Sewing With Nancy

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.