Sewing With Nancy

During the next two programs, learn how to create your own versions of antique quilt designs from a collection of history-rich quilts spanning the late 1800s through the 1930s. Here to unlock the secrets of quilts from yesteryear is antique quilt collector and author Julie Hendricksen. Julie, I look forward to showing our viewers how they can take inspiration from antique quilts to be on quilts of today. Hi, Nancy, it is so good to be here. The first quilt that we're gonna share with your viewers today is our version of a snowball quilt. Alternating light and dark snowball blocks with tiny corners make this quilt look like it's pieced from circles but, in fact, it's very easy to assemble. "Patchwork Patterns Inspired by Antique Quilts," that's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy.

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Sewing with Nancy, TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman,

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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 inspiration for Julie's "Snowball Crossing" quilt-top is from your antique collection. It is. And this is from the 1890s, and, Julie, give a hint about how the quilt maker chose the fabrics. She chose to alternate the dark and light prints within the row of her quilt, and then she put light squares on the corners of her light blocks and dark on the corners of her light blocks. And really, the fabric is called shirting. It is. And the reason it is called that? They look like old men's shirtings. Mm-hmm, and then your reproduction quilt-- using same vintage-type of fabrics but little bit brighter and also finished. Good job.

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Baby Lock

Now, if you would like to make this quilt block at home, you're gonna start with 4 1/2 inch squares. And then you're going to cut 1 1/2 inch squares, and then you need to sew them diagonally. One quick hint to make that easy to do is lay the 45-degree angle on the edge of that block and take a marking tool, mark it corner to corner, and you've got a perfect square to sew on. So those 1 1/2 inch squares-- you put the light on the dark and the dark on the light. And after positioning those, then you can chain-stitch sewing the blocks, and here's a close-up of stitching along the line. And you can sew one right after the other. And you're gonna-- you made a lot of 'em here. We did. Then after you've, um, stitched the blocks-- uh, first, let's talk about-- a little bit about this as a-- has a stripe. And a lot of shirting fabrics have stripes in it, and, Julie, your hint is to place... Place it opposite of what you think you will. So the little stripe is going to go to the center of your block, and when you press it back, your stripe will be going vertically. And pressing is next. - It is. So you can take this over here and do a press flat, then press to one side. On the light squares, it's opposite of what you think. So you're going to press that to the center, and just give that a little... bit here. And then after pressing, we already have one of the corners cut, but you can cut the remain-- the extras--excess fabric off this area, and-- so you don't have that bulk-- and I'll let you do the trimming. Sure. And, you know, you can measure. You could eyeball it. You know, a lot of times, I'll just take a scissors too. Sure, sure. Pretty good eyeballer after all these years. Yes. And if it's 3/8 of an inch or 1/4 of an inch, it's really not going to matter. Now, you'll find that the seam allowances have been pressed to the light here, so that the underside, the white, is showing, and they're pressed in the alternate direction of the light blocks. The--the corners are pressed in alternate directions because when you sew these together, then you will not have bulk in the seams. Right, they'll hug and kiss and-- They'll hug and kiss-- the seams will-- bulk will go in each direction. So we have a mini-sample here to show you that light, dark, dark, light, and you can see the interesting configuration. Julie has another quilt. Now, for this variation, this quilt features a snowball pattern as well, but here, the snowballs are arranged in a nine-patch formation, and then they're set on-point, with alternate squares cut from, again, shirting fabrics. This is a classic two-color quilt, yet it uses more than just two fabrics. The next quilt design, "Reproduction Chain," is based on a quilt that was made in the 1930s. Julie thought it would be fun to see how it looked in an even older palette of the 1890s fabric. The patchwork design is simple to make and the perfect reason to not let go of your scraps in your collection. Julie, I bet you have lots of scraps. I do. I do have a lot of scraps. And if we look at this quilt, you'll see many of the-- of the scraps put into play, and there are two types of blocks, and this is a variation of-- of an Irish chain. It is. And this block is basic. Tell us about it. What this block is is 16 patches in this particular block, so it's 16 equal-sized squares. And it's-- they're put point to point, and then to fill in the blank... Is another block. They're two four-patch blocks and then two plain blocks. And you can see how the combination of these two blocks creates, really, a great movement in this quilt. They're alternated when you sew your rows together, which allows that chain to go down diagonally across your quilt. Nice to work with and interesting to piece because I would've thought we would be sewing strip sets-- long strips of fabric-- together and sub-cut, but, Julie, you like squares. You can certainly strip-piece, and I've-- and I've done that a lot, but on this particular quilt, I thought it would be more fun to take your whole pile of scraps, cut them into 2-inch squares, so we have piles and piles and piles on our sewing machine... Uh-huh. And then just randomly pick them up... Sure. - And sew them into pairs. And chain-stitch them together, as we've done so often on Sewing with Nancy, and then after you've paired and paired them together, then you press the seams. And it doesn't matter which way you press the seams. Go ahead and now just press them to one side because you can flip this to this side or this side. Sure. So then, when putting them together as you would do for a traditional four-patch, you nest the seams so that one seam allowance is, in this instance, going to the right, the other is going to the left, and then they kiss in the middle, and then you sew a four-patch. So after you get four four-patches and you've had them all chained together, you're gonna have yards. Rows of them.

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Baby Lock

Yards and yards of chains. Just lay that out to a 16-patch. So you lay it out in a 16-patch, and again, it doesn't matter on the back because if this one is pressed up, you can turn this one to get-- to go down, so you don't have plan all your piecing before you start. So you're just gonna lay those together. Make sure you like your assortment of colors. Yeah, and that gives a 16-patch, and this is another vintage quilt, just of 16-patches, so, around that era, this was a common-- and, again, using shirting fabric-- but if you want to make that chain, then the next step is to create the secondary block that we showed you earlier. And here you go. You can see the component pieces, and the component pieces here, Julie, are 3 1/2 inches for the solid cream. Yep, so you're gonna do two, and then, when you're gonna sit and chain-piece on these, you're gonna sew equal amounts of a dark and a light sewn together, and then pair that with two darks. Okay, let's put it together into configurations. So we're gonna pair that together, and then this one would go to this spot in the block. Just gonna flip that around. There we go.

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Baby Lock

Yep, and then we need another with two darks, and that would go on that corner. And sew that to that. - So we have four-patches. But this time with a light in the corner. Two sets of four-patches, and once we lay this out, we'll just whisk this away, and you can see how the configuration works. So the chain makes it opposite, and you-- as you grow and grow, it will create that chain look in great vintage fabrics. Use this 1930s checkerboard quilt as an inspiration. The quilt maker, most likely a saver of every inch of fabric, hand-pieced 100 1 1/4 pieces into each 100-patch block. I don't know about you, but I'm in awe of this quilt. Part of your collection, again, Julie, of antique quilts-- 100 pieces here, but they started out as four-patches. They did, so you're making, um, a-- two fabrics per four-patch. - Mm-hmm. Some of these-- when you look at this quilt, you can definitely tell that it was a scrap collection. Sure. - There's fabrics from the '30s. There's fabrics from the '40s. If we pint--uh, point out some of those larger prints-- Mm-hmm. - Those were later. Um, the--the pink one-- some of those pink ones-- there's a dub-- bubblegum pink. Yep, that one. One of those is probably '30s. One of those is probably turn-of-the-century, so she was also using some old scraps in here. And this one, most like-- - Very loud. Probably even into the '50s, maybe. Sure, but this checkerboard design was definitely-- originated in the '30s. It did. And so there are 100 little pieces-- four-patch-- five-patches acro-- five four-patches across the top. And five down. - Five down. Making 100 pieces. And it's......really a work of art and interesting to work with it, but yet, in that era, the scalloped border was very predominant and common. It was, I have several quilts from this era, and they all have the scalloped border on them. One of the easy ways to make a scalloped border is-- you can see she quilted this with a cable. Mm-hmm. And after the cable is complete, that gives you a natural cutting line to make that scallop on the outside edge of your quilt. And it's heavily quilt-- and I might add, this is all hand-pieced. We can kind of pull at the seam allowances and see the hand-stitching, and it was a well-loved quilt. It was. So "postage stamp" is kind of another name given to this quilt because... A huge amount of small little squares. Yeah, yes, and admirable, and-- but today, if you'd like to replicate this, you could cut in inch-and-a-quarter squares as no doubt the quilt maker did, but if you would like to do it a little faster, you could use traditional techniques or modern techniques. And, Julie, you want to explain those? Sure. First, you're gonna go through, and you're gonna cut your strips of fabric-- inch and a quarter. After you get those sewn together, you will press to one direction, flip that over, and then you'll--just gonna go along your strip set, and you're going to make 1 1/4 inch cuts here. And--and many times, I can put two strip sets together if you'd like, you know, to-- To speed up the process a little bit. Speed it up, mm-hmm. And then we made four-patches in the last quilt design, the "Reproduction Chain," but now you'll be stitching these two little strips together and the seam allowances kiss, going in the opposite direction, one seam allowance is pressed to your right, one to your left, and that will make a very accurate four-patch. And when we place this back up, it looks bigger than what's on the patch, but this has 1/4 inch seam allowances allowed yet on the outer edge, and if we place this here, you can see it would kind of blend in. The fabric is much newer looking-- it's a reproduction '30s fabric, but that's how this quilt was assembled. The other thing that she tried to do on and off throughout the quilt, too, was to have all the dark squares going in one direction. If there were a darker of a-- within the pair of what she was sewing with. Yes, sure, sure. I see that. Very interesting. It's a study in fabrics, it's a study in design-- quite interesting. Now, not to be outdone by a 100-patch quilt, the next quilt maker from the '30s created another checkerboard quilt, this time with 289 tiny squares alternating between prints and muslins. The whole look is tied together with a solid pink sashing. All I can say is-- wow. -

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Baby Lock

Now, as we look at this quilt, you can tell it's older, I mean, just from the look of the fabric, I think. Fabrics from the '30s were much more pastel. You know, when you got to the '40s, you were adding the navies, the browns, the oranges-- Sure. And notice, very deliberate-- a print, a light, print, light, print, light. Now, if you were going-- now going to replicate this today, you wouldn't have to make four-patches. Right, we could use a strip set. Now, to get to 289 block, we might want to point out, Julie, the number of rows and columns. So there would be 17 pieces within that row, so you'll be making two strip sets, one beginning with a dark fabric and then one beginning with a light. Now, because we're a little lazy-- -

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Baby Lock

And not to show you with 17-- one strip set would start with the dark, and let's put my ruler across the bottom of this, but you can see that this row near the bottom starts and ends with a dark fabric or a print. The next row starts and ends with the muslin. So here we have-- this was 1 1/2 inch strips. And so the second one was again 1 1/2 inch, but we have the opposite coloration, so you can kind of see how this is starting, and I'll let you do some magic cutting. This block is not going to be 289. We also want to point out that you're always pressing towards the dark, so that all of those seams will hug and kiss. How about a ruler? Will that help? Very good, that'll help. So we are just gonna go across our strip sets then, and we are going to cut at 1 1/2. And then we'll cut the alternate ones. Okay. And then you can-- you'll get a variety of strip sets in here. You--you're not just gonna have one. So you can kind of alternate the color. And we'll just show this for now, but I think you can see you can turn things around to make it look interesting and-- obviously you can have others, but that's how the checkerboard builds. So we have 289 in patch, we have 100 in the patch-- you could have four patches, but they all are featuring scraps of fabric, so if you're a scrap saver, this is a patch for you. I spied the most compelling nine-patch quilt on display at a quilt show. The price tag was $25,000. I didn't buy that quilt, but I couldn't stop telling my friends about it. To my surprise, each time I wasn't in my shop, they'd cut off a 1 inch strip of each reproduction fabric they cut for customers and then pieced all 1,024 blocks and honored me with what I now call my birthday quilt. This is the ultimate nine-patch block, and quilt, I should say-- block and quilt. The 1-inch strips are pieced into two subsets, which we'll show you, and, Julie, explain how the reproduction quilt and-- and the original are alike in the col--fabrics. When I saw this quilt, and I wanted to look and see what made it spectacular from a distance and close up, I noticed that all the nine-patch blocks had muslin mixed with the dark fabric. I think if they would've used the shirting fabrics, the blocks would've disappeared. So if you notice, all the nine-patch blocks have muslin and then all of those little tiny 1 1/2 inch connector blocks are all assorted shirtings. And yes, the blocks are cut-- are finished 1 1/2 inches. It--it's really amazing. And what a sp-- stellar example. Now, cutting 1-inch strips-- there's a hint, and Julie's gonna share that with you. There is-- there's--on the market, there are, um, starch alternatives, what they call them, and so I like to use those when I'm cutting something that's this tiny, so just give it a slight squirt, and then just press, and that just stiffens up that fabric just a little bit to make that pressing easier. Mm-hmm, and we'll get a rotary cutter and ruler for you. - Yep, thanks, Nancy. And then the other hint I think when-- that's helpful when you're cutting these little tiny strips, or any strip for that matter, is, when you're pressing your hand onto this ruler, if you just keep that little pinky off the side and give it a little cut, that helps stabilize that, and you get the-- not the shifting of the ruler. Now, two subsets are created. Not with 17 strips, as we had for our 289-patch quilt, but alternating the dark and the light as before, and they're small, and-- - They are. You know, usually, Julie, I would sandwich these together, but you thought-- you found that-- It did not-- when sewing this, it was better to just cut them separate, just because of the size. So if you want to cut a couple there, and then you're gonna chain-piece these together-- first, a light with a dark, and then after you've chain-pieced the light and the dark, then you can add the-- the final dark color. So I'll let Julie do some cutting, and there we go. One more, Julie. So you piece these two together, and then after pressing, you add the third, and that will give you a 1 1/2 inch finished block. Very small but very interesting. And as we put this back up here-- you know, the end corners don't look quite like they're squares-- well, they're not, yet, because they haven't been sewn in, so they have a 1/4 of an inch seam, and your friends who pieced this were accurate. They were, and-- thank you, Diane and Theresa, for my birthday quilt. It is-- it is truly amazing and a work of art, so Julie is minus a few inches of fabric from her store in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and it's right here for us to enjoy. It is estimated that there are 21 million people who enjoy quilting in the United States. Yet there are only a select few who are considered masters of the art. Today, I have the honor of introducing you to one of those masters who's considered to be one of the top 30 quilt artists in the world. Please welcome Diane Gaudynski, who lives in Wisconsin, and is here to share with us on Sewing with Nancy some of her excellent quilting designs. You're going to be impressed. Welcome, Diane. Thank you, Nancy, it's good to be here. Diane, you started quilting in the '80s. I did. And give our viewers a little history-- progression of where you started and then where you... Ended up. - Excelled. Yeah. I started quilting because I liked the idea of taking sewing, which I had done since I was-- well, as long as I can remember. Very little girl. Uh, into a different form, where I wouldn't just be making things for the house or clothing. So, sewing was always a love. I liked sewing the pieces together in a quilt. I liked the colors, the designs, the fabrics, the threads-- everything, but I didn't really like hand-quilting, so I was in this limbo situation where I thought, well, I'm gonna move on and not do quilting, because the hand-quilting was just not enjoyable. It took so long. It wasn't what I wanted in-- that I saw in my head. Uh, and then along came Harriet Hargrave and the-- - Sure. Um, the how-to's in machine quilting, and I thought, well, you could never put a big bed quilt in a little sewing machine that we quilt on at home, but by lowering the feed dogs and repackaging the quilts and struggling and fighting it and figuring it out... Sure. - And using the right materials, I was able to transition pretty smoothly to machine-quilting my pieced tops. And machine quilting not just with your average stitching. Please look at Diane's work, and it's breathtaking. I feel honored to be touching the beautiful work, and I'd like you, also, to notice colorations, because Diane's signature color, I once read, is quote-unquote "mud."

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I--I think you say that affectionately. I say it very affectionately. It was-- it was all of the colors that other people really... Uh-huh. - Never liked and wouldn't put in quilts. - Sure. And I always liked them, and I thought that they worked so well with the primary colors... Oh, they do. The brights, the pastels, and made things have a certain richness. They ground your quilts. And so I've continued using them, but I do use more bright colors now than I did in the past. Well, in moderation. - Right, in moderation. This one does tend to run towards quite a bit of mud. -

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I like this kind of mud. This picture--these pieces are all what I call mud colors. Yeah, they're lovely. We have another big quilt to share with you, our viewers, that is a full-size quilt, a large quilt, and give us a little history of that, Diane. Well, that quilt was made-- I started it before the 9/11 attack here in this country, and I worked on it throughout that. And I--it was so depressing of a time that I tended to gravitate towards very deep, somber colors. And then I realized that the American spirit is strong; we need the light, the bright, and I got on the Internet and ordered more fabric-- bright yellows, pinks, lavenders, blues and greens, and put them with it and sprinkled those yellow colors-- the golds and the yellows-- across the surface of the quilt, much as you would see sunlight coming through a stained-glass window. It has a great name and a history to it. The name of the quilt is "Through

a Glass Darkly

An American Memory." So it alludes to that particular period in our history as well as the log cabin quilt itself, which is a milestone quilt for this country. It was everywhere. It's--it's an old favorite. We reinterpret it all the time. That's probably my sixth log cabin quilt. I mean, I always like that design. It's very graphic. Yes. - Very simple. Linear. Strong. Yes. It has a foundation to it. Absolutely, it's just a wonderful, uh, quilt block, and you can do so much with the blocks and the colors and the designs. You taught me early on in my quilting career to piece with starch. I still piece with starch. To crisp it... - Right. And then you can definitely get everything-- such exactness in the piecing. - Right. We do that on Sewing with Nancy now, but you I credit to giving me that. Oh, thank you, I didn't realize way back when that I was teaching you anything too. Oh, yes, you have. I don't know how come I started doing that, but it was just my sewing background. - Sure. Where you need to starch certain things to give it stability and then put all fabrics on a level playing field. And that it does. Well, Diane, it's been a pleasure to see you again, to admire your quilts, and thank you for being part of Sewing with Nancy. Oh, thank you, Nancy, it's been a pleasure. I know you've enjoyed this segment. If you'd like to re-watch it or re-watch today's program, you can go to NancyZieman.com and watch online, and you can also join us on our social media-- Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.

In her book Preserving History

Patchwork Patterns Inspired by Antique Quilts, Julie Hendricksen shows you how to create your own version of antique quilt designs using modern tools and techniques. It's $19.99 plus shipping and handling. To order this book, call 800-336-8373, or visit our website at sewingwithnancy.com/3014 Order item number B1382, Preserving History. 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,

has been brought to you by

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.