Sewing With Nancy

Learn to use fabric pieces of every size from tiny scraps to larger pieces during today's program. Whether you have bins of scraps or just a few odds and ends that you just can't part with, Lynn Harris, my guest, will show us refreshing ways to incorporate scraps in quilt designs. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy, Lynn. Thank you, Nancy. It's great to be here to share with our viewers today how to use fabric scraps in their quilts. If your scrap bin is like mine, it's overflowing with scraps of all sizes and shapes. Learning to string-piece is an ideal scrap-buster. The square blocks in my Garden Window Quilt are made with strings of fabric. The secondary pattern is created with the addition of hourglass blocks. This is a great way to make a bigger quilt with fewer string-pieced blocks. "Every Last Piece," 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. Lynn creates many blocks of scraps-- string blocks-- at a time, and this is one of her collections. Lynn, I wish I had this collection of blocks to work with. And you can see the variety of fabrics that she puts together to create a 6 1/2" block. And that's what was used to create the Garden Window Quilt. You can see it alternating again with the hourglass blocks. But, Lynn, you didn't cut strips 6 1/2" when you started. No, I didn't. I work directly from my scrap bin, and I usually just dump it out next to my sewing machine. And these are the scraps that are kind of long, skinny bits. So I will take them up-- I'm working to my rotary-cutting template, and I'll check to make sure that they're long enough that I can later trim to it, and I will sew them together. And I'm gonna be using a 1/4" seam, but the pieces-- they don't have to be the same size as each other. They can be a variety of widths. And I chain-piece a whole bunch at a time. I chain-piece them through, and then I can take them to the press to press them as a group. So it's kind of mindless sewing. It is. - Relaxing. It's great for when your mind's on other things, and you don't want to have to think about cutting. Well, here are some pieces that aren't quite long enough. But if I sew them together, then they will be. -

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So I just feed those in, and then after they come back from the ironing board, they'll be long enough. This one is a little bit fatter than I want to use for a strip, so I can just take my scissors and cut it right in half to get it about the size-- width I want them to be. And you don't have to measure. Don't measure. Just keep on going. And after doing the first stitching, which you're-- can continue to do, we just need some pressing done, and I'm gonna do the pressing. There you go. - Thank you, thank you. So as we do, whether we're sewing fashion or quilts, you should press the seam flat and then press it in one direction, and I'm just gonna clip the chain-piecing apart. And whatever the fabric tells you-- there's no right or wrong. This is-- - You can't do it wrong. Oh, this is great. So we'll just clip these apart and then do some more pressing. Maybe we'll press to-- let me set it first. And then we'll press it to the darker fabric, in this instance. And then you can keep on adding your next-- next string, as it's called. Here you go, and while you do this, I'll press-- while you add some more, I'll just do some more pressing. Okay, so I could even add this piece that we've just created, and sometimes I don't even add them straight. I put a little-- I like a little bit of variation. So I'll line it up at an angle and then follow my seam along the fabric that's on top and just feed that through. You can have a lot of speed with this one. Yep.

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And then, I'll end up with the bottom fabric sticking out. And then I just trim it... Mm-hmm. To the seam allowance there, and then press that one-- Now, do you throw that piece away? This piece, I would throw away. Okay. And then just keep on building. And you use that template as a guide to know when to stop piecing. Right, so when I'm pressing, I check each one to see if it's big enough. This one isn't quite. - Uh-huh. So I would add one more piece, making sure that I'm gonna add one wide enough that I can trim it so that I don't get my seam right in the next seam line. Sure, and then the next piece is approximately the right size. And this one is ready for trimming. So I put this down, and then... Just trim around it like that... And, presto, we have one trimmed. Isn't that amazing? Here's one trimmed on all four sides. And there you have a block using your pieces of fabric, but you have designed some other options that just create a little change in the square block. This block is called Wind Farm, and here's a template that you can see that Lynn has designed. You use it to cut off the extra at the bottom, and then there's a wedge that fits in this area so that, as you might guess it, this piece from the bottom is placed right sides together and stitched and pressed, and then this is what you get. That doesn't look too exciting right this minute, but if you put four together, they spin like a wind farm. And here's the close-up of Lynn's quilt, the finished quilt. Quite dramatic with just these little changes to the area. You can really... You told me the other day, you have so many ideas, you can't really sew them all. That's right. So maybe you at home will come up with some more variations. Here are four more blocks put together, this time, with the corner cut off of each of the blocks and then a half-square triangle. You get kind of a pinwheel effect. And notice all the fabrics. You just put anything together, and it works. Anything. That's right. So the basis of-- if you have lots of scraps to make string blocks, the square blocks to begin with, and then cutting off wedges at the side, and then you could, of course, complement those with other designs-- rectangles, half-square triangles, quarter-square triangles-- to make unique blocks for your first "Every Last Piece" quilt. Now it's time to take strip-piecing to the next level. Instead of creating square blocks, stitch leftover pieces to a specific shape. Lynn's quilt Rose Lattice creates great visual movement by cutting the blocks on point. It's a relatively simple way of creating a free-form block that really makes a statement. Well, Lynn, when you worked with this, you have four blocks going together, which creates that lattice look. It's very dramatic. - Thank you. And you start off with a center strip. Yeah, each block has the same center. And we start right down the diagonal, building the same way we did the squares before, and going out. As we get a bit farther out, we can add shorter pieces. Use up all those little pieces of fabric. Use them all up, and then when we get big enough, you can see we can... trim this down. Mm-hmm. Those edge pieces are a great place to use up some of those cutaway triangles you have in your scrap bin. And you have to make certain that those seams do not land kind of in this intersection. Mm-hmm, that's right. So as we transfer over to the finished quilt, you can see everything coming together, and it's on point. I think makes a real statement, as I said earlier. So what a great way of making another option for squares. But then there's triangles. Here, large pieces of a Paris map fabric inspired the name of this quilt called Paris on a Shoestring. Lynn played around with string triangles that she made ahead and then laid out the blocks in a star design. It's a great way of combining large pieces of fabric and little pieces of fabric. What a fun fabric, right? It is. I like that one. I didn't want to cut it up very small. Yeah, I can see why. And then these triangles that are nested around the blocks-- you saw earlier the great star shape, and here you can see the close-up of it. And then creating a triangle with strings of fabric is very comparable to the on-point stitching. Mm-hmm. Again, we start with the tallest piece in the center... Mm-hmm. - And add out to the edge. Here, you see we need to add one more, but we want our seam to be farther in to avoid that... Right. - That corner. And then using the template, you can do the trimming. Mm-hmm. But there's just not one way to make a triangle. You can have them-- you're creating a striped fabric with this, so you can have those running in any direction. So three options here for this very basic half-square triangle. Mm-hmm. - But there's more. There's more triangles to create, and no matter what size those triangles may be, you can create a template. We can use fabrics to create something called Solar Flare. It's Lynn's next quilt. It combines triangles of scraps and other triangles of solid fabric. A layout suggested by her son, has both drama and style. Lynn, I like it when my family, you know, gives me encouragement, and your son gave you this layout. Mm-hmm. Yes. And the use of solid fabrics plus the strings-- wow, what a great-- it's just really fun to look at. And the mustard color in the back makes it pop. Thank you. Good choice of fabrics. And now we're gonna work with a Drunkard's Path... Mm-hmm. Piecing, and her quilt is called Beach Balls. It's an exercise in controlled use of color. The design features monochromatic string-pieced squares in the background and then brightly colored beach balls made of the wedges. The best part? This quilt was created totally from her scrap bin. So you have two different color combinations or brights and lights going on here. Mm-hmm. - We'll just flip this back. And tell us about what you did for the backgrounds. Well, these, I-- I made these blocks the same way we made the squares earlier. I just chose all sandy color fabrics... Mm-hmm. - And created those blocks. Flipping the orientation back and forth. And then to cut the shapes for the traditional Drunkard's Path... Mm-hmm. I have a-- - Template? Wedge-shaped. And then just trimmed that. And I made string-pieced the wedge... Mm-hmm. To fit this template, and, um... Then to sew them together. Right, so then to sew them, I've marked this one in half. And then we fold and mark the center like this. And meet right sides together. - Mm-hmm. Which you've started to do. At those centers. - Mm-hmm. And then I match the edges. You don't do a lot of pinning with this technique, but here it's important. Mm-hmm. So now it's ready to take to the sewing machine. And I'll sew right along... And as you're sewing-- this is a close-up of you sewing-- take it a little easy. Sew, remove a pin. And then when you're finished, this is the shape of the wedge of the Drunkard's Path. You can see how four create a beach ball, another option of using string-piecing techniques. When your scrap box is dwindling down, it's time to make stars. Lynn worked on making stars for several months until she had accumulated several hundred-- yes, several hundred patches. Then she laid them out into a nine-patch unit. Working in small batches, yo u, too, can have enough stars to make a small or even a bed-sized quilt named Stardust. Lynn, this quilt is really a showstopper. I gasped when I saw it. It is so beautiful, and the small little pieces are amazing. And you can piece them with accuracy with your techniques. You cut a lot of squares. How many?

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I don't even remember. You don't even remember, but this is a box of some of her 1" squares, and she can show you the other components that are-- that you'll need to make one little 2" finished square. Well, this star unit is based on a nine-patch block. Mm-hmm. The center is a 1 1/2" square. The corners are 1" cut squares. And then units where we'll sew the star points are 1" by 1 1/2". And then we'll take another-- we cut eight 1" squares for the star points. And we will sew those... Mm-hmm. - Onto our backgrounds. So here we take the star point, and we're going to line it up, and so-- from point to point right across this 1" square. Oh. You're gonna chain-stitch these together, just like we did earlier in the program. Mm-hmm. I have the single-stitch throat plate on the sewing machine, which helps with just small pieces. And I also have the machine set on a shorter stitch length, which helps hold things together. Yeah, it is a small, little seam, but you say you make-- while you put the spaghetti on, you make one star. Mm-hmm. You warm up the sauce; you make another star. It's a fun way of creating them. So I'll chain-piece all of the points for one star unit through. So that's all four pieces like this. And then I will, um... Clip apart those thread tails. Clip them apart, mm-hmm. And trim this seam allowance down to 1/4". And then a lot of times, I even just... Finger-press, sure. - Finger-press. And then we can add the second star point. We line up those corners. - Mm-hmm. And then we're going to sew corner to corner... across. And, of course, Lynn would make four of those, just like that, and chain-piece it together. And then, Lynn, after you've done that chain-piecing, you have the layout of the quilt already there. Right, here we have the-- both star points, and again, we trim. And here is how I then lay out the pieces back into the nine-patch. And I'll sew down two columns, so I'll flip and sew, flip and sew, all the way down, and then come back and sew the next seam. And then, we end up with something that looks like this. And then we can flip these and sew together. And oftentimes, I'll use an awl, as I have these matched, and kind of hold that as I'm feeding it through the machine, 'cause everything's so tiny, it's hard to keep your fingers close. Sure. And then after these are both sewn, we end up with our small star unit. It's a 2" finished star. Really-- really very pretty, and what a smart use of all those little bits of fabric. And then if we take another quick look at your finished Stardust Quilt, you created five of these 2" blocks and then put them together alternating with 2 1/2" solid pieces of fabric to make a 9" block and then alternated it-- as we move over to the left-- then a solid block. So that's how this chain reaction of stars-- like fairy dust, you have these beautiful stars. Lynn, this is a great example of never wanting to throw away another piece of fabric. I'm going to have to change my tune on working with fabric. So I hope you'll enjoy making little stars as well. Now it's time for a quilt show, where we're going to feature some of Lynn's quilts that have used minimal amount of every last piece of fabric, and half-square triangles are the feature of this quilt, Lynn. Well, yeah, this one, I-- I wanted to do something simple with a hourglass block and feature some of the solid scraps that I have and showing that you can do something simple and still end up with a nice-looking quilt. And then you can do some interesting machine stitching in the middle. It's called Don't Fence Me In. Yeah, clever-- clever title. We like-- as quilters, like to name our quilts. And this one you entitled Zinnias. Mm-hmm. This one was inspired by a photograph I took in my garden of a row of zinnias. And the rest of the photograph, when I looked at it, was in shadow, so that's where the layout of this came from. So we have about 2 1/2" finished half-square triangles, end to end. It's a great-- it's so dramatic. I really like it. Another dramatic quilt of yours is called Bar Scene. Your daughter-in-law named this quilt. Mm-hmm, yeah, sh e's good with names. And you have-- here, you have hourglass blocks. Yes, I wanted to showcase a lot of the scraps and have them bunched up next to each other, but I didn't want the entire quilt to be a sea of scraps, so I sort of took an idea from the Amish Bars quilt. It's great to have-- use a minimal amount of scraps and then the drama of the solid fabric, and that's-- of course, and the quilt behind us shows the same thing. It's called Off the Chart. Where did it get that name? That's a great story. This was based on a knitting pattern. One color on the chart became the large circles, another color, the smaller circles. Uh-huh, and they're put on a 3 1/2" square and sewn together. And you'd only have, of the scraps of fabric, four rows of 3 1/2" squares. A great use of fabric, and then your stitching is quite wonderful. Yes, my son had the idea that I should quilt it in giant quilt-- knitting stitches. Like a stockinette stitch. Well, very clever. So these were hand-appliqud on. - Mm-hmm. Great travel project. - Yeah. And a stunning, stunning effort. Thanks for sharing this with us. Thank you. If you've ever attended a quilt show, you know that getting a close-up look of prizewinning quilts can be the highlight of the day. Recently, at the Quilt Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, I had the thrill of seeing the first-time exhibit of 22 amazing quilts made by two friends who create quilts together even though they live hundreds of miles apart. Today we're gonna learn about a modern quilting bee that takes place via the Internet with a quilter from Utah and Minnesota. Please welcome Claudia Myers and Marilyn Badger, who have created some of the most spectacular quilts I have ever seen. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy. Thank you very much. - Thank you. Now, you work together, but you kind of do some divide and conquer in your quilts, and we're gonna start with the one that's behind us. The name of the quilt? - Sparkle Plenty. And, Claudia, you do the designing, so... I do. I was going to a lot of quilt shows, and I noticed that a lot of the winners happened to be feathered stars. Sure. And I thought, "I can do feathered stars." You certainly can. And I can do more feathered stars than anybody can do, so I came home, and I started designing the elongated point feathered stars and picking out the fabrics and putting it together. Marilyn and I had done a quilt previously together so we were all ready to do a second one. And this was it. So, I got the piecing all finished and sent it off to Marilyn. And then she designed the quilting for it... And, Marilyn, you'd do the free-motion quilting? And did the quilt. - I do. And this quilt was done in 2003. So quilting was a lot simpler in those days. Well, it's still spectacular to me. So I just try not to mess it up.

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You didn't. You didn't mess it up at all. The quilt we're gonna look at next has lots of big blossoms on it. And the name, Marilyn? Awesome Blossoms. Aptly named, of course. - Yes. And give us a little history about that quilt. That is my favorite of the quilts that we've done together. And you have some huge appliqus in the middle. Right. And I visited Claudia when that was in progress and kind of started on one of them. Marilyn pieced the kind of mauve-colored one, but I drew the design out on graph paper beforehand. But it wasn't anything like it looks now. It was sort of a big rainbow, sort of ribbony, curved thing. But it turned into the dahlias that you see now. Oh, they're beautiful. And the border's kind of fascinating to me. And the border is-- was actually meant to be painted, and it is painted. But I sent the drawing to Marilyn, and she multiplied it, put it around the border, and quilted it like a whole cloth quilt would be and then sent it back, and I hand-painted it with fabric paint. What a collaboration and amazing quilt. Now we're gonna look next at Red Feathers. And that has a combination of piecing and painting on it. Yes, it does. - Correct. And it's an award-winner, as well as many of these quilts at the Quilt Expo in 2015. And give us a little history of that great quilt. That was another one where I thought, like, "What if?" And why can't you have feathers on the ends of a Mariner's Compass? Because it's a point, so you could add feathers if you wanted to. So I drafted the half-- half compass that you see there that has the traditional feathered tips. Mm-hmm. And then the other two compass kind of things that are there were pieced and appliqud on afterwards. And Marilyn did the beautiful... Quilting, and then painted. And I want to add that a lot of the fabrics that Claudia chooses-- it's tough to have the quilting show sometimes. Yes. - Oh, sure. So with the paint, it accents the quilting and makes it show up a lot better. Well, you have answered a question for me and answered, "What if?" You've taken these-- a traditional star, and, "What if I elongated it? What if I painted? What if I did this?" And I think-- to help you at home to know you can stretch the boundaries. Yes, you can. - Right. Well, you're an amazing duo. - Thank you. And it's my pleasure to meet you, because they have-- I'm honest-- they have won at every major quilt show in the country, if not internationally. So thank you, Claudia and Marilyn, for being with us. You're very welcome. We enjoy seeing your works of art. Thank you. - We've enjoyed being here. May I just say one little thing? Sure. We really appreciate having this exhibit here because we have never seen all of our quilts together before. Oh. So thank you very much for having us. You're totally welcome. Seeing Marilyn's and Claudia's quilts was a great experience for me. I know that you enjoyed it as well, getting a close-up look at their quilting majesty. Speaking of expert skill, I'd like to thank my guest Lynn Harris for being with us today. It is truly amazing what can be created with just a small bit of fabric,

so the takeaway from today's program

Never throw away any fabric. Well, if you'd like to re-watch this episode or any other Sewing with Nancy program, go to NancyZieman.com, and you can watch online. While you're there, click to follow my blog. And don't forget to join me on Facebook or other social media platforms. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.

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Don't throw away th ose fabric scraps. Let Lynn Harris inspire you wi th many ways to maximize how you use fa bric in quilts. Her book Every Last Piece is $17.99 plus shipping an d handling. To order this book, ca ll 800-336-8373 or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/3022. Item number T1792, Every Last Piece. Credit card orders only. 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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