This patriotic quilt has an olden times charm, but the techniques don't have to be old fashioned.

On today's episode, we'll explore layered fusible appliqué and decorative stitching and bias tape.

And we'll introduce some really work based free motion quilting.

Let's stitch some stars around town together on “Love of Quilting.” Funding for love of Quilting is provided by.

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[Upbeat music] Hi.

You're watching the 48th season of Love of Quilting.

I'm Angela Huffman.

- And I'm Sara Gallegos.

Sara has brought.

I feel like I need to salute a beautiful, patriotic, kind of a throwback little, you know, folk art, kind of inspired patriotic quilt.

It is.

It's it's a quilt of valor.

And the designer actually did a little bit of, needle turn appliqué by hand.

We're going to show more of a fusible machine fed method, but you certainly could do it by hand too, if you enjoy that.

Nice.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

So I thought that this time we would start with the appliqué first so we could spend a little bit of time on that.

So here I've traced off the appliqué shapes with double sided paperbacked fusible.

We've covered that a lot and just fused it into place.

And we've got a red thread in the machine.

And I was thinking that we could just show a little bit of appliqué and you can kind of choose where we want to start, but we've got to get around this cute little bell shape, our star, and then our little flourishes as well.

Okay, I'm going to just do the star in the middle.

- Sure.

Okay.

And so we've just got a blanket stitch here going.

And I'm going to start right there.

I think oh I overshot it.

There it goes.

So I kind of over start where I started.

- Okay.

I would go back and pick that out and then just make sure when I come around the bend that I catch it again, and I think I'm gonna turn that now.

Yep now it's gong to go straight - Nice.

There it goes.

We've talked about it a lot, but when you're playing with decorative stitches like this, I cut out a whole bunch of the star shapes.

- Yeah.

Some of them I did trace the pattern.

Others I cheated a little bit, and they used a dye cutter that had several different stars on the same dye.

So I just kind of use the shapes that it provided for me.

And then you've got lots of extra ones.

Very easy just to place onto a scrap of fabric and just practice whichever stitch you want to use for your appliqué.

There's lots of choices.

You could do a real short, tight zigzag that becomes a satin stitch.

Angela's like doing an amazing job with a blanket stitch here, and there's all different types of stitches you can play with as well.

The sky's the limit.

Sky's limit.

You could even just do straight stitches.

And I would probably.

I like the white or the red thread on the white star here.

- That's pretty.

Yeah.

But if I was doing this like on the blue color, I'd switch to a blue.

- Yeah.

And I don't know that I would use a thread that has a sheen too much.

Just because I don't know, I kind of feel like the era that this quilt evokes - Right.

- might be more of a matte finish sheen.

- Yeah.

And we do.

We have an embroidery thread in there, so it's a little shiny, but I've got a couple of cottons here as well.

This one's a little bit heavier weight and it's good again, practice.

You want to practice because the different weight of thread that you're playing with is going to change the look of the stitch, especially if you're using a satin stitch.

So the embroidery thread is a 40 weight.

Whereas these cottons are a 50 weight.

That's a little bit, less thick.

It's a little bit thinner.

So you might find that you need a shorter stitch length when you're playing with, a 50 weight cotton thread like this.

And then if you were to choose to use a 28 weight cotton thread, you're going to be stretching that stitch length out a little bit.

Or it might kind of jam up as you stitch.

And you've got stabilizer underneath this, block.

Right.

- And so is this a tearaway?

It is a tearaway.

And anytime that I'm utilizing decorative stitches as just a general rule of thumb, I always put stabilizer behind the fabric.

I generally starch it with, you know, whatever your favorite spray starch alternative is.

And there are some nice, like mesh that you can fuze on for appliqué, then kind of live in the project in the end and not change the hand of it.

If you don't have that using a tearaway is a really nice option because it's going to simply tear off in the end.

And again, you don't get stiffness in the quilt.

You'll still have a nice soft, cozy quilt.

And you would do this per block, right?

You wouldn't put the entire quilt top together and then go do your decorative stitches.

I would definitely do this first because I don't want to have to wrangle that whole quilt - Yeah.

- into the throat of the machine as I'm pivoting around all the edges of a star.

Yeah.

And, And I tell you what, the needle turn appliqué on the quilt behind us is just glorious.

It is beautiful.

- Yeah.

- Have you done much needle turn appliqué?

- You know, sometimes I get in the mood to do handwork because I can travel so well with it.

And you can even do it in while the car is moving and.

Yeah.

- While someone else is driving.

Oh, obviously.

Yeah.

I'm not Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

My mom used to do a lot of needle turn appliqué too.

Yeah.

- just kind of, again, a project on the go.

When you're waiting for kids.

It's something easy to grab and go.

- Definitely.

Oh, yeah.

You're almost to the point there.

Yeah.

- Beautiful.

Yeah.

Some points are better than others, Sara.

You know what?

It's awesome.

And again, just practice.

You just practice on a little scrap piece.

And you might even find that a different stitch length works better than another.

And I would say after you do a couple of these, you probably you're going to need to change your needle out, make sure you got a nice sharp needle that makes everything, Yep.

- Everything easier.

And you may find that you're getting some of that adhesive because it is a fusible to hold that fabric down.

So you could use an anti glue needle, which is going to they don't get quite as hot.

So the anti glue needles actually have a different metal composition.

And the friction of that needle going up and down through the fabric builds heat, kind of melts the glue on the fusible, and it attracts to the needle like sticks to it.

So the anti glue needle doesn't get quite as hot and it's a good option.

Or you know, you can just wipe it off.

Well, and I find that, if I see that little blob of glue, it might mean that I didn't actually melt - Oh there you go.

the glue enough.

So hit it with an iron again.

So you just got one little bit to rip out there.

- Yeah.

But you did an awesome job.

- Went a little bit And again the stabilizer just tears right off the back.

So easy to remove.

They also make some that are tear away wash away.

And then when you wash the quilt, the rest of that is even going to disappear.

Oh nice.

- So really easy to work with.

So that is one of the appliqué blocks in this quilt.

One of the others has us working with some bias strips, so I thought it would be kind of fun to show how to make continuous bias, because that is a question I hear a lot.

So bias means that we've got, our fabric strips cut from the diagonal of the fabric, not along, you know, the way that it's cut off of the bolts.

Right?

So kind of diagonal from the selvage and there's a really quick, easy way to make lots and lots of bias binding.

And it starts with a square.

So I've just got a blank square here.

It does work best if you have a square.

So you can work with a larger square, a smaller square depending on what size bias that you need.

And what we want to do is we're going to take our ruler and just cut diagonally down the length of the square.

So we do need a pretty good sized ruler for this, and we want to get it as straight as we possibly can.

And so we need it to be bias, because if you're doing the bias kind of curl.

It's making a very skinny, curvy strip that you can see in the quilt behind me.

- So it needs to bend.

It's got to be able to bend.

So we need that bias.

This would also work if you wanted to do a bias binding.

If you've got a quilt that has any curved edges, or even just special angles, this helps a ton.

So we're going to take this square.

We've got two halves now.

And what we want to do is just rearrange it a little bit.

So we're going to sew it into basically a big parallelogram.

See that.

So we've got straight edges this way.

So now if we sew this together just with a quarter inch seam.

It's making kind of a funny shape.

But it's going to help us a whole bunch.

There we go.

There you go.

So just a quarter inch seam.

- Yes.

And actually the seam allowance here doesn't really matter.

So if you had a half inch seam on, but because you were doing something for garments, who knows, it actually doesn't matter.

It's just the angle that we're sewing it at.

We're not piecing this part into a quilt yet.

Yeah All right.

- Beautiful.

Here we go.

Okay, so now.

We have our parallelogram.

We have our parallelogram.

And I would press the seam open.

And I've actually got one here that I've already done that with.

Okay.

So I've already cut off of this piece.

But there's our seam.

And what that does for us is it puts bias on this edge here.

Now I'm going to show you this, but I would not do this on your fabric because it's going to stretch it.

But I can tell because I can Woo hoo.

Look at that.

- bend and stretch that.

Yeah.

- That is the power of bias.

So if I need to go around a curve I can easily curve that.

- It is willing.

Yes, exactly.

Up here is the straight edge and it doesn't want to do that.

So that's why we go with a bias edge and you know binding that you're going to use for I would say a quilt jacket or something like that.

It needs to be on the bias.

Okay.

So what we did in the instructions, I'll tell you this.

You're just going to cut, 1.5in strips off of that.

And then I sewed it into a tube just like this.

- Oh he's skinny Then we got to turn this tube.

Right.

This is the most challenging part.

And there are a couple of different tools that we can use in order to turn that tube.

So there are little bias bars.

And these you can kind of turn one edge under and just kind of use this little bias bar to force that fabric down inside of itself.

Takes a little bit of time to get it going.

And then you can kind of just keep pushing it through and pushing it through and pushing it through to turn the whole thing.

That's one option.

So I've got it started, and the bias bars come in a set of several different sizes.

So if you wanted real skinny or maybe you want much wider bias strips, it really helps with that.

There's also this tool tool called a fast turn.

And this is a different type of a turning tool where I've actually slid that bias strip all the way down this little copper copper piece.

There's a piece inside that's hooked on the top edge, and now I can just sort of oops, there it is.

I can hook it right in there.

It's like a little curlicue.

And then you're going to just start pulling that down through the tube.

So I kind of get it started.

There we go.

And now just gently a little bit at a time.

I'm just kind of working - Yeah.

- my hand down it.

I think this is maybe slightly easier than the bars, but both are good options.

And these tubes also come in several sizes.

You just don't want to pull too hard, because you might pull that little curlicue right through your strip.

So now I'm just kind of applying gentle pressure and feeling that come through and we're almost, almost about to where it's going to pop out the other side.

Did you have to trim down the seam at all?

So the bars do instruct you to trim down the seam.

I actually did not on this one.

You could.

- Oh it looks to be turning pretty Pretty good.

- But yeah, it's going for me.

Okay, so we're almost there.

I'm afraid to go too fast and have it unhook itself, but you can see it's now coming out the other end.

Yeah.

Almost there, almost there.

Oh, it's just so little too.

It's a tiny little strip.

- It really is.

And now we just take that little curlicue right out of there.

So then you would press this, and then it goes on to this piece here, - You going to undo the curlicue.

Yeah.

We got to get that wiggled out of there somehow.

It's like untangling a fishing hook.

There you go.

Perfect.

Okay.

So now we've got this nice bendable piece I would cut off that raw edge of course that you can then use to follow the shape that the pattern has laid out for you and just glue it in place.

So another little appliqué method to get a nice flexible tube.

Cool.

Or you could hand stitch it down too.

You could also hand-stitch it.

- Or top stitch it.

You've got all kinds of choices.

- You can do whatever makes you happy.

- Yeah.

We have a little glue stick over there.

I could show you how you just literally just apply the glue to the side, and then you're just going to bend it to the shape in the pattern or whatever shape you would like.

You've got a little customization here if you want.

Okay.

So that's how we would kind of handle all of the appliqué in the quilt.

Then we've got to create these little blocks that are dancing around the edges.

So let's look at that next I'm going to just put my turning tube back inside so I don't lose it.

- Yeah my cat would just grab that and run.

Have a great time.

- Yeah.

Gotta keep that up high away from the kitty cat.

Okay.

So to create our block we're going to start with some flying geese units.

I'll pull this down.

So this right here.

So I've got my two squares on top of a larger background square.

I've marked a line diagonally.

If you could just stitch down both sides of that line for me.

[Sewing machine noise] Zipping on down.

Okay.

Ruler again.

All right.

Now we're ready to cut between those stitching lines, and we'll just kind of show you what it looks like next.

I've already got the next step ready to go.

- Okay.

So just to kind of give you an example here, we cut and we get those little foxy faces - Yes.

where you're going to just press those right out okay.

But I've got one done here.

So with that we're going to place another of our squares Right like so.

And then stitch down both sides again.

And so you need four for each block.

You need four for each block that's correct.

And here's one more There you go.

And I'll cut and press that.

- Okay.

And then we'll have our little flying gees.

Yeah I thought it was kind of fun on my version of the quilt to pull a little bit of green inside of the blue, to just instead of just blues.

- You did a little bit of green?

Like a little greeny blue.

Oh, on the floral.

- Yeah.

It's still definitely patriotic.

Even though it has that green.

It definitely reads as patriotic.

Yeah, you can find other fabrics that are patriotic, outside of just red, white and blue.

Although I do know that with Quilts of Valor they do definitely prefer the red white blue.

Okay.

So once we've done all of our geese then we need some half square triangles.

And that's pretty simple.

We've done that lots of times.

But we've got our two squares.

So both sides of the diagonal cut it all apart.

And you've got your eight half square triangle units.

Half square triangles.

And we're going to kind of skip that because we've done those a number of times in the past.

- Okay.

- Right.

So now we've got our - Ready to lay it out.

- geese and our half square triangles.

I think that every time that it's one of my quilts, we end up with a giant mess on the table.

I don't know, Sara.

I'm the messiest quilter.

There we go.

So then for the center, we're going to just have a little checkerboard.

And it's just a strip set of red and whites are and cream together.

Okay.

So now we're ready to put this together.

- Okay.

So we'll just kind of work in sections.

And the tip of that goose lines up with the - Yes.

- center of your checkerboard.

So that's a good way to find center.

There you are, my friend.

I really like the having that kind of neutral print too where it's not super busy.

It gives the eye a place to rest and a place to play.

Do you mean the cream or the red?

The cream.

- The cream.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

It's nice.

I can imagine all of the quilting you would do inside there.

So there's that.

I'm going to press this toward the goose.

I think it'll lay flatter.

There we go.

Third row here, Looking good.

So it's a really simple block.

The quilt only has the one block.

- It is.

Aside from the appliqué.

It is.

Yeah.

And I like the, so near where I live is, is Shaker Town.

Okay.

- So just, like a historical settlement, and you can tour all of the old buildings and everything, and it's got that kind of folk art, look to a lot of the things that they made, when people actually lived in the settlement area.

This kind of, Reminds me of it.

Reminds you of that a bit.

- Yeah.

Was that like a field trip for school kids - Oh for sure.

to go.

It sounds like a field trip to me.

- Oh for sure.

Oh for sure.

Yeah.

And their specialty is lemon pie.

And so I had my heart set on like, I thought it was gonna be lemon meringue, but, you know, it was a place where sugar was not used, so it was just slices of lemon in a crust.

- Ooh.

Sounds very tart.

It was super tart.

Oh, my.

Super duper tart.

Yeah.

We have a really neat, field trip that we would do as school kids, which is so much fun to see as an adult to Greenfield Village in Detroit.

And they have taken old homes and businesses and buildings and created an old village.

And you can see lots of different handmade techniques right there - Yeah.

at the village.

It's really neat.

The symphony plays there on the 4th of July, so it's just really, really beautiful for that too.

There you go.

Yep it's a neat spot.

There's a number of places there's one, close to a place I went in Colorado that has brought in or repositioned historical buildings in a cluster, so you can kind of get a taste of what a mining town.

Right.

- you know, was like.

Every part of me wants to turn these and turn this into a star, And make a star.

- Right.

- Yeah.

So just like, resist that.

- Yeah.

We're going this direction.

- Yeah.

There you go.

Don't you just want to make a star when you see geese?

But it is kind of neat how it makes it square in a square.

It's very pretty.

So you have to resist the temptation.

Yeah.

Greenfield village, you can get glass glass that's blown there.

- You can get what?

- You can take Glass that's blown.

- Oh oh okay.

They will do glassblowing displays and classes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

and you can buy pieces made there.

You can see all kinds of historical cars.

I think you can get honey that's made there.

So lots of different things that you can do right on the, on the, on the village.

Yeah, yeah.

In Shaker Town they were known for, I guess, brooms to make a lot of brooms.

- Brooms.

Yeah, yeah.

- Interesting.

I don't know why.

Did a lot of sweeping.

I don't know, I don't know, but it's a thing you can buy.

It's a broom.

I guess, you know.

Like a broom and a really tart lemon.

Lemon pie.

- Okay.

Hey, whatever floats your boat, - Yeah.

- I suppose.

I do like that.

That square in a square with a checkerboard.

It just.

It's.

I want to play in here, Sara, I want to I want to quilt in there.- Well that's what I was thinking we would do next.

- Yeah.

So we've got one row to sew there and you got a block.

And again, simple.

Just one block.

So we are going to stop and set up for some ruler work and show you some fun stuff.

Nice.

Okay, so we switched to a ruler work foot, drop those feed dogs.

Drop the feed dogs.

- So excited to see what you're going to do.

I just grabbed a straight ruler.

There's all different kinds of straight rulers.

These are going to be a quarter inch thick because we have a high shank on this machine.

But you just want to make sure that it'll reach the span, you know, that you're after.

So in this case, I've made a little, tick mark an inch, down.

And so the intention is to start at this corner, go up to my tick mark, and go back to the corner.

- Okay.

And these are little shelf grippy things that you put, you know, on your cabinet.

- Right.

And you can stick those underneath a ruler to give you a little bit more grip because there's a lot going on here.

You are holding the ruler, you're moving the fabric and you're in free motion mode.

- Yeah.

And you're going to keep the ruler foot against the edge of this Ruler.

And there are rulers with curves and all kinds of things out there.

So.

What a clever little idea it is to cut some little pieces of that that you can move around Little pieces.

Yeah.

It helps.

So the first thing I'm going to want to do is I want I want to bring that bobbin thread up to the top so that I can control him so that he doesn't make a big old nest underneath.

And so I just do needle down, needle up.

And then I lift the foot up and that will release the pressure.

On the tension desk so I can bring my little bobbin.

So now he's up here at the top where I can see him and I can control him.

- Nice.

So I'm going to put the foot back down, and I'm going to use that little needle beam to kind of direct where I'm going to put my needle, when it's going to go into the fabric and I'm going to push the edge of the ruler against the edge of the ruler foot, and then I'm going to aim this other side of my ruler a quarter inch away from that little tick mark, and then that little the little grippys underneath.

Will kind of help me keep everything, aligned up.

And I am in free motion mode.

And so, of course, on a sit down machine, I can rotate this fabric and I'm approaching that tick mark.

I'm going to stop in that tick mark.

One more little there goes.

And then I'm going to, just rotate the fabric and the ruler and I'm going to aim for this corner down here.

And bring that line down here towards me.

And you mentioned that you were pointing like a quarter of an inch away.

That's because that's the width of the foot to the needle.

Right.

- Exactly.

And if I were I'm just doing one block here.

But if I were doing more than one block, I would likely put on some, gloves just so that I can control the fabric a little more.

Because you really, that's what you're talking about is how do I control the movement of the fabric so that when I, am aiming for a spot, I reach the spot, you know.

Right.

Just a little extra traction, and then you don't feel like you're holding on for dear life as you're quilting.

Well, and if you have that white knuckle thing, it will affect the line.

And I will say that, like, I know this, this might be intimidating, but it's actually easier than free motion stitching because all I'm doing is I'm just riding the edge of that ruler, and I'm just making little chevrons here.

So back and forth, as I head towards those tick marks and then rotating, it around, if I were doing this on a larger quilt, you know, and I had the whole thing, then I wouldn't have probably it would be a little harder to, to kind of spin this around.

So you'd have to think about how you're going to roll the quilt up to control the bulk of the quilt.

And it's certainly easier if you can have the machine tucked into a flat surface like this.

- Sure.

Yeah.

Again, less tension on the body and it's not pulling off.

I know I've seen people tried to quilt with the machine, like on a small table, and the weight of the quilt is pulling it away from the needle.

So you're working so hard to keep it together.

So hard.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

All right.

So we are here at the edge, and I'm wondering if I switch to a curve, if that might work or if I want to just head down.

I think I'm just going to head down this, stitch in the ditch.

Okay.

But I'm going to stitch in the ditch with a ruler and head into these kind of red areas.

And one of the cool things about ruler work is that I could also add in some free motion.

Sure.

- So let's say that I am doing, ruler work in this negative space.

So the kind of cream color.

And then I could drop in here and just do some loops.

So don't mind me, Sara.

I'm just going to play a little bit.

She's just going to keep on quilting.

Oh I love that.

With the free motion in there.

Yeah.

Play.

- Really pretty.

Have fun.

Alright.

- So there you go.

Straight lines curlicue to come back do it again.

So simple.

Beautiful finish.

Grab a pencil tips and other useful information.

Coming up next.

So this is from Susan Stokes from North Ogden, Utah.

She said in 2019, I was blessed to have my work appear in the Utah State Guild show.

Very nice.

My work consisted of a large queen quilt and 12, yes, 12 bed bed runners.

My problem is how to store them.

My solution was pool noodles cut down to the width of the table runner covered with scraps of batting.

Then I rolled the runner and matching pillowcase onto the noodles.

She says I realize that not every quilter has this problem, but there are so many other storage issues that pool noodles can solve.

Interfacing, fusible fleece, fusible web and that foam stuff for bags can all be stored on pool noodles.

She cuts the noodles down to size and she labels the ends with a marker and stores them in an office sized trash can.

She can also use a 50 gallon trash can to stand up a rolls of batting in the corner of her studio.

That's awesome.

I like it.

Okay, check this out right here.

This is Veronica Shannon of Holden, Massachusetts, and she says, hello Love of Quilting.

- Hello.

I have been sewing since I was a little girl, and quilting is such an important part of my life.

I never miss your show and I always pick up an interesting or helpful tip.

It's great.

I'm not sure I'm not the only one to have dropped a bobbin and watched helplessly as it rolls away.

- Rolls away.

So she saves her plastic caps from bottles, keeps it next to the machine, drop that bobbin right in there and she no longer has to chase it.

Yeah.

Very good.

There's some pictures here that was sent in by Anita Ross from Columbus, Ohio.

She said all the cutting tables I have found were out of my price range.

So my son in law was upgrading his mechanic's table to a larger one, and he offered me the old one.

And I was excited because it was it was the height that I needed.

- Nice.

So she cleaned it up, spray painted it, added a half inch plywood top.

The drawers are perfect for rulers and tape measures and all the other notions.

And she says, your show got me interested in quilting a decade ago, and I hope to be watching you for another decade.

- So sweet!

Thanks so much for sharing your tips.

It's always good to sit around the tips table and learn from you.

We'll see you next time!

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