Sewing With Nancy

cc >> Hi, I'm Nancy Zieman. Thank you for joining me. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy. It's time to discover the joy of sewing and quilting. Today, we have an exciting program. We'd like to start by giving you some guidelines... On how to work with a pattern guide, and also how to set up samples in your class. We're going to be using two fabrics to create this wall hanging. Knowing what fabrics to use, you can be very creative. My machine is set up for an overlock stitch. This is a great technique, not only because it looks good, but it's so fast. This program is the start of the three-part series called "Creative Embroidery Connection." This is the third program of my three-part series entitled... You guessed it, "Sewing for Children." Since we're so fortunate to have a guest this week, Mary Mulari, we're going to feature her in our guest showcase. Today, I would like to welcome our special guest Gail Brown. Natalie, it's always a pleasure to work with you, and now to share this new idea of flower garden quilting. Eileen Roche, our resident embroidery expert and designer is my guest to share insights into how she designs embroidery. You'll be surprised what a great look you can create. It's just that easy. That's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy. See you soon.

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Thank you. Thank you! Welcome to our second program of our "30th Anniversary Special." You at home can tell we have an audience with us to take a trip down memory lane for the past 30 years since 1982. We're going to have special guests with us during this program. We're going to see how sewing has stayed the same and especially, how it has changed. We'll have a few bloopers as I mentioned, special guests. Our "30th Anniversary Special." That's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy.

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Sewing with Nancy, &nbspcelebrating30 years of sewing and quilting with Nancy Zieman is made possible by 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. The key to the longevity of Sewing with Nancy is the variety of programming topics accomplished by showcasing talents of guests. A guest that has appeared numerous times during all three decades, is Gail Brown. She's a prolific author, a writer, a designer. Her talents are not limited to one subject. She's extremely versatile. Welcome to Sewing with Nancy. Today I'd like to welcome our special guest, Gail Brown. We're talking about projects that can be handled by beginners and that can be done easily in an evening. Now it's time for dueling sergers where Gail and I will each show you some unique techniques using a serger sewing machine. Gail, you developed this cushion technique. I did, because I got tired of going back and forth to the sewing machine to get a tight cover. Today we have foilized fabric paperized fabric, fabric gift wrap. This is a great way to identify which tension to adjust. I'd like to introduce you to my good friend, Gail Brown. Thank you.

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You know Gail, as you mentioned to me throughout the practice we've grown up together. I met you 38 years ago in New York. Even though I didn't understand at that time what our future connection would be professionally I did feel a strong connection to you personally. Yes, and we've been great friends and we've shown techniques on television that mirrored our lives. They did, and in those days, we were all looking for ways to decorate inexpensively and quickly. That brought on our "Instant Interiors" series. Our first series together, right. Our studio and our homes were full of quick decor circle curtains low-sew table toppings all made of fabric, quickly. Then we had children, we got busy. We did. We were challenged for time. We were looking for a way to sew better and faster. Then in came home-use sergers. We did several shows on serging. Serging, in the early days was not as easy as we tried to make it look.

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I remember one show where we had nine sergers for nine techniques and we had to transfer them here into the studio and keep them tension-ready. The threads jiggled during our trip. They became tangled, and you were setting things up. I had a fix-it station in the studio. Then Nancy was very masterful at putting her hand right over the part of the loop or thread that wasn't quite perfect.

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Yes, and then we got into making gifts. We did. I think for both of us, we wanted to give hand-made gifts. Right. We did a series on "Quick Gifts and Decor." Some of the baby items that we made then are now being used and worn by our granddaughters who are all, coincidentally, close in age. Very close. I think our most compelling series we did together and I say this sincerely, is "Creative Kindness." Yes, and I'm retired now. I have the time to really relish sewing. My emphasis is sewing for others. Specifically, head covers for hair-loss sufferers. You've recycled some of Mary Mulari's sweatshirts. Our wonderful friend and clever designer. I re-styled two sweatshirts she had. The fabric is perfect. It's soft. It's comfy. It adds dimension. Then Mary's applique, because it's pin-on can be positioned by the wearer wherever they prefer. Gail has helped us with neonatal intensive care unit sewing, for the homeless shelters, with little dresses for Haiti, We've accomplished a lot in that area. I thank you, Gail. And thank you for joining me in my life and inspiring me. Not just in sewing, but in living. My friend, Gail Brown.

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Hi, Nancy, it's your friend, Eleanor. Congratulations on 30 years on television. You still look good, Girl! Hi, Nancy! Marianne Fons here. And Mary Fons. We're joining you from the set of Love of Quilting to congratulate you in kind of a video-card for 30 wonderful years on PBS. You've instilled the love of sewing into the homes of thousands of quilters and sewers all over the United States. We tip our hat to you that. Congratulations, enjoy your moment and eat some cake. Eat dessert, you've earned it. Have some cake. Gail and I just reviewed several topics we did together but as you can guess there are many more topics we've covered. My staff and I have what we call name that tune or, name that program or two-part series. That came after I named a program by myself "Fitting the Bodice With Pivot and Slide Technique."

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It didn't go over well. With 806 shows under our belt, you can imagine that we've shown a lot of different topics. I've developed a three-part series entitled "Quilt With Confidence." "Fabulous Feet and Fancy Stitches." "Machine Monogramming." "Contemporary Tailoring." "Appliqu: Basic to Creative." "Sew Entertaining." "Window Treatments." "Instant Interiors." "Sewing for Children." "Flower Garden Quilts." Discover the "Joy of Sewing Bridal Wear." "Sewing Fitness" Learn the secrets to "Makeover Magic." "Sweatshirt Makeovers for Kids." That's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy. So, a lot of different topics. Some topics have fared better than others. Each season we equally split the number of sewing and serging kind of as one category, maybe 13 shows there. We do another 13 shows with quilting and embroidery. Then we may do embellishing, thrown in just for good measure. Sometimes though, I ventured into the fringes, such as cooking and exercising.

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This is my way of cooking fast. It's just buying a 30-ounce jar of spaghetti sauce without the meat, and just dumping it all in. Great, it's done and it smells wonderful. I wish you could smell this. It looks so attractive, and was simple to put together. After this has sauced together then add the turkey pieces. We've certainly taken a deviation from the traditional Sewing with Nancy &nbspseries. Shake out your shoulders. Shake out your legs. Just let the energy flow through you. You've got oxygen moving through your whole body. Move to an object where you can balance yourself but not so that you have to reach. You want to still be standing up. This is where we're going to optimally go... Ommm...

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Our guest did a great job. I didn't do such a great job. Some of these topics on the fringes were one-shot wonders. There were other topics, creative ideas that came out of the comfort level of normal sewing. That came with my friend, Natalie Sewell who introduced me to "messy cutting" and using a glue stick. Two foreign things that have become acceptable and embraced. We do this messy cutting on the edges to make it ragged. Natalie, you're a pro at it. Let me just show you how I do this. It's not as easy as it looks. But you can get used to cutting very badly. You just jiggle your scissors in a most uneven way to make the edge look very natural. You can't go wrong. The leaf fabric is boring, Nancy. Don't you think that's really boring? Let's paint it. You don't have to be a graduate in an art course for this. Watch us. If you scribble fast... I'll add a little kiss of sun here. Clearly, you can see the advantage in painting your leaf fabric before you cut! This is kindergarten painting 101. Here is one of the ugliest fabrics I've ever owned in my life. It's this metallic blue. I think I bought it when I was making my very first quilt. But how wonderful it is for the center of the flowers. It just makes such a perfect little statement. Well, the person that taught me these unconventional techniques is Natalie Sewell. Welcome Natalie.

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Natalie, you gave me a shot of adrenalin in sewing and quilting. I will forever be grateful for that. Oh, Nancy I may have taught you how to do landscape quilting but you're the one who taught me how to teach your step-by-step method, making samples. I watched you week after week. It made such a difference in my teaching. And to my amazement the first time I was on your show for a three-part series, you and Donna and Pat came to my house. I have to say, I only live a mile from campus. You came to my house and we worked all day on step-by-step samples. My teaching has never been the same. Well, thank you. We did a book together and Natalie one time said We're going to do a chapter after on depth. I said, no... We're just going to show how to do it, not talk about it. But when we do a TV show together any TV show, we do a run-through and then we roll tape. So we practice. We had an interesting time one time, practicing. Some of these landscape quilts are very elaborate. We were doing a flower garden series and we were trying to create a picket fence. We had the fence just fine. Meanwhile, at home in our leisure Nancy doesn't have as much leisure as some people we cut out a least 200 little bunches of flowers to place on this fence. But suddenly Nancy said, oh, it's so hot in here. It's hot in here. Oh, I have to back up. We put them all on the fence but we didn't glue, because we were in a hurry. It took us about 20 minutes to get them all up there. It looked really nice. That's when a Nancy said, it's so hot in here. Suddenly, one of the cameramen turned on a fan the flowers flew all over the studio. It's not a small room. They were finding flowers for weeks after.

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When we started working together we started with tree scenes and in depth forest scenes. We would finish a series and we'd think oh, we can't work together anymore. So we would make something up.

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We would think of another way to talk about landscape quilts. Right, close ups, little, tiny quilts. We did flower gardens, and then, of course we had to do landscape quilts for children. Sure, and we kept it up and kept going. Then the last series we did together we made 6" x 8", real small, little pieces to teach the basics. That's right. It's been a wonderful ride. I've enjoyed every minute. It's been so great having you as my teaching teacher. Yeah, we're pals. Can't you tell? We're quilting buddies. We have quilting dates together maybe three times a year. It's just a great thing that I have a great job that I get to learn from others like you, Natalie Sewell. Thank you, Nancy.

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I have admired her just for what she has brought forth for women. She's an entrepreneur, and how successful she's been. I just admire that. I've watched it forever. Now he watches it with me and he sews. I enjoy watching her, that's the truth. He embroiders and uses my machine and learns things from her all the time. Nobody can touch what Nancy does, she does everything well. It's perfect. I wish her very well for her and her family. I just hope that she continues. I hope she doesn't retire any time soon because I would really miss it. Changes in sewing and embroidery have been exponential over the last 30 years. Initially, we used mechanical sewing machines. Now we're using computerized machines with more computer power than the first Apollo spacecraft. Your going to see next, how embroidery has changed and changed for the better. Start with the same settings we've done all the other times. That is, to drop that bobbin thread, lower that presser bar give it a love pat, lock the stitches. I'm sewing over that plastic stabilizer from the top. With your clips, trim it right away, the threads and then set it a relatively wide zigzag stitch. This is a one stitch type of monogram, one row of stitching. There isn't any need to go back over this twice because of the clear plastic stabilizer. So here we go again. I'm just monogramming the principles. The more practice you have, the better you'll monogram. I'm just moving that hoop very gently while sewing at a relatively rapid speed. I'll embroider my first design. Before I start, I might want to use the trace feature and make sure that I'm going to clear the opening. Good idea. It does just clear it. If I wasn't happy with that position I would just slide the fabric over a little bit. Off we go. The person that just pushed that button to make the embroidery happen is with me. Eileen Roche, editor of "Designs in Machine Embroidery" magazine. And of course, another of my great friends, welcome. Thank you.

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Embroidery has changed the sewing world. You taught me how to embroider. Well, you taught me how to sew. In the comfort of my living room when I was newly married and had a whole house to decorate. So thank you. And thank you. You bring a whole new world to embroidery. We used to start with this little hoop and I'd move it under the machine, and sweat. If that's how it was today, I wouldn't be here. Yeah, definitely not, we've come a long way. So now the hoops fit onto the computerized unit of the machine and this is programmed in. You just push the button after the set-up. We started with a small hoop, about that size, 4" x 4". Then we thought 5" x 7" was the next frontier. Now, you have a jumbo hoop on your lap. Now, something this large can be embroidered just by pushing the button. We've learned how to do multiple hoopings where we would have an even larger expanse of fabric and connect the embroidery designs. We've done lots of embroidering on blanks. In fact, Nancy, I know there's a pair of black pants with embroidery all over the yoke that you're still wearing all over Beaver Dam! I wish they still fit me! But we've taught lots of things here on Sewing with Nancy about embroidery. The embroiderer, the person that just embroiders it's a little different customer or viewer. You know, in the beginning of home embroidery was the sewing costumer was excited about this new machine. Then, now, I'm welcoming a new kind of embroiderer into the arena who is more technically advanced and who maybe never sewed. Never uses the other side of the sewing machine. And doesn't worry about rules. Right, there are no rules. She has probably learned in the comfort of her home or maybe struggled without any real guidance. You break a lot of rules then. You brought some samples. You know, where we started with the home embroidery and now we use our embroidery machine to do different things like make the corner of a bag, add a strap to a bag actually make it a whole piece of a bag, which is the tab. Right in the hoop, it's amazing what happens. And, you know, something that you are really comfortable doing is inserting a zipper into fabric. Those of us who didn't sew as well as Nancy are still petrified. I use my embroidery machine to actually put a zipper in which is pretty cool. It is. You have enlightened my education of embroidery as well as helped teach the audience of Sewing with Nancy. Eileen, good job. Thanks for being with us. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you for everything you've done for sewers. Thank you very much for all the happy times you've given so many of us who sew. We want 30 more years. That would be it, yes. We want 30 more years. We feel like we know her as a friend so we want her around another 30 years. In 1985, I was asked by Nebraska Public Television if I'd like to have Sewing with Nancy on Public Television. That was a welcomed call. I was on cable and I didn't want to drop that. So I decided to have two formats but I couldn't afford to tape two different shows. So, we-- "We," my editor, we edited the program taking out the six minutes of commercial time that we had for cable television, putting the content together and leaving six minutes at the end. What are we going to put there? Oh, viewer hints. Well, that first year we didn't have any viewer hints, so I made them up.

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Yeah, then the flood gates opened up and we had hints and questions. But the most difficult time that I had with viewer hints was sometimes pronouncing the viewer's last name. Our next hint comes from Alice Mag-lee-own-us.

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Our last hint for today comes from Alice Mag-lee-own-is.

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Mal-ee-own-gus, Maliongus. Our last hint for today comes from Alice Mag-lee-own-is.

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Our last hint for today comes from Alice Mag-lee-own-is.

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Now for our last hint of the day. It comes from Alice Mag--

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Three, two... I forgot her name!

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Our last hint of the day comes from Alice Mal-ee-oh-gus.

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Our last hint for the day comes from Hampton, Virginia and our viewer is Alice Maliongus.

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Yeah, I'll take the easy way out. After 20 years of this, we decided to retire the Mailbag. I decided-- Not really, my director, Laurie Gorman, had the idea of having interviews with sewing and quilting artists with people who have volunteer groups. We connected the dots. Telling you about sewing for children sewing for the homeless, sewing for people in need and then connecting the dots. One of first interviews was with Rachel O'Neill from Little Dresses for Africa, in 2009. The outpouring was unbelievable. Rachel joins us via Skype to give us an update on Little Dresses for Africa. Congratulations on 30 years. I've got to say, when we were on three years ago Little Dresses for Africa was just a very small idea that was just getting started. Having been on Sewing with Nancy it's just been amazing. The exposure is remarkable. I think 65,000 dresses came through Nancy's place and then I don't even know how many through ours. We're up to almost 600,000 dresses. It's just the exposure has been amazing. Thank you so much and best of luck.

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It's humbling to be here after 30 years. It doesn't seem possible. As you can tell, there is a big orchestra that I direct with so many people to help me. I'm just one small part of it. My thanks especially to the staff at Wisconsin Public Television. Here's our crew. Lots of people make this happen here just lots of them, and I am very grateful. A special, special thank you to my director, Laurie Gorman. Wave at the camera, Laurie. She anticipates my needs and she knows when to cut to the right camera. She's a great back-up person. I couldn't do it without her. Then, thank you to our audience and especially to our viewers for inviting me into your homes. My goal is to teach in this classroom for a little while longer.

As I end each program

Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.

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As I end each program

Thanks!

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As I end each program

A DVD of the two-part "Sewing with Nancy's 30th Anniversary Special" is available for $9.99, plus shipping and handling. To order "Sewing with Nancy's 30th Anniversary Special" DVD call 1-800-336-8373

or visit our website at

sewingwithnancy.com/2614 Order item number SN2614 "Sewing with Nancy's 30th Anniversary Special." 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, &nbspcelebrating30 years of sewing and quilting 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 Oliso. Sewing with Nancy &nbspisa co-production of Nancy Zieman Productions and Wisconsin Public Television.