll just start to stitch this. And then make sure you use an embroidery foot. Your machine guide will tell you-- or your machine owner's manual will tell you what foot to use, and, uh, a embroidery foot is important because it's hollowed out on the underside so that these heavy satin stitches can be stitched through this area. And you can see, then, that will glide through that area very easily. My foot that I have on the machine is an open-toe foot, and it also has that carved-out hollow section. And here's one big section that is stitched through this area, and then you could stitch some more through the middle. I'm not gonna change threads right now but just show you some other options of stitching. When you have decorative stitches, you could make your own pattern, one right after another; not changing the design, but rather than having the wave effect going all the way across, we have a wave effect and then a dot-dash, dot-dash, and then another wave effect, and many machines have the ability of changing the sequence of the pattern, so let's give that a try. Let's see. Let's try this... section, and we'll make it a single pattern so that there's just one. Let's just hit it again, and you can have a smaller one, and let's try this guy, and you can-- you may not like what I have, but you can experiment with it, and then we'll do another large-- whoop--that one, I don't like. That's too big. Let's see, what did I use? That would be a good thing to remember, wouldn't it? There. And so through this all, we have a variety of stitches, so I'm just going to start to stitch this just to show you that you can combine and have--have a sampling. It's more of a sampler row than working with the same stitch through that length. This is no-hands sewing. I'm hands-free sewing when I'm doing this, and because it sews slowly-- so you could talk on the phone, you could doodle, you could write a note, you could do other things while you are doing this stitching. And don't be afraid to allow the stitches to overlap each other. It works out fine. In fact, you may want to have your brightest color thread to be the topstitching thread. So as this is finishing, I'll just show you what I did on this pillow. We did some of the-- all the-- let's say, used the green thread and did all the green stitching on the variety of these components, then changed to red, and then changed to yellow and pink. So there's a lot of interest that you can show in your design when you can combine decorative stitches, so I hope that you will experiment, as we have done, with the decorative stitches and doodle to your heart's content when you're working with your next sewing project. For more than a century, the women of the Swan Creek Sewing Circle have gathered on the first Wednesday of every month. Every meeting has been chronicled. Please welcome Mary Kay Clark, who is the current president, and she's going to give us a history of this unique organization, one of the oldest women's organizations in the country. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy, Mary Kay. Thank you. I'm very happy to be here, Nancy. This is a fascinating story, to me, about the sewing circle that started over 100 years ago. Give us a little history. Yes, I'll be very happy to. It started in 1915 at my grandmother's house. Mm-hmm. In those days, the men had outings. They were able to go to the mill, you know, there were things they could do, so it was started as a way for the rural women to get together and to socialize, but they would also work on their mending or quilting. Sure. - Things of that nature. And its main charter was neighborliness. Isn't that a sweet word? - Yes. And we have-- Mary Kay has brought along several of the sewing books-- or--excuse me-- the history books, and it started on December 1st, and it told how, "We meet every Wednesday," and the penmanship throughout here is beautiful.

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00 in the afternoon. And refreshments are to be provided by the hostess, and they should be limited to five items of food.

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Yeah. Wasn't that amazing? Yeah, and the group is to provide the napkins and so forth. So it's a lovely chronicle of all these meetings, and what a sweet thing. - Yes. And they also kept great track of their events. Yes, so we have scrapbooks for the 100-year history. Uh-huh. - And this particular picture is a float that was in the centennial parade, and on the car, there's a picture of a swan on the front of it, and, of course, here's the swan and members were-- Oh, and so you got the name from being in a school district. Right, the Swan Creek School District. Oh, very sweet. Dressed up, hats--ready to go. And it started during World War I, so you made bandages--they made bandages, I should say. Yeah. Yes. They made bandages for the soldiers. They knitted hats and mittens and scarves and, you know, did lots of work; they sent scrapbooks to the USO during World War II to keep the men informed of the activities back home. And then the membership grew. Oh, my goodness, did it. By the third meeting, there were over 30 members, and so here's the hostess, cooking, providing five food items, you know, to feed this many women, so at that point, they decided they had to limit membership to descendants of the charter members. Very impressive. And you are a descendant. Yes, I am. - How wonderful. Yeah, it started at my grandmother's home, and her name is Amanda Culp, and at that time, my grandfather said, "This will never last." -

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Little did he know. Little did he know. Yeah. And now you have 14 members. That's correct. And now we just have dessert and coffee. We don't have the full meal. When it first started, dues were 5 a meeting. My goodness. Now we're up to $3 for the year, so... Okay, and you do some-- you do donations and-- - Oh, absolutely. We do some fund-raisers, and then we do donations to Ronald McDonald House, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, The Road Home, Three Gaits, which is a therapeutic horse association. And so--yeah. And your members are-- range in ages. Yes, as a matter of fact, I'm one of the youngest members, and we have four members now who are in their 90s. And their mothers or grandmothers were charter members, so how sweet. And you've done cookbooks. This is an early cookbook. Right, that's from 1938. Uh-huh, we can make, uh, port cake or fudge cake-- what a combination. This has been used. Sour cream nut cake. So, uh, really fun things. Right, we've done several cookbooks over the years, mm-hmm, as well as making quilts and other things. Well, you know, sewing brings people together, and that's really what has happened here for over 100 years in southwestern Wisconsin, and we're really pleased to hear about your story. And please tell the members how much we appreciate learning and seeing-- and if you could only see all the chronicled books. They're just--the history of this is so impressive and the notes and-- oh, it's just a gem. So thank you, Mary Kay. Thank you. I'm happy to have been able to share this with everyone today. Oh, and our viewers, I know, will enjoy listening to this as well. Thank you. - Thank you. And thank you for being part of Sewing with Nancy today. If you want to watch any show on Sewing with Nancy, re-watch this interview or our first show on doodle stitching, you can go online and watch at NancyZieman.com. We have a host of shows available for you there, and you can also join us on Facebook or our blog or other social media events. We'll be back with a second and third program on this topic soon. Thanks for joining us. Bye for now.

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In her book Doodle Stitching, Nancy Zieman teaches you how to translate pen-and-paper doodles onto fabric with your sewing machine to create fiber art. Be inspired to unleash your creativity while making artistic projects using simple stitches and odds and ends of fabric. It's $14.99 plus shipping and handling. To order this book, call 800-336-8373, or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/3011. Order item number BK3011, Doodle Stitching. Credit card orders only. To pay by check or money order, call the number on the screen for details. 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, 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.