Sewing With Nancy

We're continuing a look back in time to admire the work of quilt-making pioneers who certainly didn't have the conveniences that we have today, yet their skills were amazing and serve as an inspiration to us. Julie Hendricksen is my guest. She's an author, quilt collector, and is back to show us quilts from her antique collection plus give us hints on how we can preserve quilt history for ourselves. Welcome back to Sewing with Nancy, Julie. Thanks, Nancy. Early quilt makers' skills were amazing and a testimony to their creativity. The "Triangles in a Row" is a great example. Would you ever think that a quilt made entirely of half-square triangles could create so much visual interest? I purchased this quilt because of the sheer number of fabrics that it contains. It's an excellent study in color and fabric combinations. "Patchwork Patterns Inspired by Antique Quilts," that's what next on Sewing with Nancy.

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Now, here is a little chain that we did, and you do the honors. Just clip-- clip between the two. And pressing is next. Very traditional quilt-making techniques. Press it flat, and then press to one side. And I like to top-press-- just the way you are doing-- as well. It seems to work the best, doesn't it? Get a nice press on that. Yep. Press it flat. Press it to the one side. Very, very traditional, and that way-- Julie, you kind of like to press this--or piece this way individually, that way, you can match everything up. I do. - Or get-- get a different combination. - I do. Yep. Now, adding 7/8 of an inch and cutting something that has 1/8 of an inch isn't always the easiest, so there are a variety of templates. There are a variety of rulers. There--there-- - Many. Many, many ways-- - Many, many. That you can make half-square triangles, and there's one way that you can add 1 inch to the finished size rather than 7/8, and it--so the block is a little bit too large. So then you cut it down. So with this template, we have cut, instead of 3 3/8 inch strips, to 3 1/2, and did the same chain-stitching that you just saw a few minutes ago. So it's slightly larger, so you're gonna slide the ruler on, and you're gonna cut two sides. And then you're going to turn that ruler around and just slide it down this way, re-align that, and there's a-- there's a line on the ruler that has the finished size of the triangle. We're gonna cut the other two sides, and now we have a perfect triangle. So in case you just stitched just a little bit off, you can now correct the situation when you use a ruler to cut, so whether you're using the traditional way, adding 7/8 of an inch, or another modern way of adding 1 inch to the finished size, you can create lots and lots of half-square triangles using scraps of fabric, and if there's one thing that I have been inspired to-- by this program, and that's to save every scrap of fabric that I may have, because what interesting things that can be created with triangles in the row. Obviously, the triangles are set on-point, which gives it a little bit more flow and look, but, from the 1890s to now, great idea. The pattern for "Reproduction Windmills" was heavily damaged and not really useable. However, the block is quite interesting and totally worthy of preserving for future generations of quilt makers. Notice the fascinating pattern with colored squares in this reproduction with windmill blades. Here's how you can reproduce this design and preserve some history. Julie, when we look at your quilt that you made from the antique quilt that you had originally, uh, you see in a 4-inch finished block that there are 16 squares. 1-inch, itty-bitty squares. And the pinwheel is made again with half-square triangles-- eight of them. And you mentioned to me that there are so many different ways of making half-square triangles, and this is a great way-- using the technique that we're gonna share with you if you're making a group quilt or a quilt exchange, and that's to use fusible interfacing that's printed to the correct size. So could you share that, please? You bet, and it's really nice, 'cause then everyone's triangles are the same size, so what this is is a fusible product, so it's fusible on one side. Um, it comes in a sheet, so we iron up about a half-- a fat-quarter size when we use it, and what you do is, you iron it to your background fabric, so-- And these can make from 1 inch to much larger-- Much larger. - 1-inch finished sizes, and-- We find we tend to use them for the smaller sizes more so than the really big ones. 'Cause you got to have accuracy there. Right, exactly. So once you get that piece fused up, then you don't use a scissors but go to your rotary cutter and actually cut your fusible into squares. And that's what we've done here. So your fusible is on the back, your interfacing is ironed onto the back, and then whatever this size measures, you're going to cut your dark fabric. So you take that dark fabric, and you lay this on top. You match them up. They're the same size. And then we're gonna sew those, um, dotted diagonal lines. And while Julie gets that set up, you're gonna set your machine for traditional sewing, and that is a short stitch length--2.0, 2.5-- and you can show that you'll be stitching along the-- the diagonal seams, and you have a line to follow, which works out so well.

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So--and you could really chain-stitch lots of these together if you want. We're just showing you one block. There are four rows, two four-- rows that you're going to be sewing, and we'll let Julie stitch a few more. So there's really no guesswork here.

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We're going to be creating a quilt block with 16 blocks that is actually finished with 1 1/4 inch squares. The one that you see here is 1-inch finished squares. They're just a little bit bigger so you can see what's happening, and you can keep on sewing if you'd like. Want me to keep sewing here? But as you're sewing that, Julie, now you'll see, you'll be going in the opposite direction. There are two more diagonal rows to sew, and believe it or not, you'll have eight half-square triangles once those four rows have been stitched. While she's finishing sewing, I'll just show you one that's already been stitched, and on the dark fabric, you'll see the four rows that are stitching, and as I flip this to the front, you'll be cutting along the solid lines-- two diagonal and two that are-- one's vertical and one's horizontal. And as I do the stit-- uh, cutting, not stitching-- it's already been stitched-- the magic will happen. So we'll cut... And cut... And then start cutting between the lines on all of these pieces. We'll... we'll have quite a few blocks in a short amount of time. And if you cut a little crooked, which I'm managing to do right now, especially on those diagonals, it will be okay. And then I'll just do one more. You get the idea. Then we can go to the ironing board, and I like to press to the-- give it a quick press to the back. And then press to the dark side, pressing from the right side. And then you have a little itty-bitty block. Now you take eight of those-- eight of those blocks-- and you can do some configuration to make the "Reproduction Windmill." There--there's a pinwheel in the middle-- four blocks in the middle-- then you add the blades of the windmill. So eight blocks, you need eight more in there of the background fabric and a solid square. And you fill in the blanks. And using traditional quilting techniques, you simply chain-stitch all this together to create a block, and when you have the 1/2 inch-- or, excuse me-- the 1/4 inch seam allowance has been taken in, it will get a lot smaller. -

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And you have the accuracy of making the windmill block, the precision. Another way of doing half-square triangles. "Sewing Basket" blocks, where the feet are as large as the basket itself, look rather like an anvil. Pieced entirely in solids, with inverted handles, this antique quilt is hard to date, since there aren't any prints to help discern its age. Based on the hand-quilting designs used, a certified quilt appraiser felt it was from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Now, fast-forward a century, and the newly made version uses just two fabrics as well. A print was incorporated to give it an authentic late-19th-century look. Regardless of the era, the basket-block quilt is a time-honored design worthy to be re-created. Well, Julie amazes me with her collection, and, Julie, this is, I think, worth taking a close up look at because the quilting, hand-quilting, I admire so much, and here's the block. And you can see that it has many components, which we'll show you. And this undoubtedly was hand-embroidered. Hand-embroidered. Now, there's an offset block, which is very much visible on this quilt because it is quilted slightly with a different pattern, so you can kind of see that solid block, again on-point, and on-point is a really reoccurring characteristic in... Most of the quilts we've been sharing. Now, a lot of your quilts have-- you know, they're late 1800s, early 1900s, they're a century old. Explain, sometimes, how you don't clean them. I don't clean a lot of them. I've--I've always been told by appraisers that you have to risk ruining a quilt if you're going to launder it, or, you know, so-- so basically, air them out, um... There have been some very much-- I mean, there's a lot of products on the market, too, that are-- you can clean them with, but most of them, I just love them the way I found them. Yep, and that's-- that's the way we should too. Now, this is the reproduction, and it is hard for me-- at least it was initially-- to see the blocks, the two separate blocks, because here we have the same reproduction block, and then if we move down the angle, you quilted it so well with the crosshatch quilting that it's hard to discern where one block starts and the other one stops. Hard to tell it's a diagonal set. It almost looks like rows. - Right. It certainly does look like rows, but it's not. Quintessential and, again, half-square triangles, and why don't you give a brief summary of how this is assembled. It's quite interesting. Sure, we're gonna start with the top of the block, which, we're going to cut 4 7/8 inch squares. Then we're gonna, again, cut those in half on the diagonal. At this point, what we did was mark the handle-- I don't know if you can see that handle of the basket. But we drew it with a quilting pencil on here. In the book that accompanies today's program, you'll get the template and all the sizes, but then here's a close up of using 12-weight thread to stitch along the handles, and you might want to put a stabilizer underneath. - Right. And they're all stitched before you then continue to piece your block, so all of that is done, and it's-- you're working with a small piece. So here we have half-square triangles put together, and we have some other component pieces. Here, you have the half-square to a square. Half-square to a square, the two triangles here, so once we get to this point, we're gonna sew this to this, this to this, and then this is a slightly larger triangle, 5 1/4, and that's added, then, to complete your basket. Lot of pieces, but quite an interesting design, really, really quite charming. So you're going to use-- you could use any of the techniques that we've showed you today of the traditional piecing; you could use a ruler to true it up, cut it larger, true it to size; or you could use fusible interfacing to cut the pieces into-- to create all the elements. And then, you know, you could add some borders of-- inner border and outer border, and then, if you're so inclined, you could do some hand-stitching or machine stitching to make the very, very traditional sewing basket pattern but using some contemporary techniques. Our final inspiration is another basket quilt design from the 1890s, this time with sawtooth handles made with eight half-square triangles. Julie copied this vintage quilt to make her new version. We'd like to show that to you right now. This is kind of under the category of Quilt Inspiration 101. Quilt Appreciation. Because I enjoy looking at vintage quilts. You do too. - I do too. And to see--here's the vintage that you just saw earlier, but, Julie, it has three basic color combinations. It does; there's a-- there's burgundy, many shades of blue, and then a black. And, obviously, with kind of little shirting and polka-dot fabrics going around and around, and the copy that you made that you have, again, if we start with the same burgundy, it goes to some blues, even a little darker blues, and then going around, you can see the black and starting-- ending up with the blue again. But there's something that our viewers are gonna say; we didn't-- "You didn't copy this identically." We did not. When you--when you look at this block-- The original. - The larger block. It measures 8 inches, if we're-- - Finished. Finished size, so if any of us are good at math, then you figure out, okay, that's really difficult to cut. It is; for all these little pieces, it's easier to have... Yeah, so we did this one, and we had inch and a quarter finished, which makes it 2 1/2, what makes it 5. You know, so those are all things that can be easy rotary-cut. You don't have to do an odd 1/8th or 1/16th inch. So on the modern version, the block finished size is 7 1/2 inches, and if you're wondering, "Whoa, what does this all mean?" It just means that there was some transition done in order to make little bit easier-- Easier to piece. Easier to piece together. So using one of your favorite half-square triangle techniques, you can re-create this block, and you can see, there are many components to this. This is not the beginner block. Is it?

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No.

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So we'll leave it to you how you would sew it together, which method you'd like to choose, but I would like to now look at how the original quilt maker did the actual quilting of the layers, and if we look at the blue, you can see that there are two rows of stitching-- hand--this is hand-quilted-- and the stitching is a generous 3/8, 1/2 of an inch apart going vertically down the quilt, and you have a smaller block, and it's gonna look a little smaller, but this was done by machine. - It was. So if we look at another blue block, you'll see that the blocks-- or stitching, not the blocks-- the stitching, again, is much closer together. Now, pretty indicative of the--this era was some cabling, to do cable stitching. - Back on borders, yep. If we look at the back of the quilt, I think you can see that quite well, if you can see the shadowing of the cable as it goes around and around, and then, Julie, on your new quilt, you did more contemporary cabling, and--throughout the borders, and it really shows up with this lighter border piece. So when making-- working with antique quilts and being inspired by them, you don't have to follow them exactly. I think "inspired" is the perfect word, Nancy, yep. And you can customize them to how you'd like it to be made, because, after all, the original quilt makers did. Well, I want to thank you for inspiring us. Thank you so much. Inspiring us to treasure these quilts, and I hope that you'll find that you'll take one of these quilt designs, take many of your scraps, and make a quilt for future generations. Do you have textile treasures hidden in the back of a closet? Perhaps it's an antique wedding dress, a treasured quilt that Grandma made, or even a smocked toddler dress. Regardless of the keepsake, I'd like you to learn how to preserve your personal textile collection. Please welcome Natasha Thoreson, who is from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy, Natasha. Thank you. I had the pleasure of giving you two of my treasured textiles, and you preserved them for me, 'cause I wasn't taking good care of them. And you have put my mother-in-law's dress, wedding dress, in a box, and tell us about what you do at the collection. Well, these are boxes that we might use in a collection or a museum collection. They're archival, and they're-- that means they're acid-free. Sure. And that's how I packaged your textiles, but if somebody wanted to do this at home and didn't want to purchase an acid-free box, they could certainly just use a regular cardboard box, and you would just line that cardboard box with tin--aluminum foil. - Sure. And you would do that just to keep that acid from leeching into your textile. So aluminum foil like you'd... - Mm-hmm. Make a pan of brownies and put aluminum-- Exactly. Exactly. And here's my mother-in-law's dress, which I haven't been taking-- I haven't taken good care of, but it really does look quite lovely the way you have it. And you stuffed the sleeves. I did stuff the sleeves. I stuffed, actually, every fold that was in the garment, which includes the skirt, the neckline, the sleeves--everything that I ended up folding was-- was filled with a little bit of tissue paper. And then you've made kind of rolls when this goes over and back itself-- we'll kind of hold this down, but there are several rolls in here to hold that in place. This textile with the train is three times the length of this box, so that is why there's the fold here. The zigzag. - Yep. Now, perhaps someone may want to hang this, but you chose not to. I chose not to just because of this organdy-- um, the top of the bodice, and I felt like the structure would keep it-- or the structure might cause some damage somewhere down the line. So you have a hint if you'd like to hang it. If you would like to hang it, you could use a padded hanger, something like this. It's just a regular hanger, wrapped with quilt batting and just a sewn, um... Hand-sewn muslin on the top. - Yep. And, you know, you want to make sure that the hanger isn't wider than the shoulders. It has to fit that particular garment. Then you could maybe make a muslin garment bag or simple sheet covering to go over it. Yes, you'd like-- you want to use muslin and not plastic. - Sure. Because textiles are like us. They want to breathe. - Breathe. Okay, so we'll wrap this up, and we'll go to the quilt that's underneath. Let's put this here. So I've had this quilt in-- hanging on a coat rack for many years, and it's from my great-grandmother, and it was kind of repaired, and-- and her name is Alice Lee Larson, and she's pictured on her wedding day-- I made a little label-- and married Theodore Larson, and she made this quilt in 1920. Wow. - August of 1920. And then her daughter-- which I recorded here-- Viola Thelma Larson, did some patching on it, and she gave it to me without any backing, and my aunt Viola put on-- you can see these kind of contemporary colors, she added that, and I added-- or we added the backing and the stitching, and then I put that I, Nancy Lee Luedtke Zieman, and my-- I'm named after Grandma Lee, so I put that in there, but that's more than you needed to know. What you need to know is that the textile is... again, preserved with your tissue. Yes, so-- the textile, everywhere that it's folded, there's a little sausage of tissue, and if you didn't want to purchase tissue paper-- this kind of acid-free tissue paper can be expensive-- you could make your own tube or sausage using stockinette and just quilt batting. And put it in the folds... so that it doesn't get a permanent-- now, where I-- every place it's fold-- Natasha has placed tissue or a little sausage to keep that in place. Great idea, so aluminum-foil-lined or an acid-free box, tissue wherever you're gonna have a fold, acid-free tissue to cover it up, and then you'll have that for generations to come. For generations to come. Exactly. I thank you for sharing this with us. I'm pleased to have these preserved. I know our viewers will too. I hope that you've enjoyed this series on making patchwork quilts from antique designs, and I thank Natasha. If you'd like to join us on Sewing with Nancy, you can watch online over and over again at NancyZieman.com. You can watch our interview or any part of our program and many programs more, again, at NancyZieman.com. Thanks for joining us. 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,

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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.