[exciting music] [upbeat music] - Welcome to "Lap Quilting".

No, we're not gonna cook today, but we are gonna show you how to make an apron with the cathedral quilt pattern.

Before we do that, I want to kind of review and go over the wall hangings and kind of complete our study on that.

Perhaps you have an old block that you want to highlight at your house.

It could be a crazy patch block or something else that's been handed down the family.

I have added leftover corduroy and velveteen strips much the way you would fashion a log cabin quilt and then pulled that around wooden stretchers, which can then be stapled with a staple gun.

I think this is a nice way to feature this sort of block.

You would wanna make careful not to put any of your blocks underneath glass because moisture is retained in that.

It wouldn't work too well.

You remember our grandmother flower garden.

Another idea would be to take some Velcro and very lightly hand stitch little pieces of Velcro on the top of one of a, of quilt that you'd like to display.

Then the other side of the Velcro would be stapled to some molding that could then be permanently attached to the wall.

This makes it very nice for taking down very easily.

Another idea would be perhaps a baby quilt that you'd used and you were sentimental about and you liked.

You could sew some plastic hoops on the top of it.

And oh, I'd say about every five or six inches, knowing that a wooden dowel would then simply slip through these loops.

Now, you might wanna paint this dowel if it was gonna show.

That would be something you might wanna do.

Another thing would be, wouldn't it be nice to, if you had wallpaper and one of my students did a marvelous job of going to the fabric store with their wallpaper in hand and chose all these marvelous navy blue and rust colors for a large wall hanging.

This was lap quilted and it remains permanently on the wall rather than a bed cover, and what we have done here on the backside is to make a cloth casing, which is very nice.

Simply by taking your fabric and sewing it down and turning it inside out.

A large safety pin would do the trick there.

Then hand stitch that to the top of your quilt.

Then you can put simply some round eyelets in there and that makes a nice way to display a quilt in that order.

More or less, though, the grand finale of wall hangings is something I'm very proud of, a large theatrical backdrop that we have put and that hangs permanently out at Kanamara.

The Carl Sandberg home in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

I came across the other day the little piece of paper that was actually the before and after, the beginning of this wall hanging and Jack Gibson, a local artist, help us put the ideas on paper and then of course we enlarged it.

But each little panel has a different phase of Carl Sandberg's life, his interests, Abraham Lincoln, his home, Chicago, where he lived for so long, and we simply did this in quilting and it was a joint effort by my, one of my advanced quilting classes and it hangs outside for all the theatrical productions.

I'd like to take you now to the sewing room where we're going to touch on novelty type quilts.

[steps clomp] In the family of novelty quilts, we can certainly find the yo-yo quilt, I would really cover, a coverlet is more of a name for this type thing than a quilt because there is no batting in it.

It's a sort of thing that you would spread on a bed with maybe a colored sheet underneath it.

You can remember that this sort of thing is made with a circle and you would take simply a running stitch all the way around a circle, turning your raw edge in, and of course when you get around to the very end where your knot is, and then you would simply pull that, you can feel that draw up and that's what forms your little yo-yo.

Now of course when you get that all pulled up, it'd be important to make a very secure knot there, wouldn't it?

You wouldn't want those coming out.

But in this case you make a whole lot of these, right?

And then, the little round yo-yos are simply whip stitched together.

I've seen this put together for a bolero jacket or a vest of some sort would be very decorative clothing also.

Another idea in the novelty quilt realm would be using our polyester fabric.

I realize we've stayed away from polyester knits mainly because they just don't have a home with traditional patchwork when we're quilting layers together.

Polyester is just too thick.

But here is an idea for using your polyester scraps that involves no handwork, it's all machine work.

And what you would do would be to cut out a square of fabric.

Now, I would say in this case it's a three inch square, and then the piece that goes on top, and this is the piece that's gonna show, would be one inch larger, so in this case it's a four inch piece.

Three inches and four inches, and I do the whole process at the machine.

I would sit and starting here, make yourself a little pleat, sew that pleat in, come to the corner and turn, make another pleat.

In other words, you've got three pleats on each side and even when I'm with my little block still on the machine, I would then take my polyester batting and stuff that right in the little pocket that you have formed.

All of a sudden your little square's gonna puff up.

Then, you've got one more side still to close.

Take and form a pleat there, and with a pin there, sew all the way down, you'd make a lot of these and then simply machine stitch those together to form your rows.

And you could have fun doing this sort of thing.

These particular solid colors are lovely.

You could start and make this an entire quilt.

This I've simply made a tote bag of sorts, but you could make an entire quilt and start with a particular color.

You could do the trip around the world or step around the mountain quilt where you've seen starting in one center and just an array out of all different colors.

I wanna get to the cathedral quilt and mention that in doing some research on this particular quilt, one item that I did read about said that they had called this the Mayflower Quilt, well, indicating that maybe when the settlers came over to this country, that they were folding scraps of fabric in their laps, and somehow I think they had more important things to do on the Mayflower than making this coverlet.

I've also heard that it originated in the southwest and I think that might be a more likely story.

But anyway, it is a beautiful coverlet.

It has a stained glass look, and I wanna show you the new method for putting it together.

This is Betty Snyder's quilt, and it's been done with sheets that are white sheets.

She did mention to me that it was a percale sheet and she would've preferred to use a muslin sheet because it takes a needle much easier, but it's a beautiful collection of different calico fabrics.

She said she made it in a very cold winter in Illinois.

I might mention this large wall hanging also, this is something that I put together for the technical school where I work.

And it's more or less in praise of handwork and gives you an idea of the different things that are probably taught at your community college or your technical school in the adult education program.

There's everything from upholstering to smocking, sewing one, simply putting a zipper in, maybe advanced needle work, and the idea is using a large muslin square, which would be 20 and a half inches square to start with, and then these insets were six and a half to seven inches square.

But I think it tells a nice story and it would be an idea if maybe you were having a 50th wedding anniversary in your family and everyone would contribute a square and it might be something you could do in that order.

I want to mention this beautiful cathedral quilt done by Mrs. Ava Briggs and a little different than Betty's in that she has left every calico the same color, and in this case it's a dark calico.

But isn't it handsome?

And it's very heavy.

This quilt, of course, will keep you warm because it's very weighted with all the folding of the fabric that happens in this.

Let's go to the sewing machine and see exactly how to do this.

I'd mentioned to you to have a 10 inch square on hand and I'm going to do it in both blue and then in white, so you'll get a good idea.

The important thing to remember what every, whatever fabric you're using, you want to make sure you pre-shrink your fabric.

Now, that is an important feature, especially your muslin.

Start with your raw edges and fold your square into a rectangle.

I'm gonna use white thread on this blue.

I think it'll show up very nicely.

And we are going to machine stitch on each side of our rectangle a quarter inch seam allowance.

If I were making say, an entire pillow or a quilt, I'd probably just keep going, get my mini assembly line going, and while I'm at the end here, wouldn't hurt to back stitch, locks that in place.

And then sew on air a couple of stitches and keep going.

I'm gonna back stitch up here, all the way down.

[machine whirs] And once I've done one side of my rectangle, then it's time.

These apart.

And come over to the other side.

Okay?

Now, when I first learned how to do this, cathedral quilting was all done by hand, but this new method I think really gives you the look of the hand work because that last step is done by hand, but this initial work is done on the machine.

I believe it makes it a little bit stronger.

Now, I'm just doing two in a row now, but keep in mind, if you were doing a whole quilt, you might wanna do this mass assembly style.

All right?

Once you have those two put together, then, you're going to open up your rectangle and let these two seams meet, leaving about, I would say an inch and a half opening in the middle.

You want to machine stitch that quarter of an inch all the way out to the end.

When I get there, I back stitch.

That holds it in place.

And then do the other side the same way.

You see if I start there how the opening is in the middle?

You might ask yourself, "Well, why don't you just sew one all the way across and then turn this inside out over there?"

Well, what's gonna happen then is you're not gonna get a perfect, your corners will not be perfect, and that's important.

I'll show you in a minute what I mean by that.

All the way down and back stitch.

All right, now, get rid of your threads and by removing your pin, you are going to then turn this little envelope, this square inside out.

Before doing that, I like to trim my corners a little bit.

It makes it nice.

You'll get truer corners if you get rid of that excess just a little bit, get rid of some of the fabric.

Then turning that inside out, you are then creating a nice square.

Now, here's an opportunity to either use a wooden Q-tip or I like this tailor's point.

That's nice and, it's wooden and it won't go all the way through the fabric.

I know you're always tempted to pick up your scissors there, but go ahead and push that all the way out and you've created this square that has square, of course corners and on the backside, which will really form the back of your quilt, there are no seams.

You will notice you've got bias edges on all four sides, and then on this side, this is gonna be the inside of your coverlet or your quilt.

There are all the seams.

Then you're going to fold that in and this is the part that you're gonna slip stitch by hand across all the way across.

That'll be some slip stitching, and of course I'd use a blue thread and I wouldn't go through the backside.

Let me do that once more.

If you've got your 10 inch square at home that you cut out, machine stitch the rectangular part, then remember to open it up, let those seams meet and put a pin there.

That's gonna anchor it.

That will anchor it in place.

Then I'm going to come and leave an opening in the center about an inch and a half, machine stitch all the way to the outside end and back stitch.

Now, my favorite size of square to work with is a 10 inch square.

I have seen these as small as seven inches, but to me, a 10 inch is kind of a happy medium in between, all the way down to the end and back stitch.

And once again, while I'm here, I'm just gonna trim that corner, get rid of any threads, remove your pin and trim your corners off.

Then I'm ready to turn this inside out.

Now, if you were going to make a pillow out of this, you would make several of these and I have a pillow here I can show you.

With a 10 inch square and push those all the way out, and of course I'd take my wooden pointer.

I have a pillow already done.

Give you an idea on the backside.

there're actually nine of these.

Nine 10 inch squares for a pillow.

Now it's at this point, this is a very important point and the step in the cathedral that I wanna show you.

Years ago, it was from here that they would take and whip stitch all these points together so that it would fall flat like so.

You're gonna create your square by whip stitching the corners inward.

That is how it used to be done.

Then, of course, you'd do a whole stack of those.

Then your blocks would be placed next to each other and you would whip stitch those in place.

Now, the new method calls for, at this point, and I think it shows up nicely if we use a muslin, you can see it very clearly.

If I were working on a dark, I'd be tempted to use the soap that gives you a nice mark, but let's use the muslin.

Here's a 10 inch square that I've already done.

You see, there are no seams on the backside.

They're all inside.

All right, take and fold your square and crease it and find the midpoint.

Okay?

Do it on all four sides.

Then I would take my ruler and taking my, a marking pen, or it could even be a pencil, connect those lines.

I've done it on this one.

I believe there's one that I've, and that one and that one, there's one here that I have not done.

Take and crease that I think just a little bit and put a line, do the same thing here, crease it.

You're simply finding the midpoint on all four sides, but what you're doing is you are creating a sewing line by doing this, and this makes this go together so smoothly and really adds uniformity.

All right, then connect these lines once, twice and three times, once more.

Now, if you were, whether or not you were doing a pillow or whether you're going to do an entire coverlet, this becomes your sewing line.

You would then line these blocks up and I like to get all four corners even, knowing that right on there is where I'm going to sew.

It's kind of a pre-step.

I think maybe you can kind of see what's gonna happen now.

All right?

Come the same thing.

Line this up and pin it in place.

Think if you have gone this far with just your one block and you've drawn these lines, this will be a good example for you to hold on to when you go to your sewing table and tell exactly what to do.

All right?

Those are gonna be machine sewn.

Can you see here?

I've got these rows connected and you see how I've machine sewn one block.

The pin's out.

One block has been machine sewn to the next.

All right, I don't wanna go any further until we're right here so you can get the whole idea here.

For instance, if you were going to work on a whole muslin coverlet, I have sewn rows together much the way I'm going to sew this row.

If you are working with 10 inch squares and when it was sewn, you came out with all of these, this could be the beginning of a quilt.

All right, now I'm gonna machine stitch, and when I do this, I back stitch more or less to lock that in place, right on that blue line.

[machine whirs] Come down and back stitch.

Now, it would mean doing this, of course, all four times for each row.

For a pillow, I would use nine of the squares.

If I were gonna start a whole quilt, I think I'd work with 16 of these muslin pieces in each block.

[machine whirs] All the way down.

That would be four across and four down.

All right?

Back stitch that in place.

Now once more and I'll have my row done.

This row will then connect to two other rows that I've already put together.

Of course, to do an apron, it only takes four of these 10 inch squares.

And when you see all this sewing, you might be thinking, "I'm just gonna, this idea intrigues me and I don't wanna make a whole coverlet, but I would like to make, just make, maybe try an apron or maybe a little handbag."

I'll show you how to put it into a handbag in a minute.

All right, four are connected, right?

And these little dog ears again are sticking up.

Okay, then this row will connect to this row, and the nice part about this is that I can machine sew this in one fell swoop all the way across, making sure when I machine stitch, I just come across here, come all the way down, line up my triangle so they're nice on target, start here, back stitch all the way down and back stitch.

Then I would have my third row, I'd add one more row, and this would be the beginning of a quilt.

I can show you on one that's been completed.

I think if I were making an entire quilt and perhaps this were the corner, I'd have this all done and leave these open so that when the next set was done, I could machine stitch that to this one.

Do you follow me?

All right.

Now what about the color, the decoration that goes inside?

All right, once you have all these sewn together, you are then going to whip stitch these points together.

Those together and these together so that that whole little set is going to rest flat against the whole set.

I like to then kind of sneak in there and make sure it's secure, but do not go through to the backside.

Okay?

I think you can see over here.

Let me pick up some, and you can see where these have been stitched together.

See how those have been stitched?

Each time they fall down and rest in place and they'll just meet because you've measured them beforehand, it works out very precise if you take your time and measure.

All right, then it's at this point, put my thimble on.

I wanna show you what to do next.

Now, if you start with a 10 inch square, the size that you're going to need will be a three-inch square of this little calico or seersucker, whatever you're going to put in your leftover.

That will be a three-inch square and you'll simply place it down.

You see, it doesn't go all the way up to the edge, does it?

It falls a little bit short.

And what's gonna be so nice you're gonna notice is that that bends back and it bends back so nicely because it is on the bias.

You see, it's got give to it, it has curve, and it'll just bend back, and there you're getting your design, that pretty curve design.

Now, you want to thread your needle, and I like to use quilting thread here because it's nice and strong and I would bend each one back and pin it in place much the way I have done the polka dot and I've hidden my knot in the fold.

Then once I've got my knot in here, make sure that's come down, I will come over to the opposite side and do what I'd call a little whip stitch there to hold that in place.

I wanna show you what that forms there.

When I go over that, maybe, oh, maybe two or three times.

Can you see the little, like little design?

A little floweret design that is formed there?

It hides any raw edges.

And by the way, that is you just keep that raw edges when you place that in there.

All right?

That has been, has gone down.

Then I'm going to come along with a, either a little slip stitch or a quilting stitch.

Now, this is optional how you attach this.

I have heard that if your cathedral quilt is gonna be judged at a fair, that quite often the first thing a judge will do will be look at the backside and see if you've gone through.

That it's important to go through because you will form more or less a daisy design on the backside, but the other thing, it is nice to take this offhand and just slip right under.

See how nicely that'll go, and then you can simply secure, and with a slip stitch, hold that little calico in place.

You see how you're going through there?

Now, of course, you'd go around all four sides, and when you get to the corner, make sure you create that little fold right there.

That gives design to your coverlet.

This would be for a cathedral quilt.

Let's look at the other ideas that we can do.

Perhaps you'd wanna do a handbag.

You could start again with a 10 inch square and by doing 10 of these, putting 'em together, four for the back, four for the front, and two for the lid.

Now, I've left this open to show you the nice part about this is all the raw edges are taken care of.

So you'd simply be putting this together, and then with some embroidery thread, do a stitch all the way up both sides, all right?

And then the two squares would come down.

In this case, I've used Indian Head cloth and some leftover lace, and I've put some gold chintz underneath it.

You could even put a little bit of batting underneath this, you, this would actually add puffiness to your quilt.

If you wanted to cut a piece of batting and put underneath, it would work out very nicely.

So that would be for an evening bag.

Remember, if you do a pillow, all the raw edges are taken care of.

You would then want to simply put the sham backing on again and turn it inside out and just use a very tiny seam allowance, even less than your quarter inch.

Now, for the apron, remember that you're only using four blocks and that, for instance, I've used four up here and leave these bottom ones open.

Knowing that you can machine sew this to the waistband of your apron.

And also keep in mind that, this is an idea also, and I've done this on the pocket.

Let me show you on the gingham pocket.

It's kind of fun to see.

I've taken a little larger square here.

This was a 12 inch square, and you, once you've finished that, this could come down.

This is the way this is put together.

Then when you bend back that curve, you see the eyelet underneath.

I wanna show you a real nifty way.

I'm gonna turn my machine to zigzag, and this is the bottom of the apron that needs to be gathered.

I'm not sure if you know about this.

I just discovered it this year, and it's a great way to put gathers in fabric, and it just means turning your machine to zigzag and pulling out your thread as long as this is going to be gathered.

And this works for ruffles that we'd be putting on, say, pillows or around quilts also.

Hold this top thread on top of your zigzag and simply zigzag on top of it.

[machine whirs] I think you can follow and see what's happening.

As you come all the way down, now, it doesn't hurt if you miss a couple of stitches.

Maybe your gather mechanism works real good on your machine, but I found this zigzag technique is really terrific.

Come all the way down.

And of course, this top thread has to be as long as you would be stitching.

When you come to the end, once this is gathered, then this would be put on a waistband.

Then at this point, take that top thread and just pull it and look how nicely that gathers.

It's simply been caught in that zigzag.

I think you'll like that idea.

And of course you can gather that as full as you want, or that would just go to the side, but this, once it had a waistband on it, would be connected to the top of of your apron, and then I would sew this on either by hand or on the machine.

Then flip this up and decide exactly how I want those three inch squares to go in.

Also, it's optional.

On the outside of your cathedral quilt, it's optional whether or not you put a triangle in the outside.

Sometimes you'll see just this bias edging folded back.

That's one way of doing it.

And if you decide to put the triangle in, I simply take a square and fold it into a triangle and then crease it and then open it up and by hand I'll slip stitch that, then bring it back.

I've seen it done both ways, and that's really optional.

You might also think in terms of this would be a fun way to try a little eyeglass case with just four of the blocks.

And these, this would be the 10 inch square again.

As long as we're on the subject of aprons, don't forget that all of your blocks that we've been working with could be turned into an apron.

It makes a very decorative and fun top bib for an apron.

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