Skiers might come to Lake Switzerland in search of one thing, snow.

But if they are quilters and fabric lovers, they will not be disappointed.

A unique quilt shop awaits them full of gifts and specialty classes.

The alphabet study in the Quilt Built Studio features the letters Q and R. (upbeat music) ♪ Could you imagine a more clever object ♪ ♪ Warms a 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 ♪ - Lap quilting with Georgia bone steel is made possible in part by grants from Bernina, makers of sewing machines manufactured with the care of traditional Swiss workmanship.

Nothing sews like a Bernina, nothing.

By Gammel Quilting Machine Company, offering four sizes of long arm hand guided machines to quilters worldwide.

By Coats and Clark, America's number one name in sewing, hand knitting, and craft products.

By Martingale and Company, home of That Patchwork Place, publisher of America's best loved craft and hobby books.

By Hobbs Bonded Fibers, maker of heirloom premium cotton and wool batting with a package labeling system to help quilters select the correct batting for specific projects.

And by Horn of America, cabinets of the future today.

- It's April, it's been snowing.

We are in Switzerland, but we're not skiing.

Our European lap quilting tour winds its way through the Swiss Alps to the town of Link.

It's all here, covered bridges, picturesque buildings, snow covered mountains.

Now for a tour of the Patch Art Quilt Shop with our hostess and owner, Trix Bullman-Eppel, while she owns two shops in Bern and here in Link.

We've met Trix before in Lyon.

She is on the International Quilt Association Board and founder of the Swiss Quilt Association.

Presently, she is president of the Bernese Quilters.

And what will we do today?

Why, chicks on a stick, come on in.

Trix, it's so good to see you.

- Welcome to Patch Art Switzerland.

- Thank you very much, and your helper, one of your sales lady, Rosalie.

- How do you do?

- It's nice to meet you.

We're so excited to be here and to know that they do quilting in Switzerland.

- They do.

- For the Swiss, when I say the word quilt, what comes to mind?

- Well, I think for many Swiss, the word quilting, especially a few years ago, was a foreign word.

And especially back here in the mountains was a real foreign word.

But it has increased tremendously.

We have even a mountain quilter group over towards Stadt that we go and meet once a month.

- And certainly, don't you think it's the fabric that inspires people?

They come in and see all this color and Trix, you're responsible for that.

- I think they were shocked, actually, because they don't relate quilting with fabrics like that.

They're still used to the little dots and little prints and calicos.

So what I really try to educate people to, huge prints and a lot of colors and a lot of different fabrics.

So really try to get as much as I can.

Mostly too much, anyhow.

- And you buy for two shops, the one in Bern and the one here in Leng.

- Yes, and they get half.

- I see.

Do you fight over which fabric you get?

- No, they get half of it.

They get five meters.

- Although I must say, we do have certain fabrics that we only have here, because we have a lot of chalets.

So certain fabrics, some of the darker, more natural colors, they go well here.

- More than rustic.

- They do as well in Bern and vice versa.

- And they don't go in Bern at all.

So they get the whole ball.

- Well, tell us about the big prints now, Trix.

- Big prints, what I like with big prints is that you get a lot more out of a big print because you get a flower, you get a leaf, you could get just yellow and a little bit green, or you get just blue and green, or you get a flower again, or you get maybe two flowers, a little bit of it.

Or especially that print was fascinating to me because it's such a huge Paris print that if you look at it, you get blues, you get just a yellow, you don't see the Eiffel Tower anymore, you get red and pink together, you get red, pink, and blue.

So you get a lot more out of one meter fabric than you would get out of little dots and stripes and whatever.

- Rosalie, tell us about your community and how you deal with that because it is touristy with the ski season here.

- Right, because a lot of the locals that live here are farmers and they work in the ski area during the winter season.

And it's important that we meet their needs too.

And it's important that when the tourists come in that we have things that they can take home because they don't have that much space.

And they're real excited because even an area like Zurich does not offer what we have back here.

It's like a big surprise, you know?

They come in, they go, "The colors!"

And we also have-- We've taught the people here that you can use these fabrics for tablecloths, for curtains, for clothing.

We offer courses where they can sew with someone who directs them how you can put this together.

And they can order patterns here because it's an hour away if they want to-- Yeah, at least if they want to get a pattern.

But that's one point.

The second point is the tourists also like little gifts to take home.

So we also offer little gifts that they can take or little wrapped-up packages of fabrics.

They come in, they're overwhelmed.

They say, "Oh, they're all combined," because they don't know what to take.

But I think the biggest challenge of selling here is to sell something that the people want, not to let my taste overwhelm their taste, and then to bring it together that they go home with something they can truly use and have joy with it.

We really end up holding people's hands when we walk them through a fabric shop, don't we?

Yes.

It's a trip.

[laughter] Now, we've been sleeping under duvets here.

Do you incorporate that idea of a duvet, a patchwork duvet at all?

I do it.

I'm working on one right now, but I'm an American, and I came over 25 years ago, so I combine the two cultures.

But what they do--some people use quilts for summertime.

You know those feather beds or those duvets?

They're kind of warm, unless you have a summer one.

But when you teach classes, they-- I make bed quilts.

I teach them to make bed quilts, and they use it, especially summertime.

Winter is too cold.

You would have to have two or three quilts in one.

Especially here.

Especially here.

But otherwise, they really use quilts now as well.

It's not only a nice decoration or something like that.

They really use it--lab quilts as well.

I'm anxious to see these classes that you have.

Can we have a glimpse at that?

Sure.

Okay.

Rosalie, these will not fit into my luggage.

The farm animals are adorable.

Tell me about them.

Yes, it's a wonderful course we're offering.

You know, for those women who want instant gratification, one afternoon we have these done.

It's with Velcro.

You can open it up.

You have a pillow.

Put it together, you have a neck roll.

And we make it in different kinds of animals.

We have cows, we have pigs with a wire in his tail.

And we're into chickens today.

This is more complicated than it looks.

It is made with eight triangles.

So there's one here, here, here, here, and at the bottom.

And then the wings are each one triangle.

And then we have here on top, we have the comb.

And this is made with three six-sided pieces.

And then, of course, with the fourth piece, you make the little ball underneath.

And that's filled with a bit of wadding.

And then you use one piece for the nose.

The beak?

The beak.

Okay.

The beak.

That's a problem.

You've been here so long, you forget the names, what they're called in English.

So you put in the comb and the beak inside before you turn it inside out?

Right.

What you have to do is, for example, these three here.

You fold them, you iron them and fold them until they look like this.

Ah.

You see?

And then you set them into each other.

Always with the same direction.

Like prairie points, only different shapes.

Right, exactly.

And when you have the three together, you sew it across.

I see.

So it's stabilized.

And at that point, then you can place it on the inside out, and you can put the course here.

Because where you position this is important.

You almost need a class.

I have a wonderful story.

You know, you have a lot of people who think, "I don't need the course."

And a lot of people don't, for some things.

They come in, they take a look, and they say, "Oh, I'm going to make this."

They go home, and we had a lady, a real sweet woman, who came in, and she brought her chicken to show me.

And she says, "I don't know what's wrong with him."

Well, she had placed the wings up here.

Oh, no.

I said, "I picture what's wrong with him."

And she said, and she came and took the course.

Ah, very good.

And then you need to have two long pieces for the legs.

You put it together with the two fabrics inside out with the fleece at the same time.

And then you sew right on your stitching line and cut it out quite close, trimming, of course, in between.

And we have a wonderful gadget called Quick Turn.

And Trix can show you how that works.

With that, you instantly can turn something inside out.

It saves a lot of wear and tear.

And time.

You just stick it in all the way up.

You take that little wire.

You go in, turn, and that's it.

Voila!

Voila!

Wonderful.

And then, of course, you have to work out the little fingers.

And then you have to work out these fingers, right.

Also, I would like to then continue here with my course.

Please do.

Okay?

Also, gut, jetzt musst du den nächsten Schritt, ist, du musst das drauflegen und ausschneiden.

Du musst ganz rational schaffen, dass aus das Stück, musst nachher acht Stück, du musst das drehen, dann einmal so, und dann nochmals.

Und einfach rundherum ausschneiden.

Dann zeig ich dir, wie es weitergeht.

I think one of the interesting things with our chicken is the filling.

That's something very special.

We use, this is called husk.

This is something that you have when you clean the wheat.

Ah, yes.

And then we have this cleaned, of course.

And you can stuff them with this.

No more little plastic pellets.

No, they fly all over.

However, this one's kind of clever.

Show me what's in that one, too.

This is a special one, yeah.

This is one we did last year with the log cabin, and inside we have stuck eggs.

Oh, yes.

To give it a bit of filling.

But what I think it's good for, mine at home, I put bread in it.

Oh, very good.

My family prefer that to eat.

I have to say, as a whole, this is the difference between American and Swiss mentality.

It's changed.

But I remember making something, and my mother-in-law saying, "What do you do with it?"

And I go, "It's just to make the room happy."

And that was a real shock for her.

And today, a lot of people enjoy these decorative things.

But you know, it was also a question of having time to do these things here in Switzerland.

So when they did their farmer painting on the closets, it's because they needed that closet.

So they didn't feel so guilty spending their artistic time using it on something they needed.

Rosalie, are you prepared for the number of Americans that are going to want to come to Link, Switzerland, maybe Bern even, for the other shop, and make happy chickens?

Yeah, sure.

Just call ahead.

We can reserve an afternoon.

Okay.

We can't thank you enough for inviting us to come to your shop and to be in the excitement of patch art in Switzerland.

Thank you so much, Trix.

Yes, patchwork mountains are my thing, whether it's the Swiss Alps or my Blue Ridge Mountains.

I've tried Seminole skies.

I've tried Moon Over the Mountain with string piecing.

I've tried Flexi-Curve Mountains using the Flexi-Curve.

And now we're doing Star Diamonds, which is 60-degree diamonds.

Look at Vivian Pimble's wonderful twin-size quilt.

It was based on 9-inch diamonds.

And then she situated the shades of her mountain with 3-inch diamonds, just divided that 9 inches into a 9 patch.

Now, I did one to represent--well, I'm going to let you guess.

I called it "Surf's Up."

Can you find the waves?

And then can you find the sand dunes?

I bet you still have chicken on your mind.

Let's go check out the chicken on a stick.

How about a chicken quilt, a folk quilt that came from Vermont?

Not sure who made this one, but I really like it.

Now, as for our chicken that we learned about in Link, mine kind of died, and I'm not sure I can put him on a stick.

He's full of beans, and he's a little bit heavy.

I need some of those husks.

I was a little bit vague about how to do the chicken, so I wrote for the directions, and they sent them to me, and they're in Norwegian, so I've had a hard time really representing the chicken, but I think I've got it.

You really just need a 9-1/2-inch right-angle triangle.

You need 6 of those pieces--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6--2 for the wings.

Then the bottom or the base of the chicken can really be cut out with one square, and I would put this long side of the triangle on the fold.

Now, that's how many pieces you need.

Of course, you need those little doodads-- the waddle and the beak and the comb.

And the comb is made with 3 hexagons that have a 2-inch side plus a 1/4-inch all the way around.

And remember, they folded that like so and then come back this way and then go back that way.

3 of those are folded into each other almost like prairie points, and then those are pinned with the raw edges aligned.

As for the waddle, another one of these, the same size for the comb, just stuff that and draw it up, and that little waddle goes right here.

The beak is a little bit larger, but it's folded the same way--2-1/4.

And that goes on the top, of course, below the comb and on top of the waddle.

Well, as far as the wings, you just take that triangle, fold it in half, and the long side stays open, so you machine stitch on the right angle, attaching the batting as you're going.

And once that's been turned inside out, you fold it in half, and that would be stitched just like this all the way down here.

And of course, you would have had your comb and your waddle and your whatever, your beak, all enclosed there.

Then the same thing happens over here.

You would have the same thing here.

Put the 2 right sides together and machine stitch here and here, turn it inside out, and attach this base to the bottom.

And then you've got your chick on a stick.

Of course, I think you had the legs figured out, but what's so cute is those knobby knees.

Good luck with your chick on a stick.

Now, as far as our feature block of the day, what better block than the Swiss flag?

And how simple can it get?

Although sometimes a 2-color quilt can really be the most enhancing kind of quilt, and this is just a matter of sewing squares to a rectangle 2 times and then a center white strip.

Now for our quilter's alphabet.

Q is for quarter square triangle.

When a square is divided on both diagonals, each of the 4 resulting right angle triangles is called a quarter square triangle.

We see it in this old-fashioned quilt where each quarter square triangle is offset with just a print cut the same size.

We see it in this quilt formed into a 9-patch, which is almost a variation of an Ohio star.

You want to keep in mind that classic inch and a quarter.