No spitting, no leaking. No kidding; sulky, makers of decorative threads, stabilizers, and books. Sulky. Express yourself; fabriquilt. The fabric of inspiration; omnigrid. Providing quilters with specialty rulers and accessories for over twentyfive years; Quilters Club of america offering patterns and videos to the passionate quilter. Welcome to love of quilting. Youre watching the 2100 series, and we have an adorable contemporary quilt with us on the set today. Lets take a look. This little number is called circles for paige. It was made by marianne haak. Its circles within circles, floating bubbles or balls, bouncing balls. Its adorable. Its happy. It really is. Whats interesting about this quilt is the size is determined by a width of fabric because that background is all one piece of white solid fabric. And then there are those lovely bouncing circles placed as she pleased. She did a random placing of those and randomly chose the izes of the circles as well. I think its adorable. If you wanted to make a quilt like this theres no real rules about where the circles go, but youve got to start with circles. Were going to talk first about ways to get circles. I dont think anybody can just freehand a perfect circle. I think students in art school spend a year trying to actually freehand a perfect circle. I dont know that they ever achieve that. Its really difficult. Templates and guides are helpful if you want to get circles. We have all kinds of ways to get those. Once we talk about ways, the tools you can use, then well talk about how you take that to the next step to make applique circles. The art supply store is a great place for quilters. I remember Doreen Speckman always used to ask people do you like office supplies, do you like art supplies. If you do youll probably be a quilter. One of the things that most art stores will carry and a lot of quilting shops will carry too, because they know quilters like these templates is a circle template. You get various widths. They only can be so big because theyre in 8 1 2 x 11 format. But for some of the circles on marianne haaks quilt, you can use this to draw your circle. Thats one way to do it. Were going to put that there. If you didnt have one or a shop nearby to get one and you needed bigger circles you could just look around your house. There is a wonderful tip here. Lets turn it over. Its a dinner plate. Its a salad plate. Its a pie plate. I like how youre thinking, mom. A cherry pie. I better not think about that. But a salad plate or a pie plate is a great circle size. I think mariannes some are like pie pans. I have many a time when ive needed a specific size ill take my ruler and go to the cupboard and i will measure if it matters. This quilt it doesnt matter what size the circles are. But you need various sizes and this is a great way to get one. So you can draw around that, cut it out with scissors. A coffee mug can certainly give you another size. If youre in the kitchen grab a few things. You might use them all. Another nifty thing you may have in the house but you dont even know about it is a ruler. This is also from the art supply or quilt shop. This is an 18inch seethrough ruler. In addition to having 1 4inch measurements inch, 1 2 inch, 1 4 inch, 1 8 inch it has a series of holes. I actually let me get it so the camera can see the right side. Im going to pull some paper so you can see a little better. Theres a series of holes here. The first one is at zero and then at 1 2 inch 1 inch, 1 1 2, all the way out here. This is actually a compass. You may have one in your toolkit and not really know it. If you wanted to make a pattern for a circle any inch even size up to the end of your ruler. Up to 18 inches because 9 inches this is actually going to be the radius of the circle. What i like to do is take two automatic pencils the kind that has a retractable lead. I retract the lead mechanical on one. Im going to move it over because i dont want to break the lead. Then i pick my size of circle. Lets go out here to 3. Thats going to make a 6inch circle. Or i could go to 2 1 2 for a 5inch circle. Youd be doing this on freezer paper. If you were making a template you would take freezer paper and do it that way. Really, if you want to be able to make 1 2inch sized circles get a drill and drill holes every 1 4 inch. You could have an even more flexible tool. That makes a great circle. This you can put over in our used pile. There are a million ways to do anything. This way is one of my its new to me and i am a big fan. There is this tool. Is there a specific name for this tool . Its a circle cutter. Its a circle cutter. Thats as technical as it gets on this. It looks like something you might find in the toolkit in the garage. It says engineering to me. Definitely. What it is its a rotary cutting blade. Teensyweensy like your rotary cutter. That just pulls off a little spike that goes into the very center of the circle i dont mean to interrupt but you have a retract. This is safety and then you open this thing out. Its very dangerous. Dont let the kids get ahold of this. Here is how you calibrate the size of your circle. It has your increments here and you can move it to however large you unscrew this and it slides. We dont care what size were making. Were just demonstrating. You put down your little spike. Let me just make sure i have enough fabric here to cut the thing i want. You press down and spin. Hold on. These are great things to do on camera. It takes a little practice. Theres a bubble. Its okay. As long as the center spike stay where it needs to stay, its okay. I did pretty well. With the scissors, we could cut that. Im going to retract this back so its safe. You can bring it all the way out to here, which would make a circle. This is about 5 inches, 4 1 2. You can make a pretty good sized circle. Im going to put the little thing back on there. I would say for this particular project, were going to be using fusible web, and were going to talk about that. I think this circle cutting tool is excellent for cutting that fusible web. We have yet another. Our last method for cutting circles you have one other way to show. Its a really neat tool. Sharon hultgren has come up with a lot great things but this is an easy circle cut. Well put the name of it on our website, fonsandporter. Com, for the 2100 series so youll know all the stuff were using. This was designed to cut your circle from a piece of folded fabric. So you go anywhere from 2 inches out to an 8inch raw circle. A 10inch. A 10inch raw circle. Thanks for noticing that. Its a good thing im here. Im really glad youre here for lots of reasons. Im never doing this show by myself. You dont have to. Lets do the biggest one. You never want to waste too much fabric because, sure as you do thats the piece of fabric that you need to finish your quilt. So move it down a little bit. So i folded my fabric and made sure give yourself a little more room. Im still helping you. You are still helping me. Youve helped me from the moment you were born. Thanks. Way back in 19 83. [ marianne laughs ] dont you dare. Anyway. Were going to cut through this slot. We experimented with this a little bit. Im going to use my regular sized rotary cutter 45. 45 for this. When you get to smaller ones you might want a smaller circle. Youll have to have one. You wont be able to get around a 2inch finished circle with a big flat blade like that. So im going to just i can hear it crunching. Its extra special important to hold your template as still as possible because if it moves in any direction, youre going to get a funky circle. Its going to be more of an oval. Then you have to get more fabric. You probably noticed the way this is designed is theres a starting place, so i was able to get the edge. Look, its great. I was preparing myself for having to use a pair of scissors to cut a little more. So here is our perfect circle. Look at that. You could press a little bit and im going to use the very same method to cut my fusible web, because for every circle on marianne haaks quilt, youre going to need not only your pretty fabric circle you also need the same size circle and fusible web. This is not paperbacked fusible web that weve used and windowed and all this. This is lightweight fusible web. So one side has little dots of glue on it and one side does not. I dont want to waste this either. Theres different sized circles. That will do it. Im going to cut another 10inch circle. As we were practicing with this template, we talked to another quilter who happens to be visiting who happens to be visiting the set today. Its always great to talk to other quilters. Its a community. People share tips and swap secrets and techniques. We were using the smaller rotary cutter out here. She said, you know, i found that the 45 mm rotary cutter is better. Sure enough, it was. So if youre having trouble with a template or a tool or you dont like a certain technique or something, talk to another quilter. They might be able to help you. So thank you, lynn. Thanks, lynn. Lets see how we did. Oh its another one so for every circle on the quilt, youre going to need your fabric circle and your lightweight fusible web circle. This would take us a long time to sew on the show so were going to move to something smaller. This is the biggest circle that marianne used and then were going to go down probably as small as she used. The way you create this quilt is you make your circles first. You could cut out your panel youre using for your background but youre going to make a whole bunch of circles and have them ready to place where you want. As youre going to see these are going to be finished edge circles. Theyre going to have a fold around the edge. Were using fusible web, but were not using the method youve seen us do before possibly, where were blanket stitching on whats truly a raw edge thats fused down. These make really nice circles. On a baby quilt thats going to get washed a lot its a good method. Now, very important. You put your fabric circle with the pretty side up. Then this fusible web, you can feel the smooth side and the bumpy side. Those bumps are actually adhesive that is activated by heat. So counter intuitively i think id like a pin. Youre going to put the pretty side and the glue side together but were not ironing. So dont put your iron on anything. Im set up over here for a 1 4inch seam. Lets get that out of the way. Im going to get rid of all these things. So im going to drop my presser foot to get started. Im using the edge of my presser foot for my 1 4 seam. This isnt patchwork. Were not going for that kind of accuracy but you want a smooth circle. Ive also set my machine where as i with my needle down. Also, like the minute i raise my foot off that pedal, the presser foot raises, which enables me to pivot. Its a great feature because when i touch my foot again and start giving it some gas that presser foot goes down. When you touch the pedal. When i give it some gas with my foot, then that presser foot goes back down and holds my fabric in place. Should i keep going . You can sew a little bit more. Whenever i sew anything at home or on the set, i want to keep going. You work your way around. You cant be speedy gonzales here. You have to take your time. Just a few stitches. Should i stop . Yeah. Wed go all the way around to where we started. Im going to cut my thread. I dont need my pin anymore. Heres what it looks like. A finished one, of course, looks like that. So the next step is to separate these. Im going to snip. Ill give it to you. Im going to snip the edges about every 1 2 inch or so, because ultimately were turning this. Were going to turn this inside out. When you have a curved seam a lot of garment sewers will know this. In the armhole. In the armhole or if youve ever made a bag or some little sewing project where you have a curve an ipad case maybe, you want to clip around because it helps your curve lay flat. It spreads out the fullness of that extra fabric thats in the seam allowance and distributes it around in there. I was almost too hasty and almost snipped my stitch. If you did, because this is going to be stitched down later it probably would not be the end of the world. So now ive got these two layers. Im going to separate them so fusible is away from my pretty fabric. Im going to take these scissors and make a snip and then make it bigger. Oops, i didnt mean to do that. Throwing stuff around again. Now were going to turn this. Youll remember the way we position this is that as we turn this and try to make it look pretty, it doesnt happen immediately. Id be careful as youre turning that out that fusible youre using is lightweight. If you get too hasty turning, you could stick your fingernail through that. Again, not a day destroying problem but you would like to keep your fusible all together. You could use your stiletto to smooth it out. Be careful with that. Scissors would be even trickier. You get it nice and smooth. Now its ready to fuse down to hold it in place to your background fabric and then were going to stitch it. Lets show that little panel there. So on mariannes quilt i would have this piece of white fabric up on the design wall. Id have all my circles. Id have more than enough. I would play around with getting them where i wanted. Id pin them down and take them to my iron and press them in place. You wouldnt want pins in that while sewing. Shes using a fairly shes using about 45 inches it would be the fullwidth fabric. It says its 44 45 but it could be 40, whatever. If you were nervous about using that big of a piece and handling that large piece of fabric you could work smaller. You could work with blocks essentially. It would change the nature of the design of your quilt because theyd have to be in the quadrants. Youd have to arrange your circles within the blocks. It could be neat. It could be great. You could actually work with panels and fuse some of them and then sew the panels together and straddle that seam with another one. Thats why its so fun to make quilts because theres so many ways to do things. So we need to press. Is our iron ready to go . Were just going to make life easy on ourselves and just press to a square fabric. So youd read your instructions for your fusible web and get that nailed down. While youre doing that, im going to make some changes on my sewing machine because i want to switch to a blanket stitch. The instructions tell me about how long to hold this down. The best way to answer that question is to look at the instructions. A great tip that we have is when you have fusible, save the instructions and make a little bag for the fusible itself, so you always have your instructions with your fusible. It will tell us how long to keep our iron on it and how to use that fusible. That was a tip from a viewer. Long ago. I wish i remembered her name. What i did was fold a set of the instructions and stapled. You could stitch it and do this with fusible interfacing because all these products once you separate them from the instructions, they all look exactly alike. Believe me. I have found out the bad way what a problem that can be. So ive changed my machine to a blanket stitch. If we were doing mariannes quilt, the other marianne she spells her name the same as me ever time i did this blanket stitching, i would have that whole fabric to go around. At this size i dont think it would be that hard. A fullsize quilt, maybe more of a challenge. For a beginner it might be more of a challenge, but maybe not. Just take your time. So i positioned this. Well see how i get going. I think my needle is out. I think im going to actually well see. The needle swings back and forth. Im going to get in position. I know where on my presser foot i need to aim this pretty much. Thats another thing to mention is that before you start tacking done your circles, do a practice circle. Always when youre switching your stitches from 1 4 inch to a blanket to a straight stitch do a test before you start working on the actual piece. Here again the setting i put on my machine that helped me with sewing that circle also helps me with my blanket stitch because i can only stitch a few stitches at one time. You just tell me, mary how much time ive got. Weve got one finished and we should take a look at it. Im going to cut my thread. Thats going to raise my presser foot. It enables me to really control my stitching. Theres the one i started. Heres one weve completed. You might decide to change the width of your blanket stitch, depending on the size of the circle youre sewing. When we started out today, i referred to marianne haaks quilt as an adorable contemporary quilt. We thought it would be fun to spend a couple of minutes talking about the terminology bouncing around the quilt world which is so exciting because weve got a lot of new people, maybe youre one of them that are taking up quilting and deciding what kind of quilt is this and that. Lets start with traditional. Before we talk about that, i want to say that this is our opinion. The wonderful thing about quilt making and art in general is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and different people define things differently. Its a human desire to put things into categories. You might think one thing about what defines a traditional quilt. Someone else might say no, that looks modern to me. If people are quilting its good. We just need to terms so we can have a conversation. Lets look at a wonderful quilt by liz porter who really knows how to make a great traditional quilt. Its an irish chain variation. Shes used reproduction fabrics. Its a classic traditional quilt that looks very much like a quilt from the 1890s. One of the ways ive used to define for myself what a traditional quilt is, because im a traditional quilt maker most quilts i make are inspired from the past is that traditional quilts are quilts that couldve been made before. Maybe were updating the technique, the method, the tools, but its kind of it has a Reference Point in a quilt from the past. Even the palette and the blocks, all of that, they look almost like they could be an antique quilt if you didnt know much about them. If youre a real purist. Then we have art quilts. Art quilts are in a category of their own. Art quilts are not meant to be used as bed covers; 99. 9 percent of the time these quilts hang in galleries. Caryl fallerts beautiful quilt, we have an example of that. Midnight fantasy. Midnight fantasy is something that could hang in an art gallery and be very much at home in a big corporate building downtown an installation. Exactly. Gorgeous, gorgeous art quilts made with lots of embroidery. Embellishment. Heavy quilting. Theyve never been made before. Which brings us into a contemporary quilt, which we were talking about with mariannes quilt. That uses fabrics that are not reproduction fabrics. Theyre fabrics that have a new look. Theyre different. Theyre contemporary. Its a quilt that hasnt been made before. Batiks are fabrics that werent available to quilters. In the 1800s batiks werent around. Brights, juveniles. If those kinds of fabrics are being used in a quilt, those could be considered contemporary quilts. Then we have an exciting new modern quilt which is a whole new aesthetic new quilters are excited about. We have a couple examples. We have one by Tony Jacobson whos on our staff. That one is called pathways. Its linear. It is not block to block. Theres lots of, we would say, open space, negative space blank space for quilting. We also have another staff quilt that is more modern, although theres lots of variations. This one is by jea