Sewing With Nancy

If you're interested in sewing chances are that the creative process fascinates you. Yet, sometimes it's helpful to have inspiration for adding details to make a style your own. Welcome pattern designer and author Amy Barickman who has mastered the art of personalizing patterns. Amy, welcome to Sewing with Nancy. We took a challenge, one pattern to see how many looks we could give it. Changing the style and the look can be as easy as changing the buttons or as fun and creative as adding needle felting. This first version of our featured jacket highlights the fabric. The swing silhouette with a Mandarin collar let's the fabric be the focal point. We'll use this easy-sew style to add our creative touches. "One Easy Pattern, Six Terrific Looks" that's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program 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. Our first look of this jacket was to create it just as the pattern was designed but having the fabric as the showcase. Amy, we have two unique fabrics here with the jacket in the short version and the three-quarter length version. Yes, this is a contemporary, just cotton print with the modern look that you get. The fabric really is showcased. This is really nice in the cotton with the drape. Here you can see one of the details which is the bell sleeve. I'll show you a few more details over here on the other jacket. On this particular jacket the closure is actually a covered button over giant snap. I think this is a really a fun detail. And for those of you who are not fond of putting in buttonholes and buttons this is a great option. And with big buttons you don't want to have those huge buttonholes. It just is a nice, clean look. The Mandarin collar is real simple, easy to create. Then, I'm going to spin it around and show you the back because this is a really fun accent. The inverted pleat also has the accent of the tab. Again, it's a place for a fun button detail or embellishing just to do something creative with it. So, it's always fun to have a look coming and going. I'll spin it back around here. You can just see, it's a very, very flattering style. We have cotton. We have twill. There's some other options for fabric. Yes, I have really enjoyed looking at the fabrics through the upholstery fabrics, and seeing what you can do. Many of those, the "right" side can be either side of the fabric. Sure. So that can be a fun fabric to look for. You'll see a variety of different fabrics as we progress through this mini series. We've used a specific pattern. It's called? The Chinois Coat. It's a jacket or coat. It has some basic pattern pieces. If you're not using that pattern just look for a pattern that has very plain styling because we're going to be doing embellishment and doing some changes as we go along. The basic front piece, back piece, sleeve sections. Then we mentioned earlier about the collar. It's a larger collar, which gives us a palette. For adding embellishment whether it be needle felting or appliqu. The belt, too, is a fun little detail on the back. Amy has the belt in the higher position kind of across the shoulder blades. But you'll see that we can change the position. So, these large palettes of pattern pieces, I think are what are important when you're choosing a pattern to give it a lot of variety. That's our first option, choosing the fabric and making it the showcase. For a second terrific look, make a statement with a framed, super-sized covered button. We added needle felting to the covered button fabric an accent that can be completed in mere minutes. Add a framing, a rectangle of fabric behind the button. It's now button art. Amy and I would like to show you three ways of working with covered buttons. When I think about the past, covered buttons were small. They're not any longer. No, we love the buttons a little bit larger to really make a statement on a garment. We'll take a close-up look of the finished jacket. You've added some nice detail. We have. We have the yarn embellished with needle felting and then the frame that you mentioned which can be created with a small piece of wool. We frayed the edges. Again, what I love about this jacket is the fact that there are no buttonholes necessary. I'm going to open it up and show you this fun, large, oversized snap that, again, is just one of those details that just makes this jacket one-of-a-kind and so customizable. It's functional, but it has style. Now, the covered button, perhaps some of you have made them. They come in a package. You get a little pattern how large to cut the circle of fabric. But we're going to add the embellishment with hand needle felting. I like the way you make quick embellishments. Needle felting offers such a quick and easy way to have fun with fabric and fiber. First of all, I'm going to show you the tools that we use. This is the needle felting tool. What I love about it, too, is it's safe. You unlock the mechanism and then you have a protective cover so you're always going to be able to protect yourself from these needles. These needles have barbs on them. What the barbs do is entangle the fiber into the base fabric. I'm going to show you that. You have to work on a base. You do. The nice thing about this base is it's calibrated so that your needles will not hit the bottom of the base. Sure. It really is so comfortable and easy to use. The mat, again, is small and easy to transport. I'll show you a little bit of how I created the buttons that we just looked at. One thing to think about is just the fact that you're going to have a little bit of an allowance. So when you're designing you're going to be designing in the center of the button. I'm going to start out with this yarn. What we're doing is kind of a windowpane effect with the yarn. We're going to go ahead and I'm going to do a couple rows of this particular variegated yarn which always adds a fun accent. If you've had a bad day, this is really good! It is! It is a wonderful stress releaser as well as a creative tool. Here you can see where this fabric has migrated through the material. Then we're going to add a little piece of the purple. Then maybe we'll also add another piece of a green accent, as well. You can really have fun and just do something abstract and unique. Both buttons don't have to match, necessarily. You're going to wrap that around the top of the button. Exactly. Let me show you how we do that. We're simply going to-- Again, you can see how the fiber has come through here. We're going to place the fabric over the button centering it on the back. Then we're going to-- The prongs on the inside of this button cover allow you to press your fabric into place. It does take a little bit of time but you're eventually able to secure it. In fact, then we'll be adding the back cover to the button. Now, if you would like to make a variation using ribbon, which I think is a very nice option you put the fabric on first. Yes, this is where you can see how we attach the fabric. Now we're going to have fun just stretching different ribbons over the button in different directions and different methods. You can just have a lot of fun with that. Then the back snaps right on. You have to work at that a little bit. Right. Amy you're known for vintage fabric. My favorite fabric is this barkcloth. You can see the fun design, real contemporary retro. Just a small piece allows you to make a really unique statement with your button. Fuse some interfacing on the wrong side and wrap the vintage fabric around this. If you'd like to make a frame hand stitch a little fabric around this area. When you put your buttons over it, you have button art. Easy-to-sew fleece is the perfect palette to showcase two terrific techniques. For this next option, we started with a free-form needle felting design that adds great impact. We then enhanced the jacket even further with whip stitched edges. You'll enjoy learning the magical tip that ensures that all stitching will be perfectly even. As we take a look at the embellishment area that rose feature of this jacket you'll see that it's another felted technique another felted area. Done on the palette of that large pattern piece on the jacket it has really fun impact. Roving yarns and extra twisted yarns have been embedded into the fabric. You can see, again, how it migrates to the wrong side. The button covers are used again. We did a little felting on the buttons themselves. In the book that accompanies today's program as well as with the pattern you'll receive the embellishment this outline of the rose. You could use another design, if you'd like. To transfer it to the fleece fabric this is traditional fleece you'd make for outerwear it's hard to transfer it because of the nap in the fabric. We have water-soluble stabilizer. Then just outline or trace the design. It's really a free motion design. Follow the lines better than I'm doing right now with a marking pen. Then we'll pin this to the fabric. We're working with samples, as you might guess so I have a smaller piece. You'd be putting it on the lower edge of the jacket or wherever you'd like to place it. Here you can see the outline of the rose. We've done this so that now I can just do some straight stitching. As when going through the mountains or around curvy roads I go slower in my car. Now, when I get to a curve I'll just shorten the stitch length a little bit so that I can maneuver those curves and have even flowing. This will just take a few minutes to work around the design. All you want to do is make sure that the design is transferred. If you've never used water-soluble stabilizer I'd like to show you the magic of it. You don't dissolve it all, you tear away most of it. I hold the stitching by my hand. The needle perforates the stabilizer so it comes off easily. Usually, I sometimes save some of this. You never know when you might need a small part. You just keep removing it. Then you have the outline of where to put the embellishment. Amy, your design has been-- Most of the water-soluble stabilizer is almost gone. Correct, we just have a little bit left where these stitches are intertwined. So what I'm going to do is go ahead and actually use the water to help me remove this stabilizer. You can see where we're just patting it. Eventually, the material just flakes off. It really is a wonderful product for transferring the design. There you can see how it is removed. A few minutes ago, we showed you how to do needle felting with the hand needle felter and the brush. Well, now we're going to go the electronic, the mechanical way. Yes, this is a wonderful machine. There are 12 needles. It works very similar to a sewing machine in its method. It's just the up and down movement though of the barbed needles entwining the fiber. The fiber that we're going to be using is a wool roving. Essentially, what I'm going to do is take small little pieces and using the design that was created through the stabilizer I'm going to put the little pieces in place and follow the outline of my stitches. Unlike a sewing machine, this doesn't have any thread. No thread, right. You're putting down the fiber you want as you go. Lower the presser foot. Then again, I'll guide the machine. You can see just exactly what happens. I'll lift it up here. The fiber is entangled. The next step, too after you finish doing the solid colors within your design is maybe you want an outline. So, what I've done here is actually take roving and make it a yarn, essentially, to do an outline. I'll go ahead and show you what is involved there. The outline, I put almost directly over that stitch line that we created. You can work a little bit at a time. That's what nice. And it's pretty forgiving, too. If you make a mistake a lot of times, you can remove that mistake. I'll show you just the beginnings of this outline that I was working on. There you can see how it's step-by-step. Then I'll bring in some green roving. Why don't you do that? And do the leaf, maybe. Here you can see, again, the outline. It's fun to use the fiber and variegate it. You can get some definition and dimension depending on how thick you actually lay the fiber as you felt. Then you can always add another layer of material to enhance the design even color, and all sorts of things. Sometimes, I've done felting with scraps of wool or scraps of other fabric. So if you didn't have roving you could certainly put other embellishment in there. The more you stitch, it changes the color. Exactly. You can see here how it really embeds and leaves a really nice shape and design. Again, we can add a little additional depth to the color just by adding another layer of fiber. If there were some areas that were weak in color you just go back and re-stitch. Exactly. That's one thing I love about needle felting is just how forgiving it is. Many times, if you make a mistake you can actually pull out your fiber and it does not squelch your design. I'm going to let Amy do some more stitching. But let's us take a close-up look at the finished design. You can see, you can add as much of the fiber as you'd like. You could fill it in, you could enhance the edges. We talked a little bit earlier about the covered buttons. The buttons have just a hint of some of the details. So, whether you're using hand felting or machine felting it's a beautiful accent for your jacket. After we did the needle felting on this jacket we knew there had to be an additional finishing touch. The whip stitching around the outer edges and hemline was the finishing touch we were looking for. Amy, just point that out for our viewers. Here we have you can see a two-layer sample where we actually went through the facing and the front here on the jacket edge. I'm going to show you where we did a single layer. This single layer is through the sleeve and the hem would be the single layer whip stitch. You can finish your garment any way you'd like. This technique works on fabric that doesn't ravel. Yes, a non-woven. So, with this fleece it's a perfect element for us. As Amy mentioned, we just added the facing as the pattern called for. You could make believe this is the hem. My life is in samples! But this would be the hem. It could be a single layer or a double layer. We're going to assume it's a single layer just for ease of working with this. You can see some stitching that is going to come out. You can do some basting stitches just with a long running stitch on your sewing machine just to keep these edges together. You could just do that whip stitch at this point but if you want the stitches perfectly spaced we all like gadgets and ways of making things easy. I'm going to use a rotary cutter, ruler and mat. You may think, "Rotary cutter," are we going to cut this off?" Well, not quite, the blade is unique. It has little divots in it. Each divot is perfectly spaced so that an indentation or a cut will be made in the fabric as the "pizza wheel" goes around. About 1/2" or 3/4" from the edge. I'm starting at 3/4" from the corner. I'm not going to cut way off the edge, Amy. This is just amazing. I love this tool. I'm going through all the layers right now so as I cut, I'm just going to move my ruler so I get a fairly even, I hope, whip stitch. Then, assume that this is the hemline. There we go. I'll just place the ruler at the same area starting at the stitching line, so that I'm not having a divot or a cut in the fabric. I'll show you what happens because of this non-woven, non-ravely fabric. As you make the little divots, you get openings if you can see them. They're tiny. But boy, do they come in handy to keep a real symmetrical look to your work. You have a heavier weight thread. Yes, you want to have a thread that's thick enough to really showcase the thread. We'll find one of the holes that has been made by the tool and by the blade. We'll just, again, be looking for these holes as we work through and whip stitch this edge. You could always fold it over, too but since it's a single layer and has a nice finished edge, it's not necessary. And sometimes it's difficult to get the spacing just right so this is a fun way of doing it. You could use the same edge on a fleece blanket or whatever the case may be. Oh, I think there's so many uses for this. This is what I do when I "listen" to television you know, just watching TV. So you can finish this third look, the fleece look by adding the whip stitch. Combine a farmstead, committed historians and dedicated quilters, and what do you get? The answer, a refurbished old barn that is now the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts. The quilt barn museum has become a must-see destination for quilt and fiber enthusiasts. I'd like you to welcome Terri Kirchner who is now the president of this all-volunteer organization. She is here to introduce you to this very magical place. Welcome, Terri. Thank you, Nancy. You know, our program goes beyond Wisconsin much further than Wisconsin. I invited you to be our guest because the Wisconsin Quilt and Fiber Museum has become a destination place. Yes, it actually has been for a while but now we just expanded our footprint, so to speak. It started with purchasing some land a vision of many people, I know but purchasing a small farmstead. Yeah, we own a small farmstead out on the edge of town in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. It's about 2-1/2 acres. We saw it more as a place where we could build. We started in the farm house, and then we moved, with vision to create an exhibit space in the barn. Having quilts displayed in a timber constructed barn must be beautiful. It is, because you've got the height. You've got these beautiful, huge quilts. Imagine a king size quilt, if you put it on a regular wall it kind of just takes over the space. It looks actually very appropriate when you've got it in a two-story timber framed barn. This has been a long journey for your group. Yes, it has. It started off as the Wisconsin Quilt History Project back in the late '80s. Then it merged into the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts. When we realized our documentation program we needed places for the quilts that people were donating to us. What a wonderful area to showcase them in but you had to raise a lot of money. We did. It took us a long time. We raised it mainly, $50, $25, a lot of bake sales, as we said. But we ended up raising almost a $1.5 million to build this facility. Earlier, I mentioned historians. Conservationists were interested in this project and that's where a majority of your funds came from. Yes, we have a wonderful following in historic preservation. As you know, Cedarburg is very proud of its history. We have a lot of very unique historic preservation sites. Our little farmstead is one of the last remaining German farmsteads available so we try to keep it as natural looking as we can. I like your motto, "Create, Preserve, Educate." Yes, well, as you know, as a quilter and fabric person we like to bring in fiber arts to help build things show people how to do it, and then preserve our history. That's really where the basis of our project began is in the documentation stage finding out why people made quilts and why were they so special. We've written a book on that. We've also taken those stories now and collected them. We've got nearly 8,000 documentations now. Impressive to know what the stories are behind the quilts, what a great thing. You also have, as I mentioned earlier a totally volunteer group, which I think is quite phenomenal. Yes. We're totally volunteer. Not a paid member on the staff. We've got a very dedicated group. I would say we probably have about 150 regular volunteers but we have a very dedicated board. We have 15 on our board. We meet every week especially now that we're opening a new facility. We meet and we do everything, from the lawn work to cleaning the toilets to greeting our guests. Guests, you have quite a few guests a day. We do, now that we have the facility open we're averaging between 40 and 60. We get a lot of international visitors, too. So it's a destination to see beautiful quilts and architecture. There's a learning facility. Yes, we have two large classrooms in the lower level of the barn, and we do do classes. We had David Taylor, a nationally known quilter. We'll have you next year at Quilt University! Terri, what a wonderful experience for others to appreciate quilts in such an architectural showcase. It's phenomenal. Thank you for this opportunity. You're welcome. If you'd like to learn more about the Wisconsin Quilt Museum go to nancyzieman.com where you'll find all things Sewing with Nancy. Click on Nancy's Corner, and then you'll be able to find Terri Kirchner and the Wisconsin Quilt Museum. Also at that site, you'll be able watch the most current 52 Sewing with Nancy programs online, streaming video. So, if you'd like to re-watch part of this program or watch another program you can do so at your convenience. Next time, we'll be back with our final program of our episodes on "One Easy Pattern, Six Terrific Looks" with Amy Barickman. I hope you'll join us then. Thanks for joining us. Bye for now. Nancy has written a fully-illustrated book entitled "One Easy Pattern, Six Terrific Looks" that includes the Indygo Junction Chinois pattern plus all the information from this two-part series. It's $19.99, plus shipping and handling. To order the book, call 1-800-336-8373

or visit our website at

sewingwithnancy.com/2523 Order item number BK2523 "One Easy Pattern, Six Terrific Looks." 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 Rowenta. Sewing with Nancy &nbspis a co-production of Nancy Zieman Productions and Wisconsin Public Television.