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I'm drawn to quilt fabrics with large designs. Just when I think I'll include them in my next quilt I shy away from cutting into them fearful that I'll destroy the design. Then I met today's guest, Tula Pink who showcases her quilt designs with large prints. Welcome back to Sewing with Nancy, Tula. You've taken the fear out of cutting into those big prints. Thanks so much for having me, Nancy. I think everybody's afraid of cutting into those large prints. My quilt pattern, "Stacks" will give you the confidence to work with large scale prints.

Modeled after the things in life that get piled up

books, parking tickets, and elusive socks. This quilt design makes a little beauty out of the chaos and turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. "Quilts from the House of Tula Pink" that's what's next on Sewing with Nancy. Sewing with Nancy, &nbspcelebrating30 years of sewing and quilting with Nancy Zieman

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Baby Lock, a complete line of sewing, quilting and embroidery machines and sergers. Baby Lock, 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, makers of sewing, knitting quilting and embroidery products for over 25 years. Experience the Clover difference. Amazing Designs and Klass needles. When I first met Tula, what stuck in my mind was she said, "I create quilts that are organic but they have intention." Your stacks quilt is organic, free-flowing but it has specific order. Probably the epitome of that statement is in this quilt, here. We're dealing with a pretty standard block structure but the way it's pieced together it disappears within the quilt. You have no idea that it's a big block. A big block. Here, this is one of the blocks in a different fabric coloration. It has five different rows. All of these blocks have been made of these same five rows different colorations, different order. By changing up the order you completely change the look of the block but it still finishes to be an 18" block, every time. You get somewhat of a column look. You do, you do. That's why the quilt is called Stacks. It's like stacks of stuff. We all have stuff. We can certainly appreciate that. You're going to be cutting out many prints that coordinate. All you need is a fat quarter. Remember, they're 18" by 22" of those funny cuts or a quarter of a yard. Either will work. That's what I like about this design. What we have cut here are the sizes. This is what you would cut from each quarter-yard. We're going to start with a 3-1/2" square and then there's a narrow strip 2-1/2" by 9-1/2" one that's 2-1/2" by 18-1/2" one that's 6-1/2" by 10-1/2" and one that's 3-1/2" by 12-1/2". If you didn't copy those down quickly you'll find them in the book that accompanies today's program. By itself, that wouldn't be that interesting. Right, so by cutting these from every piece of fabric that makes up the quilt you'll end up with a variety of fabrics all in those pieces, which you can mix and match into each block. You'll need four of the squares two of each color. Then you just choose from the stacks until you have the grouping. So, one of each of the fabrics. We kept this one, as you can see. Now these two squares turn into the pinwheel. The pinwheel just adds a little bit of that traditional flavor to an otherwise really modern quilt. Here we have-- I think some of you have done pinwheels before. You meet the opposing colors together meeting the right sides together. We've marked down the center then stitched a 1/4" from the center. Then just by simply cutting that in half-- Half of your pinwheel is essentially already made. We just open it up, do a little finger press and here we have some pinwheels that are starting to look like pinwheels. Here we have three, four-- I think I have this wrong!

both laugh

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I think I have it really wrong! When I'm making pinwheels that's always the hardest part is to figure out the combination. I visually turn them, just like a pinwheel. Because I did it wrong, let's show the right one. There you go. I think that's the easiest way. We have a very traditional quilt block. Now you're going to make tubes. This is very brilliant. When I first read Tula's book and I had a conversation with her I thought, this is clever! So now you cut a background fabric. Right, the idea of these tubes is that you want to create the stacks and give them that organic quality. You really want those prints to move back and forth. If they were all in the exact same place every time it would get monotonous. You wouldn't have that really organic sort of feel. We're going to work at the very bottom combination. We'll meet the background to the fun print, sew a side seam and meet the other so you have a tube. Here's your tube. Now, Tula, I'm going to give this to you and you're going to cut this arbitrarily. Right, we want this print piece here to move back and forth. When I cut the tubes, I'm not measuring. What I like to do is just fold it in half and finger press it to give me a guideline to follow. Then, using the scissors just cut along that guideline. Mm-hmm, here you go. I'll give you some more that have all five of these-- Actually, there are four that have been stitched. One is a complete unit. Correct. I'll lay that down here. Here you go, some more. This is where the magic happens. By jogging these back and forth a little bit I can get these pieces to move back and forth. If I find that they're leaning a little too much this way I take one of these and just flip it over and move it that way. I'm going to stick that one in there. Again, finger press and cut along that line. So really, you never measured so that each block will have a different amount of fabric on either side of the print. Then this one long strip, the 18-1/2" by 2-1/2" is just the full width. The full width of the block. That gives us the most variety of block sizes. This is the same configuration of sizes. They have been sewn together. You can see that Tula put these in a different location or had a different arrangement. Right. Even within one block, you get a totally different look. This is what I call the recipe of the block. These are all the components that make up the block. Then from here, just by moving the pieces around we can create an infinite number of blocks that all look different. Yet, they're still stacked. Right, and no matter how you arrange these they will always be in 18" finished blocks. It's very clever. I think it's very unique. Here you used 20 different fabrics that weren't from the same collection. You're a fabric designer. but these aren't from one collection but they had the same coloration. You have heavily machine-quilted the layers together. But you'll also notice from the full quilt that Tula didn't put borders on. Right, and this is something, or a device, if you will that I use in a lot of my quilts and patterns that I write. I leave the border off because I do like it aesthetically. But I also leave the border off so that I can easily expand the quilt to fit any size. Any size bed. A clever design. It may not look like it has order but it has a lot of order. It's a great way of using very large print and letting those prints showcase. Next, Tula's "Shattered Glass" quilt. Use squares or rectangles as a base and then effortlessly sew squares to the corners. It gives an illusion of a fractured mirror. The look can be beautiful. At times the look of shattered glass means bad luck so make a quilt instead. When you see this quilt undraped later it has a unique abstract look to it. Tula, your design is clever you started just with two shapes. Right, there's the 6-1/2" square and the 12-1/2" by 6-1/2" rectangle. So, 6-1/2" and 12-1/2" by 6-1/2". Then, multiple fabrics cut into squares. You're going to show the sizes and how to do the sewing. Right, with our corner squares we've cut a variety of sizes so there's 2-1/2" squares, 3-1/2" squares all the way up to 5-1/2" squares. It's just for a variety of sizes. You can see here I already have one corner sewn on. On this one, I'll sew another one on. You're just sewing from corner to corner. If you're willing to just go ahead and start sewing you can do that. That's what I will usually do is just go ahead and start sewing. But you can also draw a line on the corner. Each square can have as many as four corners or you can do less and leave one corner open which will create more open space in the finished quilt. Tula's going to work on stitching a couple more on the rectangle. Sometimes two corners, sometimes three. The fewer you have, the more open spaces there'll be in your shattered-glass look. Right. I like all the coordinates that Tula is using a variety of fabrics that have different prints, different sized prints kind of the same basic principle of working with quilting. Yes. Assume that you've done a lot of this basic sewing. You're just arbitrarily adding squares at the corners. The next step is to press it. We're going to cut. Before cutting, we're going to press to make sure it's square at the corner. Tula taught me this. You can kind of cover up some of your errors if you would like by making sure that all these edges meet. If they don't you can maybe press in a little tuck to this area. Then lift back the fabric and trim. Don't throw this away, "this" being the corner. You can make little half-square triangles at a later date. If you trim accurately, you'll trim all of these pieces. Next, you're going to stack them the rectangles and the squares. We're going to show you how you can lay the design out so that it does very nicely resemble a shattered mirror. We'll go to the table and do that right now. Before looking at the layout of the shattered-glass quilt I think it's important to point out where these rectangular or square pieces fall. They did disappear into the quilt as it's being put together. Here, approximately, is a rectangular piece. Another square is somewhere in there. You can find them by the corner area where the shattered pieces come together. It's abstract, but fun. Yeah! When you're laying this out with your variety of rectangular and square pieces-- I'll let Tula do her magic. It's like building a puzzle. As I'm laying them out I'm kind of looking for areas like this. You don't want the same fabric or size. I'm turning them around and sort of reinterpreting where they might go. Here's the other one. They go like this. I don't think there's a wrong way. There really isn't. The key is to just make sure that you have the same rectangular block every time so that when you're sewing your rows and columns together they go together easily. What was the foreground, or the predominant fabric which is this brown olive color really recedes, because of the shattered glass. You can move them, if you wanted to. I didn't mean to change your design! That would be not such a good idea! They can move. There's an infinite amount of possibilities Absolutely, it's just fun. When we look at the finished quilt you see the quilting has also attributed to the look of shattered glass. Absolutely. What we did with this quilt in particular is where it's all machine quilted and where it's quilted more heavily it causes the batting to essentially, mash down. So, where it's quilted more closely together here the fabric recedes. Where there's less quilting here on these triangle parts it causes it to puff out. It gives it an almost three-dimensional effect. So shattered glass is a unique quilt design that again, has an organized way of being put together but from first glance, it's very contemporary. Exactly. A great way of using a variety of fabrics with great impact. Fabric is art. Way shouldn't we hang it and frame it the way a gallery does, but in our own way? "Grand Salon" is the perfect quilt to showcase those little fabric gems we bought but have never been able to cut. Here's how. When you look at Tula's finished quilt, it's not small. It's impressive. The "framed art" really pops out. This is all about the fabric, a quilt like this. It's all about zeroing in on that main motif in a piece of fabric that you just love. They can have, as you see with this masquerade print definitely a portrait. But even just fussy cutting an element of the design helps balance the quilt. Right. Right, and it's just about color. A piece like this is about really liking the fabric or really liking that flower. Fussy cutting is what we're going to talk about now and marking your ruler. Right, and when I mark my ruler I need an 8-1/2" by 10-1/2" square for the large frame so I've marked my ruler here so that I know exactly what my parameters are when I'm placing it on the fabric. This allows me to move it around and get a really good idea of where I need to be. Sure. Once I zero in and I feel like that is nice and centered and exactly where I need it-- I just start on one end and then I can flip it around and line my taped edges up with that corner I just cut. I'll cut my other two sides. It's a really simple way of knowing that you're going to get your fabric in the right place every time. You can see right through that ruler which is very, very helpful. Then there's the frame. You choose fabrics that look like a frame. They pop. Yeah, you want something that's really going to highlight the piece because it is all about that center piece. So you do want to choose something that's going to make it look it's best. Then we have some side fabrics. All the dimensions are listed in the book that accompanies today's program. We have a large piece. You designed a large piece at the top and a smaller one at the bottom. Right, and this large piece is larger so that you have room to sew the ribbon down without having to make the whole quilt and sew all the ribbons at the end which would be far more difficult than doing it block by block. We'll take a look at the big block. We'll show you where this block is found in the quilt in just a few minutes. You can see Tula has angled the corners just like you would if you had a wire at the back of your quilt frame. It's not a difficult quilt block to create. No, it's a really simple block. It isn't any harder than say, a Log Cabin. Your basically putting strips around the sides. Very good point. Let's put this up on the quilt so you can see where that block is. It's right there, a big block. Then there's one more size. Right, there's two blocks. There's the large frame and then two smaller frames. I wanted there to be a variety because it's not often that we have a wall full of picture frames all exactly the same size. So, just to give it a little bit of interest I varied the sizes of the quilt frames. You just straight stitched the ribbon down. Then, of course, the finishing touch instead of a nail head, there's a covered button. I needed something that would make sense to be holding that ribbon up so I needed some sort of a "nail" and the covered button just gave it dimension and was nicely representative of a nail on a wall. Very nice. Some of the frames have the very fussy cut areas. This just has a small print which just kind of gives the eye a little relief. Right, just a little color and texture to tie them all together. If you have some great prints that you'd like showcase work with Tula's Grand Salon pattern and you'll have a great design. Reading to children is one of my very favorite pastimes. When I was made aware of a program that connects children with the love of reading and art through a traveling collection of books and matching quilts I knew I had to share this program with you. Please welcome Julie Stephens of the Quilt Guild from Alfreda, Georgia who joins us via Skype. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy, &nbspJulie. Thank you, Nancy. Welcome to Alfreda, Georgia. It's a pleasure to see you and talk to you. I'm anxious to share the program that you developed. Please share with our viewers how it started. In 2009, a member of our guild, Janie Stokes and the guild is Chattahoochee Evening Stars. She challenged us because she had been collecting storybooks for children connected with quilting or quilting stories. She challenged our guild. We made 37 quilts for 37 books and presented them at our 2010 quilt show. It became "Storybook

Quilts

Janie's Dream." The interesting thing is that you said 37 members took a book and then using some of the images from the illustrations in the books decided to make the perfect quilt. One of the quilts behind you is the Tamale quilt. Yes, it's a very beautiful quilt and tells the story with color and drama. We let the children touch the quilts as the story's being read. There's another quilt that's called Grandmother Winter. Is that the one that's behind you? No, that's Old Dane Counterpane. You can see the book cover here. The other quilt behind you is that quilt. Part of the fun of that book and quilt is that it has numbers that come off. You can teach the children to count while they're looking at the quilt. You have many more examples of quilts and books but what I want to have you explain to our viewers is that it's the connection of maybe kids who have never seen the quilt process or understand how a quilt goes together. They get to hear the story and see the quilt. Exactly, and we've gone now into libraries and to local schools. The excitement and the enthusiasm of the children seeing quilts who maybe haven't grown up with a family member who quilts is very exciting. You were also given a grant to help you with this. Yes, actually we received a grant from our quilt guild and we a grant from the National Quilting Association to help with setting up websites. All the books quilts are on the website. We have lesson plans to help with reading the quilts and books to students. The teachers have enjoyed those immensely. We're starting to determine how to travel with the quilts and get the quilts out even further than just the local Georgia area. You're not satisfied with 37 quilt books and quilts, I've heard. Oh, absolutely not. We've challenged our guild yet again this year. We've already been promised 35 to 40 more quilts which we hope to again show to the community at our quilt show in September. It's an ambitious goal and you have very dedicated members. We have so much creativity in our members. We have both men and women in our guild and the artistry is just wonderful. Well, how impressive. Your quilts will also go on a traveling show? Absolutely, in fact, they are scheduled this summer to go to the National Quilting Association's quilt show in Columbus, Ohio you know, as a special, to show a grant recipient. Julie, thank you so much for being our guest on Sewing with Nancy. Please tell all your members to keep up the good work. I'm impressed. These aren't little quilts. These are substantial quilts to go with the stories connecting children, quilting and many generations together. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much, Nancy. If you would like more information on these storybook quilts

you can go to our website

nancyzieman.com Under Nancy's Corner all our Nancy's Corner interviews are listed there. You can go to the guild, the storybook quilt information and you'll find a link to their website. Perhaps you, too, can make a quilt and share it with someone in your community. Special thanks to Tula Pink who was with us during this two-part series on the "Quilts of Tula Pink." What a wonderful, inspiring, modern look at quilting. I had such great fun. Thank you, Tula. And thank you for joining us. Bye for now. Tula Pink has written a fully-illustrated book entitled "Quilts from the House of Tula Pink" that serves as the reference for this two-part series. It's $16.99 plus shipping and handling. To order the book, call 1-800-336-8373

or visit our website at

sewingwithnancy.com/2610 Order item number W1582 "Quilts from the House of Tula Pink." Credit card orders only. To pay by check or money order call on the screen for details. Visit Nancy's website at nancyzieman.com to see additional episodes, Nancy's blog, and more. Sewing with Nancy, &nbspcelebrating30 years of sewing and quilting with Nancy Zieman

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