- Quilts here, there and everywhere is the name of today's show.

It originates in Kutztown and then branches out all the way to France.

Join us as I explain machine quilting and quilting frames.

[upbeat music] ♪ Could you imagine a more clever object ♪ ♪ Warms the body ignites the mind ♪ ♪ A child sleeps under mother's creation together forever ♪ ♪ The art of the heart and design of the mind puts you ♪ ♪ To bed one day at a time, the art of the heart ♪ ♪ And design of the mind ♪ - [Narrator] "Lap Quilting with Georgia Bonesteel" is made possible in part by grants from, Leisure Arts, publisher and distributor of needlework and craft publications, including an assortment of quilt books and related products.

By VIP Fabrics, a division of Cranston Print Works Company, America's oldest textile printer.

Additional funding by Omnigrid, the original patented black and yellow ruler.

And by Bernina, delivering sewing technology and education to sewers worldwide.

- [Georgia] It's very easy to get caught up in the craft excitement of affair, especially The Kutztown Pennsylvania German festival.

Many of the booths reflected quilt designs and patterns from woven baskets to wooden puzzles, stained glass, why even Christmas ornaments.

And then there were the Tinsmiths.

So much to see, so much to eat.

Oh, yum, yum.

There was something for everyone, even children, they weren't forgotten either.

With this fun maze made from hay bundles.

Quilts were center stage at the Amish Quilt Challenge.

This contest was sponsored by Quilters Newsletter Magazine.

Now they had to use traditional solid color fabrics, designs and hand work.

Navy and brown bars was the winning quilt.

It was by Janet S. Dove from Kansas.

The quilting stitch is truly highlighted within the distinctive colors of all of these Amish wall hangings.

Then hold your breath.

It's hard to believe it, but inside the exhibition building, there were over 800 quilts made by local artisans, busy fingers in Pennsylvania.

The 24 prizewinning quilts were then auctioned on the main stage, and I've always wanted to go to a quilt auction.

Sure enough, the log cabin and house quilt got the high bid.

Well, it's always a popular choice.

- One class.

One class of ten.

One class of ten [indistinct].

[crowd clapping] Quilt vendors are always a part of quilt shows, everything from fabric to notions to books, and now buttons.

All the way from Texas is Susan Baker who specializes in decorative button jewelry.

Welcome Susan.

- Thank you.

- [Georgia] The obvious question is why are you here?

Why buttons at a quilt show?

- Well, what I have found is that quilters, like anything that is textile related, and of course the button couldn't be any closer to a textile related product than anything else I can think of.

So we decided that this was a wonderful way for the quilters to enjoy antique buttons and collectible buttons, the beauty of them, and have a wonderful piece of jewelry.

- [Georgia] Do you go all over the country with this?

- [Susan] All over.

We do all of the major quilt shows that includes about 20 to 25 a year and then a few gift shows at Christmas time.

But the quilt shows are truly our favorite.

- [Georgia] As I glance at the buttons, they all look very orderly, very regimented.

How did this happen?

- Well, we started with an antique button collection, which is how we buy our buttons directly from collectors.

And really all we do is to simply restore them to their original beauty and change them over into a jewelry item.

- [Georgia] Now, what is the most popular arrangement and tell us what selection you have.

- We have a little bit of everything.

We really specialize in antique pieces.

Our bracelets and our watches are of course our most popular items, although many people buy our pens and earrings too.

But we, we deal mainly with antique pieces, as I've said, the main things that you're looking at here are mid to late 1800s pieces.

For example, this particular tray has Victorian picture buttons and if you look at each bracelet individually and at each button individually, you'll find that there are very detailed little scenes on each one.

So that's a popular piece.

This is an 1880s button, most of which were made here in the United States.

It makes a lovely bracelet or a nice watch.

- [Georgia] Does it bother you at all to glue the button or destroy it or do you do that with the real treasured buttons or?

- No, not really.

We of course have our own private button collection, which my husband and I are both quite proud of, but we pretty well know what are the really fancy and valuable buttons and what are the ones that collectors consider to be everyday sorts of buttons.

To the average person these are wonderful and to us they're wonderful too.

But to a collector, they're fairly common.

So the really wonderful buttons that we get in a collection we keep for our own private collection and then we make jewelry out of things that we think are very nice jewelry items.

- [Georgia] Well, and you could always sew them on clothes, couldn't you?

- [Susan] Absolutely.

And that's how we got started.

In fact, there's a couple of garments here in the back that you see.

- [Georgia] Wonderful to think that buttons have all sorts of lives.

They just don't have to be used to close the shirt.

- Absolutely.

And they really shouldn't be hidden under the bed or in your grandmother's button box because they're wonderful.

They should be taken out.

They should be enjoyed and loved because they truly were miniature works of art and the people who designed them, designed them for people to enjoy them - [Georgia] Down the road from Kutztown close to Lancaster, Pennsylvania are the well-known areas of Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse, the home of Rachel Pelman.

Rachel is a recognized author, lecturer and Amish quilt expert.

We find her at the People's Place Museum.

Our on the road van has led us to Lancaster County and to Rachel Pelman, who is an authority on Amish and Mennonite quilts.

Can you tell us what is unique about your area here?

- We have a wonderful area.

It's beautiful scenery, but we also have a large population of Amish and Mennonite people here.

And a lot of people come to see this way of life because it is very unusual.

There aren't a lot of people who choose to live without electricity and who drive horse and carriage on the road and that kind of thing.

I think sometimes when people leave they think that when they go away this stops because maybe it was done just for them.

But the fact is that this way of life continues year round.

This is a very committed group of people committed to family values and and that kind of thing.

- [Georgia] What about your exhibit?

Tell us the name of it.

- This exhibit is called Mennonite Quilts of Lancaster County, the women, their stories, their heirlooms, and it is a celebration of women's lives in Lancaster County years ago.

And it combines some of their very fancy dresses, quilts, sun bonnets, photographs of the women.

So you can look at the quilt and you can actually see beside it the face of the woman who made it.

And it's just a wonderful collection of things from people's attics, the treasures that people had in their homes.

- With all these quilts on the lines and in the stores, is there anything left in the homes?

- There are things left in homes.

What we have here is all heirlooms from individual homes.

And what we found is in Lancaster County, there are people, families who have lived here for seven generations on the same farm.

And so the attic is just filled with all these things that accumulated over the years from one generation to the next.

Well, as we become more professional and leave the farm, a lot of those addicts are being broken up for the first time.

And some of these things that were hidden for years have come to light.

And this exhibit is an attempt to celebrate that and inspire people to dig into their past and find out what might be there before it's lost over the auction block and the stories are gone.

- [Georgia] As a layman, how would someone tell the difference between an Amish and a Mennonite quilt?

- Amish quilts years ago, the same time period, if you took Amish quilts and Mennonite quilts, Amish women used only solid colored fabrics in their quilts.

They did not use printed fabrics at all.

Mennonite women on the other hand, had a whole rainbow of colors available to them and also used printed fabrics in their quilts.

Amish women did primarily piece work.

Mennonite women did a lot of piece work, but also applique.

- [Georgia] I'm anxious to hear about the quilts themselves.

Now that looks like a hole in the barn door behind you.

Tell us about what's going on there.

- What we have here is the hole in the barn door quilt made by the mother and then the dress is the wedding dress of her daughter who received the quilt.

So we have the whole mix there.

The wonderful workmanship in the wedding dress and then that same kind of skill exhibited in the quilt.

- [Georgia] And what about this square quilt?

- [Rachel] This little postage stamp rose here is just a wonderful example.

We look at that today and there have been many quilters who look at it and forget that she did not have the help of a computer to generate that pattern and establish the block size and that kind of thing.

She did that all by hand.

There are more than 13,000 little squares in there and the perspective is wonderful.

She also made, in addition to the quilt two matching pillow shams - [Georgia] And she made other quilts in this exhibit.

- [Rachel] There are four quilts by this same woman in In this exhibit, yes.

- [Narrator] She was very prolific.

- She was.

- [Georgia] I'm anxious to see more.

- Okay.

- [Georgia] What a unique bright quilt.

The red certainly stands out and I love the border, ell us about it.

- Yes, the applique border is all one piece.

Each of the four sides there's a continuous strip.

And when we saw this quilt, I loved the pattern, I loved the design.

I had never seen anything like it before.

The very next house we went to had the identical pattern only smaller in proportion and scale.

- Tradition At its best, Rachel, with this ocean waves quilt.

It's so pristine.

- Yes, I think the reason it's in such good condition is because oral history says that this quilt spent most of its life in a chest.

It was brought out and put on the bed on Sundays when company was coming.

So it looked pretty.

- And now we have the whole state of Pennsylvania on a quilt no less.

- Yes.

And Lancaster County labeled right here.

And this quilt was made by a grandfather and grandmother team who did different quilts for their 14 grandchildren as teaching tools.

So this one took the state and broke it into different counties.

And you see down here at the bottom it says, "Made and presented to," and these are his initials "By Grandma Carpenter aged 72 years old."

She was 72 when she did this work.

- And I liked his name.

Uriah.

- Uriah and Harriet Carpenter.

Yes.

- [Georgia] Color plays such a role with this particular quilt.

Can you tell me who did this?

- Yes.

This as well as the postage stamp rows that we looked at and the next two quilts were made by Mary Salder Brubaker, the same woman who was a very proficient and prolific quilt maker.

- [Georgia] The design here?

- This is essentially a trip around the world, but each little block is a single center diamond unit and each of the little units is made of different fabrics.

So the colors appear to be the same, but there are different fabrics in each little block.

- Quite amazing.

- Yeah.

- [Georgia] I find another thing that's very unusual when we compare that heavily pieced quilt to this applique quilt is the technique involved.

- Yeah, made by the same woman and she spent so much time hand piecing her piece quilts with these tiny little pieces, but when she came to applique, she chose to machine applique.

It's very carefully done close to the edges, but it is all machine done, - Especially with all those circles.

- Yes.

- You pointed out to me also a thing I find quite intriguing.

And that is the secondary arrow design that is created by that red square.

- Yes.

- Behind the green.

Rachel a truly amazing sampler, the color balance and I guess the size of each of those templates.

Can you talk about this?

- [Rachel] Each of the blocks is different.

She was just not satisfied to do something over and over again.

So she did each block differently.

But the whole quilt has a wonderful unity because of the color.

And the other thing I think we have to remember is she didn't have the aid of a rotary cutter for accuracy and that kind of thing.

This is all hand cut, hand pieced, just a lot of hours of work.

- [Georgia] And what was the date on this quilt?

- [Rachel] The date on this is circa 1870.

- Rachel here is that wonderful rose and grape wreath quilt.

Now tell me about the border on this.

- [Rachel] It's the same border treatment we saw earlier, but here she very carefully resolved and mitered her corners and if you look at the binding, it's a continuous sawtooth applique binding on the outer edge.

Now she was 17 years old when she made this quilt in preparation for her marriage as part of her dowry and her wedding dress is also on display here.

- That makes the whole unit complete here.

Going even younger still, I like this four patch quilt.

- This little girl was five years old when she made this quilt, handpiece the little four patch blocks and then her mother and her grandmother and two aunts quilted it with her.

- We could not conclude a Mennonite show such as this without a bar quilt hanging above us and in such spectacular colors.

What about this quilting?

- [Rachel] Beautifully quilted.

Some of the bars are treated as an individual unit and in some cases she worked as groups to do a cable over three bars.

- We can't thank you enough for the expertise you have shared with us today and continued success.

- Thank you.

It's been a pleasure.

- Rachel presently markets miniature quilt kits and designs original patterns.

I especially like her book "Tips For Quilters."

Now just like you, I enjoy hand quilting.

It's my quiet time of the day to connect those three layers.

I do it in a hoop, out of a hoop and whatever makes you comfortable with the end results.

But today most quilters will also recognize the advantages and the excitement of machine quilting.

[upbeat music] Wall hangings are the perfect size for machine quilting.

On this particular circular piece, I used monofilament thread.

I started in the center just like you would for a full size quilt, with the feed dogs dropped and working in a hoop, I outlined the characteristics of the face, the mouth, the eyes, the cheeks.

When I came up to this portion, I made sure to go next to the white stitching to bring that out.

Then for the background I put my walking foot on and did almost mattress pads, straight line stitching.

I thought it was a good contrast.

When I got to the border in this flame area, I put on my metallic thread, dropped the feed dogs again and did just a flame stitch.

Quite often I will draw that out on a piece of paper first so I can get the flow of how my fabric will come to the needle on the machine.

In this background area, I dropped the feed dogs and did that meandering loitering or puzzle type work.

Then I switched gears and did hand quilting in the pointed star area.

The important thing when you combine hand and machine quilting is that they both take up the same amount.

Then hanging this quilt was quite a challenge.

I decided to do circular tubing that is just hand stitched on the back and when it's put on I will then simply slip in the quarter sections of foam core and I think that's gonna work.

There are two basic forms of machine quilting today.

Machine quilting with the feed dogs on your machine dropped means that you control the length of your stitch.

Now there is the option of doing it with a hoop or without.

I prefer a hoop to stabilize the three layers.

And remember the large part of your hoop goes down first and then you drop in the smaller portion.

Now if you're using metallic thread, switch to a metal fill needle.

I like the thread to come from the back of the spool and if there is a way to control the flow of the thread, sometimes you can put it through a little loop.

I'm ready to meander or do whatever I want.

This time I'm doing stars and I can just turn my material any way I want knowing that when I put my needle down, I'm ready to go in another direction.

I sometimes do a straight line and then I do my five pointed star.

[machine whirring] If I run out of room, I remember that I can drop the needle, release the hoop, and then simply move to another area.

I don't have to cut my threads, which is another big advantage.

Then the other form of machine quilting is with a walking foot.

Inside this wall hanging I have used with the coffee pot, different widths of masking tape where the steam is coming out.

I use some of that contact paper just to give me a guide for quilting and now I've turned to the walking foot.

I simply take advantage of the width of my presser foot and that allows me to turn the fabric, [machine whirring] and keep the first line of stitching as a guide to simply quilt by.

And I think this works very well.

I'd like to point out on this little Amish wall hanging that the other theory of mine about machine quilting is I like to do it places where I can't do it by hand.

In other words, what simple crosshatching here, and I've gone through the intersections here where normally if you went with your hand quilting, it would be very hard to go through all those layers.

So don't try to emulate hand quilting.

Try to use it in a unique way.

Now the tree house quilt is almost completed.

The tree house is now a quilt top.

But what do you think about next?

Well, it's the stuffing, the batting and then the backing.

Those have to be sandwiched to allow you to do the quilt making, sometimes a dilemma, but there is a solution.

When it comes to basting, nothing beats six foot tables that are pushed together, keeps you from getting up and down off the floor and you can go to your local quilt shop, church or maybe community college and push those together.

I'd like to give you a little hint to remind you that with your backing, if you use a whole cloth piece and after you've pre-washed it, it's a little bit damp.

Get another person to take the opposite right angle corner and do the old [indistinct] high school pull and it'll straighten out those threads.

A popular quilting frame today is the Q-snap frame.

It's lightweight, it's portable, and it stores easily and you can tighten your top by just pushing that down and it'll stay very nice and taut.

There is a tilt mechanism in the back now so that you can bring it towards you a little bit easier.

Another quilting frame is really a lovely piece of furniture.

It's made by the Jasmine company and it's a self basing quilting frame that's based on three poles.

Notice that the backing of the quilt is inserted on that middle pole.

The backing rolls around the good side here, so the wrong side of the backing faces up.

So then I will go ahead and pin my batting and the quilt top to this outside pole.

Knowing that all I have to do then is roll this over, then reach down and pull that backing and start pinning at the center and go outward.

At each end, there are three very secure little clips that will hold your quilt taut, then with two lights on either end you're all set to quilt for a long time and enjoy looking at your frame.

Now there is a little tool tray that fits right on and becomes the perfect accent while you can even quilt with a lovely China thimble.

We have traveled far and wide on lap quilting this time and the most traveled quilter we have found is Gül Laporte.

I know you'll enjoy meeting Gül [upbeat music] Gül Laporte, welcome today.

I'd like to state where you're from, but in speaking it's many places.

Tell about your your background.

- I was born in Turkey, lived in France and traveled since 23 years now all around the world I may say.

Actually since 10 years I'm living in England.

We moved from Houston, Texas to London where my husband has his job and I'm in the quilting business and quilting creations since 15 years now.

- [Georgia] And but you really feel that your influence came from elsewhere, not London or?

- No, my influence came from United States 'cause that's where I start learning patchwork and I may say I have been completely hooked and it's a passion.

I can't spend a day without doing something or even if I don't have time, I think about it and what my next work will be.

- [Narrator] Well, you're a proud writer, an author of this wonderful book.

It's so colorful and it's so big.

It's enough to make anyone go into quilting.

Tell us a little bit about it.

- I always wanted to make a book and I didn't have the courage I believe, and last year I decided I will make one, definitely.

And my idea was the title for the time being is in French, but the title is "Patchwork From Yesterday and Today."

And the idea has been to display all antique patchworks and to show how people, even if they want to copy them, they may do it with contemporary fabrics and change completely the look of it.

And there is, I think a good example with this one.

- Yes.

- Which is a variation of flying geese.

It's just four geese around a small square.

But if you look at it like that, it doesn't show at all because they are using only contemporary fabrics.

- [Georgia] I think In looking at at your book that you're drawn to both the traditional and the contemporary.

- Yes.

- Can you tell me about the state of quilt making today, say America compared to France and England?

- I believe because I have been to many shows in England, in the States where I go regularly and in France that they are not exactly the same.

This is of course just my belief.

In America, they are now tending to go much more to contemporary, but using a lot of machine quilting.

In England, they started also to use a lot of machine quilting, but I don't think that they're having the same view color-wise, not at all.

And in France they are having a lot of creativity and they are having real unique pieces with machine quilting, but very little, more hand quilting even in a contemporary, even if they don't do a lot of quilting, they will do a little bit, but it will be hand and normally perfect.

[upbeat music] ♪ One day at a time and the art of the heart ♪ ♪ And design of the mind ♪ - [Narrator] "Lap Quilting with Georgia Bonesteel" is made possible in part by grants from Leisure Arts, publisher and distributor of needlework and craft publications, including an assortment of quilt books and related products.

By VIP fabrics, a division of Cranston Print Works Company, America's oldest textile printer.

Additional funding by Omnigrid, the original patented black and yellow ruler.

And by Bernina, delivering sewing technology and education to sewers worldwide.