(gentle music) - My daughter has become very good at sewing and that is not a talent she got from me.

She sews purses, clothes and all sorts of artistic pieces while I struggle to sew a button back on a shirt.

Maybe that's why I admire the sewing and quilting done by several friends in our community, they make quilts and wall hangings that are just beautiful works of art.

I'm Mary Holm, host of "Prairie Yard and Garden," and today let's go visit a place that takes sewing as an art form to a whole new level.

(gentle music continues) - [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of Truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

(gentle music continues) Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by "Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden" a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - [Mary] We have lots of good sewers, quilters, and stitchers in the Morris area.

Several years ago, some of them went on a tour to a place called Cherrywood.

Now, since I handle a garden trowel better than needle, I was not part of the tour.

Then I heard that Cherrywood was going to be involved with Monarch butterflies and I just had to find out more.

So I called Karla Overland and she said we could come to learn more.

And here we are.

Thanks Karla.

- Oh, it's so good to have you here.

- Tell me what is Cherrywood?

- So Cherrywood is a hand dyed cotton fabric and it is created for quilting.

So quilters, seamstresses, home dec people, they love to use our fabric.

It's hand dyed, we start out with a unbleached muslin and we dye it in this gorgeous, solid colors.

But they're not just solid colors they have a texture to them, they kind of look like suede.

Some people think they're flannel or wool or felt, because we have this tone on tone texture that we have a special technique.

So we dye 200 different colors.

And our claim to fame is we put them together in a collection, a bundle like this.

So there's 12 colors, or eight colors or four colors packaged together in gradation.

So my job, I'm the colorist and so my whole world is all about color.

So I come up with formulas, they're like recipes and I use them to get consistent color.

And we dye about 200 yards a day, which is a lot for our little company.

Have a very thriving website but we also go to national quilt shows and set up booths and sell that way.

And we also sell to stores.

So if you go to quilt shops around the country, you may see our fabric on the shelves.

- How did Cherrywood get started and how did you get involved?

- Well, Cherrywood was started over 35 years ago by a woman named Dawn Hall.

And people often ask where the name Cherrywood came from.

So in Baxter here, we have a lot of woods and forests so most of our streets are named after trees.

And she happened to live on Cherrywood Drive, (Karla laughing) so that's where the name Cherrywood came from.

She just took a dyeing class and started dyeing in her home and came up with this suede technique, which nobody else does.

And she started bringing fabric to quilt shows and people loved it.

So I came on the scene in 2000 I was working in the advertising industry, so I went to college for graphic design.

I know all about color from that and design work.

And I've been sewing since I was 10 years old.

I was a forager, I joined the quilt club when I moved to Brainerd and I was introduced to Dawn and it was all serendipity that we got together because she needed graphic design work and I needed to get out of advertising.

So our paths crossed and now I am the sole owner of the company.

- How do you decide what colors to use?

- I take my inspiration a lot from nature and I'm always dissecting things I see, not in just nature, but just everything.

I'm trying to break it down into the basic colors that I see.

And usually I'm thinking an eight because I put together eight step gradations and we call them steps because if I go from a red to purple, I want to figure out how to get from those two colors in eight steps or 12 steps.

We dye it five days a week and we have five women who either work here in-house or they work from their home.

And after we dye the fabric here, they press it and fold it and package it and bring it back ready to sell.

- What do you use for your dyes?

- I'm using Procion dye and that is a natural dye made from minerals and it comes in a powder form.

I'm using recipes, it's like baking almost because I'm using cups and teaspoons and tablespoons and we have very strict formulas that we use.

There's a lot of variations that come into effect so the hardest part is keeping the colors consistent.

So we have water temperature, we have humidity in the air, we have water quality and all these things could fluctuate.

So that's why, in any kind of hand dyed the dye lots will be different.

Meaning if I dye the exact same formula last week is to this week, it could be slightly different.

We're using a cotton muslin and muslin is a raw form of fabric.

It's 100% cotton and it's rough enough where you can actually see the little parts of the cotton plant.

So there's little flecks in the fabric.

And so in our darker colors you don't see that, but in the lighter colors you'll see little flecks of the cotton seed.

And of course the dyes are non-toxic.

And then we're using other materials like salt and soda ash.

- I am dying to learn more about your dyeing process.

Could you show us please?

- Sure, we can go back to our production area and I can show you around.

(gentle music) - When the leaves turned red, orange and yellow and chilly winds come whipping across our state from the north, that's the best time to reach for a cozy wool sweater or scarf.

When you think of good wool fiber, maybe you put your sheep on stony cliffs in Scotland, or beautiful alpacas in the mountains of Peru.

But we have plenty of high quality local wool available right here in Minnesota.

Today I'm at Shepherd's Bay Farm in Alexandria to talk with Kathy Sletto, who raises sheep, llamas and rabbits with her husband to produce local fibers and make several, beautiful handicrafts, which they sell online.

- Right now about 20 some sheep normally we have between probably 30 to 50 sheep, Shetland mostly.

And I've got close to 40 angora rabbits that we raise for fiber and three guard llamas.

We sell a lot of it to hand spinners and weavers, probably the most of our raw wool is sold to people that spin it or weave it.

And then what we don't sell that way, we send it to a small mill and it's spun into yarn.

(gentle music continues) I think it's important to know where the wool comes from.

A lot of people, that even when we sell it down in the Twin Cities, they come out to the farm to visit, they like to see the animals that it came from they like to see how the animals are raised.

It's nice that they're out on pasture where it's not a confinement operation they live a pretty natural life.

We've been breeding sheep for close to 25 years and we keep the lambs of the ewes that have the nicest wools.

So we've been building our flock for a long time just for wool quality.

(gentle music continues) - So if you are a crafter or looking to learn more about making clothes with wool, you only need to look around our backyard.

For more great ideas on local fiber, please go to minnesotagrown.com for a link to Shepherd's Bay and for more information about the Minnesota Fiber Festival held each year in Minneapolis.

- So here we are in our production room and I have 18 washing machines all set up.

People think we have some special equipment, but we're just using Maytags and just regular home machines.

We do modify them to meet our needs a little bit.

And I can walk you through the process.

So this is the raw fabric this is muslin and it is a little bit stiff because when they weave the muslin, it comes with sizing.

So the first thing we have to do, it comes on large rolls we can't dye a large piece at a time, so we rip them into two yard pieces.

But we can stuff the machines full of fabric, but in order for the suede texture to come out the way we want it to, we rip it into smaller pieces.

And then the next step is to pre-wash the fabric, to get out that sizing so it's not so stiff.

And the fabric has to be wet in order for the dye to be accepted.

So we actually reserve half of our washing machines just for the pre-washing, no dye goes into those machines because we don't want to get any spots on the fabric before we even start.

And then we mix the dyes.

And this is a sample of the dyes.

It's a Procion powdered dye.

It's made from rocks and crushed minerals.

And it comes in many, many colors from the manufacturer.

And Procion is a kind of dye and you can get it from different manufacturers.

So I formulate all my colors specifically for Cherrywood.

I never use anything right from the manufacturer because I want my own color palette.

After the dyes are mixed, one color goes in each machine.

The dye process happens right in the machine.

It's about a five hour process.

And some magical things happen along the way that we keep private and close to our vest because we do have a very unique look.

We call it the suede look.

If you look at this piece from a distance, it looks like a solid color, but up close you'll see some variations in the tone.

We call it tone on tone, because it reads as one color, meaning your eye understands it as just being a blue.

But up close you'll see darks and lights and a mottled texture to it.

After we dye it, we also wash it two times extra after that.

And we need to rinse out any extra dye so it doesn't bleed onto other colors.

So then when it comes to the consumer, it's ready to go.

They don't necessarily have to pre-wash it, but most people pre-wash their fabric before they start a project.

- How do you keep the fabric from ending up looking like tie-dye?

You know, where some is a lot darker and some is lighter.

- So that's why we cut the fabric down into smaller pieces, otherwise it'll get tangled up in the machine and that's where you're going to get parts of the dye doesn't saturate the fabric.

So over the years we've discovered that two yards at a time works and it does get tangled up a little bit, but found ways to overcome that 'cause we want the entire fabric to be saturated with color we don't want any white showing.

- So when you're doing the dyeing, just to give me an idea, do you use a teaspoon full of this at a time or how much do you use?

- We're using cups and cups of dye.

So we've got 20 yards of fabric.

So it takes a lot of dye.

There's a chemical reaction that happens and we use salt and soda ash in the process.

And the soda ash is actually what strikes the fabric and creates the bond of the molecules of dye to the fibers of the fabric.

- Some of my friends have mentioned that you have what's called a Cherrywood challenge.

Can you tell us about that?

- Well, that is a fun way to get people to use our fabric in an interesting way.

So a challenge just means we have certain rules that you have to abide by.

And this came up to me about 10 years ago.

I thought challenges in the quilting world are common, but I had something unique.

I have this unique fabric that nobody else has.

So I decided to come up with just a color and a theme and see what people could come up with.

- [Mary] So what is your theme for this year?

- [Karla] Well, it's the Monarch Butterfly.

- [Mary] Oh, can we find out more about that?

- [Karla] Absolutely.

(gentle music) - I just heard about a new grape from the University of Minnesota.

What can you share about that?

- Yeah, our newest release from our grape breeding project is the Clarion Grape, it's a wonderful new grape it makes delicious dry white wine.

The Clarion grape is notable for, it's got a wonderful flavor.

It's got a great flavor profile.

For the most part, it reminds me of sauvignon blanc.

It's got citrusy aromas, in some years a little bit of that fresh cut grass aroma that your New Zealand sauvignon blancs have.

It's got very moderate acidity.

It's got a moderately higher pH for wine making, which is an advantage for home winemakers.

The one sort of consideration for the Clarion grape is it's not quite cold hardy enough for all of Minnesota.

It does very, very well anywhere south and east of the Twin cities, what we call the Driftless area.

But I don't think I could try to grow this grape, in Alexandria or anywhere else too far up north.

Some people ask us if it's not quite cold hardy enough for all of Minnesota, why did we release it?

Well, the Clarion grape has been around since before 2000.

And when we come up with new grapes, we send them to other research stations.

In this case, we sent Clarion off to Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and southern Wisconsin where it did very, very well.

And those experimental growers down there were pleading with us for many, many years to release this grape.

And we kept saying, we know you're excited about it, but it's still not quite cold hardy enough for Minnesota, so we're not going to release it.

But then in the last two or three years, the clamor kept and we were sort of obligated because there were just so many requests to release this vine.

It's a zone five grape I wouldn't try to grow it too far up north.

So it's a great grape, makes a delicious dry white wine as I say, kind of like a Sauvignon Blanc, but you have to pick the right site and the right microclimate for it to flourish.

- [Narrator] "Ask the Arboretum Experts" has been brought to you by the Minnesota landscape Arboretum in Chaska dedicated to welcoming, informing and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research and education.

(gentle music) - The Cherrywood Challenge started with my first idea of Wicked.

I went to New York City to see "Wicked" on Broadway and I knew that I wanted a theme that was associated with a strong color.

So when I saw the "Wicked" logo, I could envision lime green and black.

I designed shades of the main color and I added black to the bundle.

And the main rules were very simple.

I wanted to keep all the quilts the same size, the same color, the same theme and the same fabric.

Sometimes in challenges you can make whatever size you want, but I really had a vision to see all of these quilts all together as one.

And the best way to do that was have them the same size.

I decided to make them 20 inches square so that they weren't very big people could get them finished.

And then I didn't want any other rules.

I want people to have fun and try any kind of technique, any kind of embellishment.

There's a lot of things you can do with fabric that most people don't know.

You can use paints and beading and folding and stitching methods and whatever people can come up with.

So that's the basic premise of the challenge is to open up people's horizons to what you can do with fabric.

So every year I pick a theme.

I've done a couple Broadway plays.

I did "Lion King" on Broadway and worked with Disney.

That was really fun.

I did Van Gogh Blue, I did Prince Purple, because of course Minnesota.

Our latest one was graffiti, that time I gave people eight colors of fabric to play with.

So every year is a little bit different, but you can only use the colors that are provided to you in the bundle.

So the main challenge is you can't add any other fabrics.

You can play with what you have, but that forces people to think differently and it shuts off all the little voices in your head about, well what if I, what if I, what if I?

You can only do this.

So it's amazing the creativity that comes out of people that way.

- [Mary] So this year's challenge was the Monarch Butterfly.

Why did you choose that?

- I actually had another idea in mind for the challenge because I have lists and lists that I'm always thinking about.

But when the Monarch was put on the endangered species list right before I was ready to make my decision, it was just an obvious choice.

I developed this bundle of fabric so I've got some oranges and the black and white of course of the monarch and then greens.

And I put in special colors that aren't available in any other format.

So a chrysalis green and a monarch orange.

And this year, for a fun thing to add, was milkweed seeds.

And I got these from the Save the Monarch Foundation.

These are packaged in the Twin Cities and everybody got a package of seeds included in the bundle.

- So how long do people have to make their pieces of art?

- I'm on a rotating, I announce the challenge in the fall and they get about nine or 10 months to finish.

And some people wait until the last minute (Karla laughing).

Some people get them done right away, but they have almost a year to come up with their idea.

It has to be an original idea and to execute it.

And then we do the judging because we get a lot of submissions.

We have grown from getting 100 entries back in the first year that we did it this year was a record break in 472 entries.

And they photograph their quilt, so the first round of judging is digitally take a photo and upload it to a website.

And then I have blind jury process.

So I have people going through and selecting, I give them a certain number of quilts that we can keep and they jury it down to that collection.

- [Mary] I was gonna ask, do you do the judging or who does the judging?

- [Karla] No, I stay out of it 'cause I'm too close to it.

So I have three anonymous jurors that select the collection.

And then the quilts are sent here because we also give away prizes, so we're choosing first, second, third, fourth place winners.

But we wanna see them in real life to do that so that I'm a part of and coming up with that decision.

So right now is a really exciting time for us.

The quilts are coming here to Baxter and it's like Christmas every day 'cause we get to open up the packages and see all these fabulous quilts coming.

- Then how many are accepted for the contest?

- We're going to accept 225 this year, which is also the most we've ever accepted.

And the demand to show the quilts at small quilt shows, national quilt shows, sometimes even galleries the demand has gotten so high that we've decided to split the collections into three collections.

So we can have one collection on the east coast while one is on the west coast and they travel all over the country for over a year.

- How do you split 'em apart?

How do you decide which one's go into one, two, or three?

- We've done it several different ways.

Sometimes we divide the country by the Mississippi River and everybody who lives on the west side gets into one collection.

Sometimes we do it randomly.

I may group them together just by theme and just split them into different trunks they call 'em.

- Where do the people live that enter your contest?

- All over the world, we've gotten so popular.

Of course we get a lot from Minnesota, but we have entries from Japan, Brazil, Mexico, a lot from Europe, and they hear about us from the internet and by seeing the quilts on display at quilt shows.

- And then when they go out, do you package 'em up and then travel with them and unpackage when you get to the location?

- We make the display, it's self-sufficient.

We have custom boxes that they travel in to keep them nice and protected.

Sometimes we are at the shows as vendors setting up a booth, but usually the organizers of the show will set the display up for us and take it down and then they send it onto the next show and the process happens all over again.

- [Mary] How long do they stay at each location?

- [Karla] They're usually shown at a show lasts about three to five days.

So almost every weekend there's a some show in the United States that they could be seen at.

- Are there any people that enter that are repeat people?

- Yes, in fact, this is our eighth year and I believe we have four or five women who have gotten in every single year.

So make a special notation about that because that's pretty special because people have been entering and being accepted but that doesn't guarantee because it all depends on the juries, it's subjective and it's art.

We're just trying to get a cohesive collection put together.

So sometimes unfortunately we have to reject some.

- [Mary] So after everything is all done and the artists get their pieces back, then things are all over and done with?

- Not quite, because we do publish a book.

We photograph these professionally and we publish a beautiful coffee table book.

All the artists actually submit a artist statement.

So they talk about how they came up with their idea and maybe the techniques that they used.

And that's all in a beautiful book that we have every year.

These are some of the entries that we've selected for this year.

Some of them are very literal and do the lifecycle of the butterfly showing the chrysalis and the caterpillars.

Some of 'em are very dimensional.

For instance, this one has taken advantage of the seeds of the milkweed.

And since we let them do any kind of embellishment, you can see beading, you'll see some shading.

Sometimes they are very abstract like this one with lots of stitching on it.

- Can they be machine stitched or does it have to be hand stitched?

- They can be machine stitched, hand stitched to hand embellished.

Sometimes people even use a little bit of bleach or over dyeing.

So we really don't wanna limit.

And look at this gorgeous one.

This one is actually from Holland.

So this is one of our international entries and this one uses a lot of painting.

And there's a technique called thread painting where if you're using your thread in your sewing machine, like paint and stitching in different colors and overlapping and building up colors.

Here's some sparkly beads, hand embroidery work.

(gentle music) And just gorgeous shading.

And something I learned, was that a group of monarch is called the Kaleidoscope.

So we have a lot of entries that are using kaleidoscopes as their theme, which is also a technique in quilting, making symmetrical patterns like a kaleidoscope.

(gentle music continues) Aren't they gorgeous?

- [Mary] I'm so glad that I'm not judging this.

- [Karla] Oh, it's very difficult.

- [Mary] Every one of them would be a winner in my book.

- [Karla] Yes, they are all winners and they're all very personal.

I love hearing the stories behind them.

So I get to meet the artists when I'm out and about at quilt shows.

And there's always a story behind the quilt.

It's not just a piece of art.

There's meaning behind it.

Or monarchs are also a symbol for memory.

So people are dedicating their quilts to people they've lost in their lives and just a lot of really interesting stories.

- This is wonderful.

Thank you so much for letting us come.

- Oh, you're very welcome.

It's fun to share.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of Truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative proud to be powering Acira pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by "Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden," a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues)