Join us while we make circles and curves.

First, I'll show you my experiments in silks.

And the trapunto appliqué techniques that make circles as smooth as silk.

Next.

Lorraine Woodruff-Long.

Shares spontaneous curves that are simple, fun and create extraordinary quilts.

It's 360 degrees of creativity.

On today's episode of “Quilting Arts.” “Quilting Arts TV” is brought to you by.

The Bernina 990.

If it can be imagined, it can be created.

Gentle fuze fusible web made for quilters from Maywood Studio.

[Upbeat music] [Mellow music] I have always loved silk.

I remember when I was in college, my mother made me this gorgeous, changeable silk taffeta dress for a formal I went to.

But it's the feel of it.

It's the sheen of it.

It's the rich colors.

It's just a beautiful material.

So I've been playing around with it a little bit.

And I also love circles, so I've been making some pieces of silk with circles.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about the kinds of silk that I've worked with.

Silk is available through thrift shops.

You don't have to go and buy yardage.

You can often find it at thrift stores, in clothing, in garments, and in ties.

Let me move this out of the way and I'm going to show you.

Here's a tie, for example.

So this tie, you want to check the label and make sure that it says that it's silk.

And sometimes it will say it's silk.

But if you are a little suspicious that it might not be, there's a burn test you can do with that fiber to make sure that it is silk and not a synthetic.

But look at this tie.

When I open this up to deconstruct it, it's so wide.

If you look at one of the quilts behind me with the large circles that was cut from a tie like that, you can get a good a good sized piece out of a tie, and they're very easy to deconstruct.

So let's look at some of the types of silk, and I'll pull them out individually so you can see them.

This one is a jacquard.

Here is a changeable taffeta or it's also called shot silk.

And you can see it's made with threads going different directions in the warp and the weft.

So when you move it under the light, it goes kind of from a dark red to a red.

Beautiful.

This one is dupioni.

Dupioni is known for its little bit of nubbiness.

And I love those irregularities in dupioni.

But look at the glorious color.

Here's an over dyed kimono fabric.

So kimono fabric tends to be maybe a little bit stiffer and thinner.

This is a taffeta silk.

Beautiful.

Listen.

Listen to that sound.

You can hear a little bit of a difference with taffeta.

This is a crepe de chine.

Beautiful drape.

Right?

Great for blouses and scarves.

This one's a damask.

So on a damask.

You can see the design on both sides.

Some people are familiar with damask linens.

This is a damask silk and this one's a brocade.

So on a brocade, you've got this beautiful design on this side.

And on the underside you can see it's also beautiful, but kind of long threads.

One of the things about silk that I don't like is all this shreddiness.

See, all these threads?

Drives you crazy.

Silk comes from these silk cocoons.

And you could also purchase these cocoons and dye them for mixed media projects.

Really fun.

So let's slide that out of the way there.

So I have two different circle techniques to talk to you about today.

I'm going to start by introducing you to this.

This is a tear away stabilizer and it's rayon so it takes the heat I tried this with another kind of stabilizer.

And you can see how melted it became when I introduced the iron to it.

So the stabilizer that you use is important.

And there's information online about the specific product that I used.

So I'm going to start with a circle template.

And you can use anything you want.

You can use a bowl or this is a mylar template I put it on top of that paper, tear away paper stabilizer and trace around it to the size you want.

And then I cut it out.

Okay, so I've got my cut out circle and I put it on top of the wrong side of the silk.

So I'm going to glue that down.

And in this case I really can go just around the outside edge.

With the glue stick.

I like to use the school glue sticks that are purple because I can see where the glue is, but this is also an acid free glue and it won't, you know, it won't come through.

It won't mark that purple disappears when you press it.

Let me bring the pressing pad up here, because now what we're going to do is we're going to iron that down.

Silk can take a little bit more heat than you might think.

You might be scared to iron silk.

I've found that as long as I keep the iron moving, I can use high heat.

Next, I'm going to cut that circle out so that I've got this.

So it's about a quarter of an inch that I'm leaving around the outer part beyond the paper interfacing.

And then I like to use these glue sticks that are a little bit narrower for this step, because I'm going to put another bit of glue right around the edge the whole way around.

And this one is harder to see, but it's there.

And now this is the fussiest part.

I want to get those edges up around the circle, and I'm using my fingers and the iron.

To make sure that I'm sticking that seam allowance down to the glue.

Sometimes you can get going and you can actually do a little bit more of it at a time if you get the feel for it.

And if you're doing this and you have little bumps that stick out that don't look good, remember that you can always stop.

Let's take a look at this and see.

So see right here I've got a little bump that I'm not happy with.

So I'm going to unstick that with my fingernail.

You have to be careful because they are shreddy.

And now I'm going to just stick that down iron it down but pull it in a little bit more when I iron it.

And a little bit of steam sometimes can help reactivate the glue so that you get.

Now it's much better.

I've got a nice smooth line, so I'd continue to go the whole way around the circle and get it completely glued down till it looked like this one.

All right, double check on the front that you're happy and it's nice and smooth.

And for this technique I really like to use a little bit of batting.

So if you look at this piece you can see this one has the the paper stabilizer or interfacing inside it and also a little bit of batting.

So I cut out of cotton batting or any kind of batting really that you want to use a circle that's just slightly smaller.

So it's just a little bit smaller.

And then I can pin it down to my fabric.

Wherever I'm going to be, appliquéing it down, and then I can hand stitch it down.

I would use probably a cotton thread because that's easier than silk and appliqué the whole way, the whole way down.

And on this piece I left everything inside here.

So it's a little bit crunchy if I push on it, but it gives it really nice dimension.

The other way that I like to do circles is what I did for this piece.

So this piece, can you see how when I touch it, it's not as crunchy, it's not as stiff, it's a little bit more flexible there.

I'm going to show you that technique as well.

So in this other method I do the same steps, except that I pin it down and I don't have any batting inside this one.

I do just have that paper interfacing.

Can you see it inside there.

And I needle turn appliqué it by hand all the way around.

But I leave this opening and then I go down inside here I have to pull this bit of silk off where it's glued down, and I'm going to stick a not really sharp tool down inside there.

And I've got to pop that glue.

Let me hold it so you can see I'm running it around on the inside, popping that glue.

Make sure it's completely unstuck and be gentle.

If you're gentle, you can rip or tear your silk.

And once you've got it unstuck, you can take it out.

So the best thing to do is to pull it a little bit, make sure it's coming out, and then kind of fold it like a taco and gently pull it out of the circle.

Then you might need to do a little bit of work here, tuck this under and pin it and then finish the hand stitching there.

All right.

So let's pull some things out of the way.

And I'm going to show you how I sew on silk I love to sew do free motion work on silk.

And it's great to use silk thread.

So I've got silk thread in the machine and it's a 50 weight silk.

And you can see I've got it going straight up here.

That helps because it's feeding off the spool in a slightly different way.

And because it's so fine, it's really nice to, you know, have it go straight up.

It just seems to feed better.

So I've got silk in the top thread and I've got a 50 weight cotton in the bobbin.

50 weight cotton seems to work really well with this weight of silk.

Silk comes in many different silk thread, comes in lots of different weights and it just depends on the application, what you want to do.

I'm doing a lot of these little circles to echo the circles that I sewed on, and you can see I'm going slowly.

I'm trying to do different size circles.

Sometimes you do need to adjust the top tension a little bit.

I think I've got the tension lowered on this a little bit.

Just experiment, but don't be afraid to deal with what you think of as fussy materials because they're so beautiful.

Okay, going to go this whole experience of playing with silk and experimenting, which I try to do, I, you know, I try to push myself out of my comfort zone and work with different things.

I love the the sheen and the effects that I've been able to get with, with thread, with the silk thread.

And this is an 80 12 top stitch needle two that I'm using.

The trick here is to make circles that fit right in.

So that's one reason I don't do circles all the same size, because I like to make even teeny tiny circles to fill in.

Its imagining that space and trying to fill it in.

And I know I'm going to have to go back over here.

Always readjust your hands.

Hey, one more circle here.

So I really encourage you to play and experiment.

Try materials that you think are a little bit tricky.

It's always a lot of fun.

[Mellow music] Lorraine Woodruff-Long is here.

She is a fiber artist and a teacher, and you have this really fun improv technique for curves.

Yes, I find a lot of people, a lot of quilters feel very scared about using curves, whether it was trying to insert a sleeve in your seventh grade sewing class.

People stopped after that.

And so I wanted to develop a technique that made it really easy and improvizational.

I like to use techniques that people can make their own, and you really don't make any mistakes.

You can just add more fabric.

I like that, that's great.

So tell me about the quilt in the back.

A little bit.

- Yeah.

This is a quilt I call Green River.

And I had a lot of fabrics that I was that were my pristine fabrics I wasn't using.

And I thought, it's time to use them and cut into them.

And so I really wanted to demonstrate the technique.

And you can see I used a lot of many different fabrics and it's really fun.

I'm going to show you how to do it.

- Makes me think about a river and currents in a river.

It did look like I thought of Creedence Clearwater and the green River song.

Nice.

- I started doing it.

Okay, so show me how we do these.

Okay, so I'm going to start with these are the two pieces that I'm going to be finishing with and they're trimmed down.

This is all complete using several different fabrics.

So what I do is I start with two larger pieces of fabric that are usually try to have it pretty big contrast.

And in this case I stack them on top of each other.

You can see I'm starting with about eight inches of an 8.5in square.

I usually try to start with something that's maybe an inch to two inches larger than what I want to finish it with, - Okay.

So you have lots of room to to maneuver.

And then I don't use templates, I just eyeball it and I try to make things not even that's kind of one of my favorite things to do.

So I just take it to the corner and I'm, you know, they're stacked on top of each other and I'm just going to eyeball it, and I'm just going to do a curve here that is not.

- And you put it there so that you could see that you were aiming for 3 to 4in?

Yeah - Okay.

- I kind of started the three here and four here because I wanted to make sure it wasn't even.

- Gotcha.

That's what I tried to do.

But you can just eyeball it.

But this way it kind of helps me as I keep going to have an idea of what the different sizes are when I continue to add things.

So what I'm going to do is it's kind of a stack and slash method.

So now I have two pieces I'm going to be sewing together.

And another one of my easy tips is I'm not going to be pinning these.

I'll do a little bit of a pin, but I'm going to show you how.

Because some people pin the heck out of it.

Yeah, I don't pin the heck out of it I like that.

and I'm going to show you how to do it really easy.

I'm all about easy and improvizational, and so I just kind of look for about what's the middle here.

And I mark it.

I like chalk or disappearing ink pen.

And you mark it both on the little - Yes.

On a little square.

Yeah.

It's easier to see on the next one here.

I'm going to do the next one over here just in the center, just to make it so that you can see it.

I'm just going to mark them.

So, you know, that's that's where I'm going to be sewing them.

Kind of the my guide here.

So then I'm just going to take this flip it over so that those little dots are matching and just pin it.

Same thing here.

These dots are matching.

Just flip it over.

And the ink goes through to the other side so you can see it.

- Yeah.

You just you just you know look at it and make, you know, flip it back and forth.

And so now we're going to go over to the sewing machine.

I'm going to show you how to sew it very easily.

Oh great.

Okay okay.

Okay.

So I start by starting from the center where the pin is.

And I'm just going to I pull the pin out and then just start sewing.

So I'm just going to hold it so that I'm just guiding it along.

Kind of pull it.

Just putting it into place along.

- Yeah.

Putting it in the end.

And you want you'll have a little tail at the end, which I'll show you when we stop it, trim it.

Then I'm going to go to the other side.

Just flip it over.

You can see it.

- Oh okay.

Just flip it over.

I was thinking, you're going to stitch it backwards, but no.

Yeah.

No, that would be really hard, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

This is a quarter inch seam.

Yeah.

Use a quarter inch seam.

But you know just try to have it.

You want to use at least a quarter of an inch seam.

You don't even have to be that precise.

You could make it bigger.

But it's nice because it makes the seems nice and flat.

So I'm just going to continue.

And you didn't backstitch either.

I don't, I just start right over.

I use a very small stitch.

I really like using a 1.8 or something, because that way whatever you do, it's it's going to stay put.

So.

- Well, that's pretty easy.

So there I have one done.

I'll do the other one real quickly to show you again.

Once again, I'm just going to put it down and start sewing.

And I kind of pull the edge here.

So you know, so that it it lays flat.

But I'm not pinning it.

I'm just.

And you're not stretching it either.

- I'm not really stretching it.

It just it falls nicely and again do the other side.

And this is what I, this is the technique I'll do over and over as you add layers.

So easy.

- It's very.

- all the pinning and stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You just don't have to fuss.

I think that's another thing that gets people intimidated.

Like, how do I make it work?

[Sewing machine noise] This is a nice technique because you've got two for the price of one kind of.

- Yes.

And you and you're going to get a lot more as you go.

Right?

Okay.

Okay.

Next we'll press them.

Always press before you move on to the next step.

And I'm always pressing.

I'm not I'm not cutting into the notches or anything.

I just push I just push the seam towards the pizza pie corner and do it with both.

You know, do it on this side, flip it over, make sure it's nice and flat.

Do you use steam or just dry iron?

I tend to like steam and I also really like clapper tailor's clappers.

- Oh right.

But this is this is fine.

This works fine.

So then I'm ready to move on to the next step.

And so I'm going to keep, as you can see from from these, I'm going to keep adding layers to make it fun both on the inside and on the outside.

Okay.

So let's start with this one.

And I think the next thing I'm going to do is take an orange color sorry yellow color, which is right here.

So I'm going to I like to use this as the top to see where I'm going and when I'm going to make the next color I'm going to always kind of match these up.

These are this is my little guiding star just matching things up from the corner.

And actually I want to point out you'll see that these things are going to be uneven.

You know they'll be stretching out.

Just keep it this way until you get all of them done and then you'll trim it.

So wait until the very end.

Wait until the very end.

That's why you use that corner to line things up.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

And so that works.

So I kind of do the same thing.

I'm going to do something opposite.

Last time I was making it small and big.

I'm going to make it bigger and small.

Just so it's wonky or and more interesting.

- Yeah.

Because I like wonk.

And here let me just trim that off.

And so I'm going to do the same thing with both of these.

But you can see I'm just going to do the same thing where I mark it.

And then I'll add it, I'll go back to the.

Same.

Same.

- And sew it and add it.

And then I will have a piece that looks like this.

- Perfect.

And you can just keep doing as many of these as you.

You can keep doing as many as you want.

And then sometimes you might find a little later that you're going to, you know, you want to make them.

Let me also show you you can make it adding it from the inside.

So this one I'm adding it from the outside.

But let's add one from the inside.

Go back.

To that.

Because if you feel like it just needs a different fabric or something, - Yeah you know.

Yeah.

Cause sometimes you might decide, oh, this piece is too big or something and you can do it again.

Do the same thing where you're just going to.

So here it's a little bit smaller.

- Yeah.

- It's like two inches.

That's a little smaller.

It's probably a little smaller than I would usually make it.

But but again you can add things from the outside and the inside and just keep going.

And you can see with this one I've added a lot of different times.

You can do it.

You know, I like to do it like four sometimes five times, but sometimes it's even more.

So once again I'm going to mark it and then I'll go back to the sewing machine.

And sew it as well.

Great, great.

Okay.

So - And the result would be this.

And once you get all of these - Yeah.

blocks, you start thinking about what you're going to do with them and what how are you going to put them all together.

Right.

Yes.

- Yeah.

- And I have a fun way.

But let's talk about trimming down first, right?

- Ye Because we didn't do that step.

- So these are trimmed.

So you can see once you add a bunch of pieces they're going to be looking like this.

And I'm going to be making these blocks about 7.5in.

So I try to measure off of my bottom left corner where's my one inch.

And so I can see looking at this that I could make it I, I don't really I can make it a nice seven inch.

I might not quite have enough for seven and a half here, but I could move it over and make it smaller.

So yeah, I usually will just, you know, trim them down using this as my guide because I want that to be my nice 90 degree angle.

And trim it down.

- And it's not big enough.

You'd put another one.

- I'd add another.

Yeah.

Which I did for some of the others.

Yeah.

Like in this case I added another I added another color.

Okay.

Right.

Great.

So that's how we do it.

So then you have lots of different design options, right.

Yeah.

And you and then also what's fun is once you make a bunch of these you're going to have a lot of little pieces.

You have a lot of little, you know, you have some little one of these and you can continue to add pieces to go with it.

So you know, here's, you know, you'll have these things left over.

And then you can go back to, you know, making new pieces by these are left over from the other things that you've cut.

And so you can just, it's fun to just keep taking your leftover pieces and making them into new things.

So.

- And nothing gets wasted with this either, because you just keep going.

You just keep going.

And then sometimes what you can do and what I did here is I had a lot of little pieces left over.

And so what I ended up doing was adding things on this side.

Okay.

- So it's the same process.

So I love what you did here.

Let's talk about these two quilts.

- Okay.

Let me move this in so we can see it up close.

Tell me about this.

Well this is I have I had a bunch of oak shot from a friend who passed away and she gifted them to me.

And I was in Los Angeles when those terrible fires were happening in January of 2025, driving down the highway and the sunset looked like this.

And so I thought, this is a great way to use the this technique.

And you can see each of these blocks.

It's a they vary a little bit, but for the most part you can see theyre all the same.

And within this block you did wobbly curves too.

Yeah.

- Is that harder than you know.

You have to their inserts.

And so you have to think of.

But it's the same idea where you just you stack your pages, your, your fabric, and then you mark it and then you just make sure that you, you do the same thing.

And again, if you start with big enough pieces, it's easy enough to trim it down.

- Right.

Right.

And I love how you use this, the circular one here.

And then this one.

Okay.

We've got just 30 seconds more.

- Yeah.

Let's talk about this.

Well, and what I like about this was I just thought go big, make your blocks really big.

And then, you know, and you know, they can be tiny, they can be bigger.

But they're just again, the same thing with using one, two, three, four, five, six different fabrics in one.

And your quilting is beautiful.

- Oh thank you.

I love how you did different motifs within each of these.

It was a fun a free motion quilting experiment.

Yeah, this is a great technique for beginners and people who just want to play with their fabric.

Yeah, and just you don't have to be afraid of curves.

Well, thank you so much.

- Thanks.

- Love learning from you.

- Thank you.

- We'll be back in just a minute.

From applied design theory to innovative technique.

Learn what fellow artists are up to within the art quilting community.

Join us for finishing touches.

Welcome, Marcia.

What do you have here?

- Thank you.

I'm glad to be here We have our silver celebration quilts today, and I'm so excited to share them with you and take a look at them.

Yeah.

- The first one here is, appropriately enough, an Airstream, which is all silver, really whimsical.

So it's like lamé?

- Yeah.

- Silver lamé?

- I think it is.

Yeah.

- And I thought this was so charming, the way they are going off on a road trip with their silver celebration.

And look at this dimensional banner.

And did you notice the.

They're like those little stickers that people put on the back of their cars, - Yeah.

aren't they?

I'm sure it's the artist's family.

- Yeah.

And look at the little tin cans.

- Yeah.

- Almost like the Just Married.

- Yes.

- Only it's the silver.

Just celebrating.

Yeah.

- And the balloons here with these, the strings tied right in.

- Yeah.

Very dimensional.

You know, it's just really charming.

It's great.

Very whimsical.

- Whimsical.

And this one is very funny.

- Yes.

So really, I chose these two quilts to go together.

Not because they match each other, but because they both have such a whimsical sensibility.

- Yeah.

They do.

Yeah.

- And this one is.

Do you know what this fish.

Is called?

Is it an anglerfish?

- That's right.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

This anglerfish is one we love even more than any anglerfish, because there's actually, like, a brooch or something for us.

For its.

Light.

- Because they normally have, like, a little light - Yes.

- that attracts prey.

Right?

This artist used so many different mixed media.

Really?

At first you don't realize it, but starting with, of course, the pebble quilting.

And then.

This is like paint and maybe one of those iridescent fibers.

I believe so.

Yeah, iridescent teeth.

I don't want to meet this guy.

This has been so fun to do with you.

Yeah, it's been really great.

- They're great quilts.

Remember?

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The Bernina 990.

If it can be imagined, it can be created.

Gentle fuze fusible web made for quilters from Maywood Studio.

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