Sewing With Nancy

Doodling-- we've all done it with pen and paper. Those same concepts-- drawing squiggles, circles, rectangles, and silly shapes-- can be done with fabric, trim, and stitching. Why should you doodle at your sewing machine or with fabric? Well, it's a great way to use odds and ends while being creative. A collage doodle is where I'd like to start. Gather buttons, small pieces of fabric, a little ribbon, and some stitching to create a greeting card or a small piece of wall art. The process is spontaneous. "Doodle Stitching," that's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy.

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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 goal with doodle stitching and collage art is to not spend a lot of time on your project but just enjoy the process. Ribbon, fabric, stitching, buttons all floating in a frame that could be made large or small. I've done some collecting of elements, and the elements that I've worked with are fabric and ribbon, that you saw. But before I decided on a layout, I did a little doodling-- some sketching in my notebook. Took a few seconds, literally, and sketched three different options of where to put ribbon, where to put buttons, and you can see, I happened to choose the top one. I cut a piece of fabric-- background fabric as well as craft interfacing. I used the fusible kind and fused an 8"x10" background fabric to the 8"x10" fabric, so it kind of has some support. And then I have some ribbon that I used double-sided basting tape to adhere the two ribbons together and made that little frame that you saw on the left. Now, you may want to take a little time to measure this or eyeball it, however you'd like it to look. Just kind of pin it into place. And then the appliqus. You don't need to be precise. We're not gonna satin stitch all the finished edges by any means. We're just going to tack it down. And here's the fabric that I used and cut out shapes-- not the big shapes you see here but just smaller shapes. And you use a little imagination and place these designs around your frame. Now, you're gonna usually work on a flat surface, and I'm just kind of-- talk about doodling. I am doing a quick design... element here. But you don't want to spend a lot of time on this. This can be relatively quick, and I like odd numbers, so I guess I'd better get five on here. So we'll add the elements, and then-- so we're not gonna do all the stitching. The key element is using bridal illusion or netting. And a bigger piece of netting is placed on top of your work of art. And maybe your kids, grandkids could help you with this, because that's what makes it kind of fun. It's a great first quilting project. This isn't quilting; this is a sewing project. And get the ribbons straight. And kind of tack everything down with pins. Now set your machine for a straight stitch. And I'd do a little bit more tacking in here, but all you need is a straight stitch. And I'm going to have-- and I have embroidery thread, decorative thread in the needle. And just meander, just stitch down the center. Lock the stitches, stitch down the center. And I'll clip the threads. And then I'll stitch on this. We'll get the thread tail out of the way. Stitch down the ribbon. Or--excuse me-- stitch down the leaf. Just tack it down, but you don't have to go far, because... you have the netting holding it in place. And just stitch. Just have some fun doing the stitching.

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And tack it at least one-- each piece is tacked a little bit. Now, I've only done a little bit of tacking, but you can see that the netting will hold the majority of it in place. If you'd like, switch to clear monofilament thread, the type of thread you really can't see very well, and stitch down the ribbon, which I've done on this sample. And then I would stitch with this clear thread along 1/4" or so-- you're not really gonna have to measure-- from the outside. And then to finish it, on the sides that have the stitching, use a rotary blade that has a pinking cutter on it and a 45 millimeter. Line up your ruler and trim. Trim off the excess fabric, and you can do that all the way around. And at home, maybe you can trim a little straighter than I did. There we go. Just taking off a touch of it. And you would trim all the way around the edges. We mounted it onto glass with double-sided basting tape, and within moments and a little enjoyment, you have collage art. Next, doodle with fabric and your iron. Cut rectangles and squares that are backed with fusible web, arrange on a background fabric, then press. After adding ribbon and button accents, you'll have an art piece that was made with odds and ends of fabric yet looks like it could be hung in a modern art studio. We're doodling, doodling with a variety of textures and tactile things, and this is probably the simplest project we have. The size could be any size. We've just chosen a 12" square canvas frame that I purchased and cut a background fabric about 2" larger than the actual canvas. So on the pressing mat, I have the canvas-- or I should say, the background fabric. I've added fusible interfacing to the back. You really can't see the white on white, but it's heavier, and, as I mentioned, about 2" larger on all sides, so this was 16"x16", and I have marked on this edge the placement where I-- the area that I can do my designing, do my doodling. Now, what to doodle? That may seem obvious after seeing the finished result, but before I had the idea, I decided to sit down and sketch out-- should the squares be on point? Should they be rectangular? Should they be oblong? And I just happened to choose-- you can see it, obviously, the top one. When I first got this idea in preparing for this program, I saw this fabric in my fabric stash, and this is what I started to cut apart. And then I thought, "Well, this doesn't work. I'm not getting all the different elements." So I chose instead fabrics that went with-- I used this as the inspiration and chose the fabrics from the fabric itself, the coordinates, and then I did find this fun little print that just seemed appropriate for the design. I found some buttons, some ribbon...oh. You get three different people; you'd have three different color combinations of what they'd like to doodle with. So with my squares of fabric or leftover pieces, I fused on paperback fusible web. You take off the backing fabric. And then with your rotary cutter that has a pinking blade in it, just start cutting. And you can measure to a certain degree, but you can also just cut, and... I'll peel this off, and then I'll cut some other shapes. So you're gonna be doing lots of cutting, and I did cut as I was designing as well, so... Let's see. Here we go. Here's the piece. And the fusible web is doing its job, and you can see, I have a whole arrangement below that I can use. So then, using your imagination, you can just start placing, seeing what-- what might work. I've done this a couple of times, and they never look the same, so just randomly place down the designs. And we'll put this piece right there. And let's see. We're missing-- I guess I have turquoise already, but you get the general idea. Start to fill in one area so that it works for you. And you get the layout done, and the fusible web is sticking. Let's use it like that. It will take a little bit longer than I'm allowing right now to get a design. But you get the idea. And just start the placement and enjoy the process. You don't have to hurry through. Just enjoy the process. After you've designed this, then-- and I'll just do it with a little corner-- press the pieces down, following the manufacturer's instructions. Give a little shot of steam and press appropriately. Then you could add some ribbon, some buttons. Decide where you'd like the buttons to be placed. You can sew those on by hand or by machine. Choice is yours. And then later, stretch this. And fun with fabrics and all those little pieces you've saved but didn't know what to do with them, you now have a purpose. When you're doodling on paper, most likely, you're not paying much attention to what's happening around you, as I was known to do in my history class in school. When your brain is not thinking of the task at hand, it's the best time to experiment with simple doodle-type stitching for free-motion embroidery. For those of you intimidated by the process, put your brain in neutral and daydream while stitching. So I call this "Daydream Stitching." There are really no rules to this, and the perfect spot to learn free-motion embroidery or quilting, and, you can see, over these haphazardly cut blooms that I have stitched over and a little concentration in the center. And I've talked to people recently who've said, "I'll do "a lot of things you show on Sewing with Nancy, Nancy, but not free-motion." Well, I think this will be a doodle project that will give you some confidence. I have felt or wool that you can use. I've used wool scraps or felt scraps and randomly cut circles. They look a little bit like funky eggs at this point, but you can just cut circles randomly from the fabric. And then on my sample, I have backed it with some fleece, or interfacing if you'd like. And then you can just place these little funny blooms that you have, and with a glue stick, you can glue them down just to tack them down temporarily. Now, if you wonder where I got this design, it was one of those mindless doodlings, and I did it again on my little sketch pad, and this is what I re-created on my little art piece that I have. You could choose different colors, of course, but the main technique is to learn this free-motion stitching, because it's not difficult. You just have to think differently. So for the machine setup, I have my machine set for a straight stitch, and on the screen, I'm going to set my machine to lower the feed dogs, and that button is right here on my machine. You may have a lever. You may have a button. But you do not have to change the stitch length. You're gonna be controlling that or-- it's a straight stitch-- or the width. I have embroidery thread in the top, bobbin thread in the bobbin-- lightweight thread. Now, the problem that most of you have with free-motion stitching is that you have to move the fabric. It's not moved through with the feed dogs because the feed dogs are dropped, they're lowered, so you're in control. When we sew, we usually just sew to the back or sew in the front, depending-- if we're gonna reverse stitch. So this is the motion that most of us are familiar with, back and forth, back and forth. So that's what I'm going to use to teach you the free-motion quilting technique. So I'll lower the presser foot and start in the middle of the stitching. And I'm gonna place my hands on the side, and as I stitch, I'm just going to move forward and then move backwards, like it was reverse stitching. In the middle, I'll stop with the needle in the position and raise the presser foot and turn the fabric. And then it's sewing forward, but you're moving the fabric, then sewing backward. You're not pushing the reverse button. Rather, you're moving the fabric itself. So no difficult turning, just stitch forward, stitch backward. And stop in the middle. The needle automatically is set to stop in the lowered position. You may want to change that if you don't want to stop there, but I just will work it front and back. Now, what you can do on your work of art, your little doodling, is to change threads, but I'm just going to show you this on one thread color. And I could also do a little faster if I wanted to, but I don't want you to get afraid to do this or afraid to try this. So we'll just keep on keeping on. I'll just stop the stitches and show you what happens. But that little back-and-forth without moving too-- not trying to create a shape. You're just getting the back and forth, back and forth, just as if you were stitching a seam, a quilting seam, a sewing seam. Now, the middle on our little daydreaming here, daydreaming design, I filled in the middle with a circle. We're gonna get an experiment with that to begin with and I'll do this on a plain piece. But when you're doing this, you're just going to be going around and around and around. Just moving it ever so gently. And then when I pull this forward, you'll see that-- just that little doodle in the middle. Well, that's what we did on this particular piece, is, with some contrasting threads, we used different types of circles. It's not much different than putting it forward and backward. So if you're learning to free-motion quilt, free-motion embroider, try this doodle stitching, going back and forth, back and forth, not worrying about a side motion. And then with your little experiment, you can frame it, stretch it, put it on a birthday card and send it to your friend. And you can see that you gained confidence as well as learned a new technique at the same time. When I think of monograms, my mind's eye sees large, precisely stitched letters. Hmm. Not so if you're doodling. The same type of impact can be made

with squiggle stitching

creating the shape of the letter or stitching the negative space around the letter to make the unstitched fabric pop with distinction. It's a 20-minute stitching exercise that will satisfy the doodler inside of you. You can tell we're not doing precision quilting, accurate tailoring in this program. We're just using--learning to use your sewing machine if you've never done free-motion stitching and learning that technique. I just showed you the back-and-forth technique that we used for the daydreaming blooms. Now these squiggle monograms can be the negative space or right on task, right on the letter. In my sketchbook, I just showed you how I determined how to work with this, and that is, just use that squiggle stitch, just wiggle around. And that's how my machine needle is going to work. And the negative space-- you fill in everything but the letter. So it has some options, and it's another way of getting accustomed to free-motion stitching if you haven't done it before. So as we did in the last technique, I have my machine set. Push the button to lower the feed dogs, and it's just a straight stitch. I have decorative thread in the needle, as well as an embroidery thread and lightweight thread in the bobbin. Now first, I'm just gonna follow my sketching, which I've done on the-- on the letter. Right on the fabric-- the letter on the fabric. And just--instead of going back and forth and back and forth, I'm gonna just go around in tight little circles, tight little squiggles, just the way you'd work with a pen. Some people who are-- have heard about free-motion stitching get a little nervous because some instruction books in quilting request that you don't cross your stitches or lines. Well, this is doodling. This is not precision sewing or quilting. This is just fun sewing. You move the fabric slowly in tight little squiggles or circles. Whoop. I went the wrong way. And now you just move the-- sew a little medium speed or a little quickly. More quickly, I should say. And I'll get repositioned and do some more, just as if you had that pen in your hand and you're going around and around. Don't move it quickly. Don't make tight, sudden changes. Just be gradual.

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with squiggle stitching

And after a while, it gets a little methodical. And you can see that I'm not just on one layer of fabric. I have a layer of batting. You could have a layer of fleece. You can move this around and fill in whatever you drew on your fabric. Now I'm just finding-- or following within the shapes of this capital letter D. If you were doing the negative space stitching, of course, you'd leave whatever you traced empty. And I need to go around this letter again. But it's not tricky at all. But when you do this, I would recommend that you take it slowly. Look at my stitching. It's quite crooked. Let's just take a look at it. It's okay. This is doodling. This is just the way a pen and ink would look right now. But I'll go over this again and-- to make it look just a little bit better. And I'll-- just slow stitching.

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with squiggle stitching

In our project book, we'll show you how to make the key chain-- or the luggage chain, I should say. Quick little instructions. But I'll just keep on stitching, and I hope you enjoy this technique and this squiggle monogramming. During the Nancy's Corner interviews, it's my pleasure to introduce you to a variety of fiber and quilting artists. To date, all artists have incorporated fiber, thread, or fabrics in their art pieces. Today, you'll see a new twist to fiber arts with the addition of wood to the supply list. Please welcome Jaana Mattson. Jaana lives and works from her home in Minneapolis and has great works of fiber art. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy. Thank you for having me. You started out not doing fiber art exactly like you're doing today. Give us a little history of how you've evolved. I have a very mixed background. I've always had a passion for craft techniques and building and texture, but I've done everything from stained glass and welding and encaustic, and I did have a background in fibers and hand-dyed quilts and fabrics. But I was in jewelry for ten years and then felt that I needed to find something more artistically satisfying, so this is the technique that I came to. And the technique with the finished result is very organic. As I said, wood to the supply list, and felting wool fiber... luscious. That was the spark that got me really intrigued and the felting-- was the combination with the wood grain and the textures and the grains of the wood up against the wonderful tactility of the fiber. Now, we've done felting on Sewing with Nancy, but this is the PhD of felting. We've done silly little fun projects, but you're working with beautiful hand-dyed wool. Mm-hmm, when I can, I get it from the people who are raising the sheep and doing the processing, but I use it like a painter uses tubes of paint, so it's my palette. And here is your art board. Yes, this kind of demonstrates the stages of developing an image. I start with just white acrylic craft felts pinned to a foam base, and then I start layering and building it up from the background forward. You just take small portions of this? Yeah, I can show you, but it's just taking wisps-- very delicate layers and wisps of color to get the blending that I use. I will use either the multi-needle tool and work that through the larger swathes of color, but more often, I'm using the single felting needle to really manipulate where I'm placing the color as I'm poking it through. So the needle felting process is very simple, and it's just pushing half of those fibers through to the back side, so it's a dry felting. And like we've done on Sewing with Nancy with some landscape quilts, we work a little bit with-- not we-- you work with inspiration. Absolutely. I take many photographs. I'm always inspired by the landscape, driving around the country or in Minnesota. So I have a wall of photographs in my studio that I'm constantly referencing to look at cloud structure and how the light hits the trees and how the fields, you know, flow. I think what's interesting, Jaana, is how if we pan from your left to right, how the shading is added in the sky with the clouds, and you can just see the buildup. You get such depth. And it's really very careful examination of nature-- how the sky lightens towards the horizon, how the richest blue is over your head, how the clouds change shape from above in the sky all the way down to the horizon, so I look at those details, but I also have to build it in order, so I have to put all the clouds in before I can put in the tree line, and I have to put in the undertones before I can put the greens of the field on, so it's building to the surface. Now, we have some finished pieces, which I think is interesting to show from the side angle, the profile, because as much fiber is on the front as-- it's pushed to the back. - Mm-hmm. And what a beautiful piece. And I'm sure you used the single needle a lot in this area. Absolutely. And it's very forgiving too. There's a lot of things you don't see that are covered up there too, so as I work and it's not what I want, I just keep putting it on or taking it off and working it till I'm happy. There are many storm clouds-- could be back there, right? And here's a smaller piece, just a lovely gradation. You work in small pieces but also larger pieces. I do, yes. It's a different challenge, that kind of scale, because to go from this very intricate, meticulous scale to looking at a much broader composition, the eye is-- perceives it differently, and I have to work it differently. And this piece that is about 18"x22" is called... Riverbank in the Storm. - In the storm. I love the reflection, the sense of the water moving slowly, and the energy of the impeding storm light. And you can-- those clouds are-- even though they're really not three-dimensional, they certainly look that way. People always think my work is puffy, and it's not. It's actually a flat surface, but it's all in the color work, yeah. Well, lovely, lovely work of art. And you are an artist with art fairs. I do, yes, I do a lot of art fairs in the summer. I'll be here for Madison Art on the Square. I do art fairs in Minneapolis, where I'm from, and I travel around the country. Well, Jaana, I really appreciate you being with us, and thank you for sharing your fiber art with us, and I know our viewers will appreciate it. - My pleasure. Thank you for having me. - You're welcome. Thank you for joining us on Sewing with Nancy, and I hope you've enjoyed the second program of doodle stitching. We'll be back with our third program on this topic, where I'll show you how to use odds and ends of fabric and thread and various types of stitches. Remember, you can re-watch this program or four seasons of Sewing with Nancy programs online at NancyZieman.com. You can also join us on my blog or other social media platforms. Again, thanks for joining me. 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.