Hi, I'm Liz Porter.
And I'm Marian Fonz.
Welcome to So Many Quilts.
Today we're going to be showing you how to make a scrap quilt that is made from literally
hundreds of fabrics.
Normally, cutting the fabrics for a quilt like this becomes a major chore.
I have closets full of fabrics, but I hate dragging them all out and cutting a little
bit of fabric from each of the different pieces.
We want to show you a way to organize that and accomplish that goal of utilizing many,
many fabrics without making the cutting a great big chore.
The quilt on the wall is a corn and beans quilt.
It's a multi-fabric patchwork quilt that I gave to my mother for Christmas.
I made the quilt after our friends got together.
We had a cutting bee.
We cut hundreds and hundreds of triangles, and I pieced the quilt.
And I realized as Christmas was rolling around that I'd been quilting for 10 or 15 years,
and I had never given a quilt to my mother.
The look that you have in this quilt is very traditional, and we accomplish that by using
lots of different colors.
We use pink, we use blue, we use black, lots of red, lots of different prints in all these
different colors.
As Liz was saying, cutting your fabrics one by one, dragging each one out of the closet
and cutting them takes so much time that what we like to do is draw our friends together
for a cutting bee.
And we're going to tell you how to organize a cutting bee for yourselves.
Let's move over and show how we accomplish doing a cutting bee, Mary Ann.
Well, you know, in the old days, we all have heard about the pioneer times when women on
the prairie had the old-fashioned quilting bee.
And the story goes, or the folklore, we're not sure how true to life all these tales of
quilting bees are.
But the idea was that the women pieced their patchwork tops during the winter.
They assembled their tops, and then they would get together.
And as a group, they would put the quilts in the frame, and they would get together,
and they would quilt as a group through the day.
They would bring their food, they would share recipes, they would share gossip from the
neighborhood, and they would get the quilt together.
And it was a very social activity.
What's always worried me just a little bit, because when I would hear about these cutting
bees, I would hear how the quilting bees, I would hear about how they would quilt an
entire quilt top in one day.
And it always seemed amazing to me until I attended one in the community where I live
with a large number of Mennonite women.
And when you indeed see 14 or 15 women sitting around a quilt, several on each side, they
really can get a quilt quilted that quickly.
And usually it's a very simple quilting pattern, so it's something that they can fly through.
So quilters today are still very social.
They love getting together, they love working on quilts together, but it's really rare that
they get together to actually quilt on a quilt.
Our cutting bee is sort of a modern, newfangled variation on the old-fashioned quilting bee.
What we do is set a date on our calendars, call five or six friends.
And decide on an overall color or mood that we want our quilts to have.
One of our favorite moods that we use is a country look or an old-time look.
We choose red fabrics, blue fabrics, black fabrics, and a large variety of neutral colored
fabrics.
We just as easily be working with pastel fabrics and use light pinks, light yellows, light
greens, fabrics like that, or with jewel tones combined with black.
But each time we have a cutting bee, we decide what's the look that we want our fabrics to
have.
And then we call half a dozen of our good friends and invite them to the cutting bee
and tell them what look we're working with.
We ask them to gather all the fabrics that they have that would contribute to that look.
It's usually a laundry basket or a big plastic sweater box full of fabric that they bring
that we're going to work with.
And we have a box of fabric to show you what that looks like.
This is the fabric I'm bringing for our cutting bee.
Okay.
So would you help yourself, Mary Ann, to...
These fabrics in Liz's sweater box are a variety of colors.
There's light, there's medium, there's dark.
Some are bigger pieces, some are smaller pieces.
So let's each pick out, let's get a couple pieces of fabric for each of us.
Here's a couple of darks, a blue and a brown.
You should get yourself some lights too, Mary Ann.
Here's a shirting print, here's a green.
We'll pull some fabrics and we'll cut.
I want the bug fabric.
Okay, here's the one with the house flies.
We thought this was just oodles of fun.
This is a reproduction of an antique fabric.
There was a period of time where having insects on fabrics was kind of all the rage.
Maybe it'll come back, maybe it won't.
I'm going to choose a couple lights.
It looks like I'm choosing this red one.
Okay, that's for you.
I'll take that.
I'll take out the green.
Okay.
Okay, so let's put our box away.
I'm going to slide it over here so it's out of our way.
Okay, so once we all get together, we've all brought a potluck dish too.
We have them in the kitchen for lunchtime because cutting strips, you burn a lot of
calories and you need to have lunch all set out before you.
We have our pieces of yardage ready to cut strips.
And as we started today, we talked about the corn and beans quilt.
The corn and beans block uses two sizes of triangle, large triangles and small triangles.
And we cut those in a cutting bee and I stitched them together into blocks.
And here's another block that is a wonderful block for multi-fabric quilts.
It's called Rocky Road.
And you can see looking at the block that it uses small squares, large squares, and
large triangles.
I want to show how you can cut all these different pieces from just two sizes of strips.
So let's start by cutting the strips that we're going to need.
Okay, all right.
We need to cut four and a half inch wide strips and two and a half inch wide strips.
And from the four and a half inch wide strips, we'll cut squares and triangles.
And from the two and a half inch wide strips, we'll just be cutting squares for this particular
block.
I'm going to cut a strip for you and a strip for me while I'm cutting.
Okay, I'll cut each fabric.
You're going to do the house flies fabric.
I'll start with that.
It's so much fun to work at a table with all your friends.
Sometimes we have several tables scattered around the room and talk just like in the
old days.
We catch up on everybody's family, what everybody's doing, the latest recipes, politics, religion,
you name it.
One of the things I enjoy about our quilting friends is that they're a variety of ages.
And it really helps give me a perspective on what phases of my life I have coming up
yet.
Right.
And it helps me, I feel like I can give people help in knowing what they have to expect with
three teenage children, which is the phase that I'm at.
If your child has just gone away to college, it's really helpful that somebody else's
went away a few years ago and you can.
Now you're doing the four and a half first and I'm doing the two and a half.
Okay, I'm doing the four and a half.
I've got a four and a half inch strip for you.
Put that over here.
And a four and a half inch strip for me.
And you know, sometimes you might think about getting together for the cutting bee and you
think, gee, I'm going to give up all my fabrics.
But it's just like one of those cookie exchanges that you have at Christmas time.
However many cookies and dozens of cookies you bring to the event, you're going to take
the same amount home.
So you're really not giving anything up.
I usually find that I take it home in a much more usable state than when I brought it in.
When it's in the laundry basket, when it's on the shelf in my closet, there's a built
in resistance not to make anything with that fabric.
It's too much trouble to get it out, it's too much trouble to press it, it's too much
trouble to cut it.
But oh boy, once you get the strips cut.
Once you have the strips cut, you have the ammunition ready to make a lot of different
kinds of quilts.
We have at least one friend that whenever she's cutting fabric, any kind of fabric,
she always cuts what, a one and a half inch strip off of every fabric.
And then a two and a half.
And a four and a half.
She just throws those in a bag, a quilt tote bag, and so when the time comes that she wants
to make log cabin or some kind of quilt that uses strips, she's got them all ready for
her.
I'm going to cut a four and a half inch strip.
And I have a little safety trick that I do.
One of the dangers in cutting with a rotary cutter is the danger of cutting your hand.
And there can be some very, very serious injuries if you slice along your fingers.
One of the tricks that I do to keep my fingers away from the cutter is to lay my hand down
with three fingers on the ruler and two fingers off the ruler.
This serves two purposes.
By having the two fingers off the ruler, it moves my hand out of the way of the cutter.
Those fingers also stabilize the ruler so it's less likely to shift while I'm cutting.
Then I start cutting back before the fabric and roll the cutter clear through.
That gives me a clean cut.
Always cutting away from yourself.
With those fingers off the ruler, really keep my hand over to the side.
I'm going to show that again.
Three fingers on, two fingers off.
That's the easy way to remember that.
When you're cutting, as we said, you need to fortify yourself.
We always have a bowl of chocolate candy so we reward ourselves every few strips so you
can keep your energy level high.
I'm going to dump this.
One of these is for me and one of these is for you.
Then I've got this and this one is for you.
This goes on your two and a half inch pile.
Let's show how to cut squares.
We have our strips cut.
We've been cutting, cutting, cutting for the morning.
We break for lunch.
We have our potluck lunch and then we decide in the afternoon, now we're going to take
our strips and cut them into really usable triangle sizes.
In this case, the ones that finish two inches and ones that finish four inches.
We can stack them.
Just show how to do the triangles and then I'll show how to do the squares.
I'm going to make big triangles.
I think I want to make big triangles.
I've got a light fabric here.
I think I'll open this out and I'll put a dark one in because with our rotary cutter,
we can stack and cut quite a few layers, really up to eight.
I really like six.
Since my strips are folded, I'm going to put out three different fabrics and I'm going
to align them so the edges are all nice and tidy.
Does that look good?
Looks good to me.
I'm going to use a special tool for cutting my triangles from my strip.
I'm going to put my tool on the... I'm going to fix this one up a little bit better.
Let's show that ruler a little bit.
Okay.
Talk about that ruler.
How that ruler works.
Okay.
The ruler is marked so that the sides of the ruler, the marks on the ruler, measure how
long the triangle is going to be when it's finished on that side.
The four inch mark on here means that the triangle will finish with a four inch leg.
The three inch mark then, the triangle will finish with a three inch leg.
At the tip of the ruler is a little mark across the end that you can use as a guide so that
you're really lopping off the triangles as you're cutting them and you're getting rid
of the excess seam allowance that would normally be at the end of that triangle.
One corner of the triangle is blunted.
That's why we can cut triangles from the same size strips that we're using for squares.
I'm going to position my ruler on here with my four inch mark along the edge.
I've got some uneven edges here.
My little way to avoid that instead of cutting that off first is I'm going to position my
ruler.
I'm going to cut... I'm a little bit off there.
Then I'm going to flip this stack.
They'll cling together because they're cotton fabrics.
I'm going to turn my ruler around and cut off that excess.
It looks like I'm cutting off a lot, but I knew that one of my strips was quite a bit
shorter.
There's my little stack of triangles.
Now I turn my ruler around.
I've got it turned around.
Position it.
Quickly, quickly, I'm getting this stack of wonderful triangles for Rocky Road.
So far you have some for you.
Now you're cutting mine.
Yes.
Okay.
Those are for me.
I'm going to move this down a little bit.
Put my ruler on.
Slice it.
When you're heading off for a cutting bee, be kind to yourself and put a new blade in
your rotary cutter.
Our rule of thumb is that we start with a new blade and hope that we can make it to
the noon hour with the same blade in.
We always laugh when we go to a cutting bee.
We're anticipating lunch and we know that it's time to eat lunch when our wrists ache
and our arms hurt from doing so much cutting.
And we're out of candy.
We're out of candy in our bowl.
I think I can get one more off of this.
Why don't I cut a square?
This block doesn't need a square, but I think I can get, I want a four and a half inch.
Some of these may be spoiled, but I have made quick work of this strip.
There might be a block come along where I can use squares too.
So this is your stack.
I'll give you the stack with four piles.
I'll keep the three piles.
And you have squares and triangles both.
And maybe, let me just move this back a little bit.
And a lot of times we use a pizza box.
All of us quilters eat a lot of pizza because we don't like to cook as much as we once
did.
And so you can always stop by your local pizzeria and ask for a brand new, clean, empty pizza
box.
And then when you're piling up your pieces, you can stack them in your box like this.
Hey, you want to stack your squares in there too?
This is an empty, yeah, this is a fresh box.
This is exciting.
We're just starting to fill this one from our cutting bay.
So I could maybe put my squares along one side and my triangles on along another side.
Some of our friends even cut out a piece of batting and lay it in the box so that the
pieces don't shift around.
That works pretty well.
But I may be needing these, so I'm going to take them back out and I'm going to hold
onto them.
And we'll keep our pizza box for filling up later.
Should we show how to make some blocks from the pieces that we've just cut?
We need to cut some squares, some small squares though, don't we?
Yeah, I'll cut some small squares.
So when I'm cutting squares from the strips, I'm going to repeat the same process that
Mary Ann used and I'm going to stack several strips on top of each other with the raw edges
down at the same end and align the raw edges of the strips.
I like to do that until I again have six layers of fabric that I'm going to be cutting through.
While you're cutting, I'm going to make us some more light triangles.
I'm going to lay my ruler down and I like to make sure that I'm cutting perpendicular
to the raw edge of the fabric.
So I align one of the horizontal lines on the ruler with the raw edge of my fabric.
That assures me that I am cutting perpendicular to the raw edge.
So I've cut a wide piece.
I'm going to turn that, come back, line it up for two and a half inches and trim it into
a square.
Once I've cut that first piece, then I can continue down my square, lining up the two
and a half inch mark on the ruler and I'm using the yellow vertical lines on the ruler
to guide me in marking my quarter of an inch.
So I would just work my way down that strip.
If I felt that I'd cut enough squares, I could come back in and use the triangle just as
Mary Ann did for the larger pieces.
I would lay the triangle down, the two and a half inch mark, cut along the side of the
triangle, get a set of triangles, come back in and cut again so that I can cut both triangles
and squares from my strip set.
Now let's see what you've got here.
We're going to need some more different, I think we should each cut a couple more squares
from the light fabrics because when we lay out our rocky roadblock, we're going to need
light and dark squares to make sure we have enough.
I think if I just do one stack here, it might be enough to lay our block.
We may need some more, but when we start laying the block out, if we need some more, I can
quickly cut some.
Two and a half, so there's that stack.
These are the same.
We've got to divide them up.
Those are for you, those are for me.
So we see what we've got here for our rocky roadblock.
Okay.
I'm going to start out by making groups of four squares sewn together into a four-patch
unit.
Because we're using so many different fabrics and we want a large variety of pieces in the
block that we're making, we're starting with single pieces rather than working from joined
strips.
So I lay out two dark squares and I want two light squares.
And I think there's one in that stack, yeah, the stripe.
That's with the four-patch.
So that will make the four-patch unit that we're going to use in the block.
For each block, there are three four-patch units.
We have them at the end of the first row, in the middle of the second row, and again
at the opposite end of the third row in the block.
So let's put this one here and then we'll need a light and dark triangle for this row.
And let's see what I've got here.
I'm going to move these over.
Okay.
Well, we've got, have we got any other light triangles?
I guess we'll have to use the fly fabric again there.
We don't really want to, but.
I'm going to switch them around.
Yeah.
Are you working on this row?
Yeah, that's fine.
Okay, then I'll turn this, I'll turn this.
That's good.
I'll put the fly fabric away from, we like to not repeat them very much if we can.
Why don't I show how to sew each of these components?
Okay, all right.
And we could use some of these four patches that, why don't I lay out some of the four
patches that we already have made for the middle row?
How about that?
Okay.
I'm going to pick up these pieces and move them over.
Can I get this out of your way?
That would be great.
Okay, good.
While you're laying out a block, I'm going to thread the sewing machine.
Okay.
It's so nice when we have a block already made to go by.
You know, one of the things I've hated about getting old is the fact that every year I
quilt it gets a little harder to thread the sewing machine.
I'm just going to join these into a pair of squares.
When I'm doing this, this is that kind of a mindless process.
So when I'm at home, I do it while I'm watching TV.
Listening to books on tape.
Listening to books on tape, while I'm listening to the radio, maybe while I'm sitting and
visiting with my family.
Sometimes they think I'm ignoring them, but they really don't know how I can sort of think
and sew all at the same time.
Oh, we're out of bobbin thread too.
So.
Okay.
That's all right.
What we can do is we can take this four patch and put this in position.
Right.
And while you rethread, why don't I go to the wall and show how we can put these blocks
together to make a rocky road quilt.
Sounds like a good plan.
Okay.
Here's some blocks that we've completed for the rocky road block.
As you can see, this is like the block we had laid out on the table.
It's a nine patch configuration put together in rows.
We have the four patches through the middle here.
We have the large squares on the corners of the block.
And the way we have put these six blocks together, we've turned them.
This block, the center section is going on a diagonal from upper left to lower right.
The next one we go from the lower left up to the upper right so that it forms kind of
a large X in here.
We're laying our blocks up on what we like to call a working wall.
And Liz and I each have a situation like this at home in our sewing room so that as we are
sewing a project, as we're working up blocks, we can lay them up on the wall and kind of
get a feel for the whole quilt and how it's going to look when it's completed.
Sometimes you simply pass through the room and you see that maybe you'd like to reposition
one block in a different place.
It makes it a lot of fun.
If you can find a place in your room, you can get a piece of insulation board, cover
it with a low loft batting, and put it up on the wall and lay your blocks up there.
For workshops, what we like to do is use a vinyl tablecloth and throw that up on the
wall and play around with the flannel side of that.
I've got my machine rethreaded.
Good, okay.
I think I'm back in operation again.
It seems to always happen at the worst times.
Yeah, at the worst times.
Always fun that when I'm demonstrating that's usually when I have operation errors.
Our students are always happy to see that happens to us too.
Let's talk about joining the pieces and then for a variety, why don't I sew the three rows
together?
We have rows.
Okay, should I remove these rows and bring... Well, we've got these already here.
So I'll give those to you.
I'll move this out of your way and stack these up for sewing later.
Our first piece in the row is two... I'm going to have this one.
Okay, you want that?
Great.
Is two triangles joined together to create a square.
That's used at the top of the row and at the end of the row.
In the middle section is those four squares joined together.
Now I'm going to lay out the three rows and flip the rows together with right sides
together and I'm going to feed that through the machine.
While she's sewing, let me just mention that what we generally do for our quilting or our
cutting bees is we really never bring our sewing machines to our cutting bees.
Usually we just bring our fabric, our potluck lunch, our bag of candy, our bushel basket
full of fabrics and we just cut and then when we go home, we figure out just how we're going
to combine those triangles for our block.
Great.
I have the two of the rows joined together for the block.
Then we'll just simply put this one... We'd simply add the third row onto the side.
Why don't we show some other blocks that can be made from a cutting bee?
There's a great variety of blocks that you can use, make using these same size pieces.
Some really great traditional style blocks.
This one uses the same size triangles and squares that we were working with and this
block is called, I have my note here, World's Fair.
We have our two and a half inch squares and our triangles.
This one's called Brave New World where we have the small triangles, the large triangles
and the small squares.
This one is Flock of Birds and here we have another one, Cat's Cradle and here's a beautiful
star block that also came out of a cutting bee.
We have so much fun at our cutting bees.
We look forward to them with great delight, getting together with friends just like we
always did, like they always did in the old days.
So we hope that you'll get together with your friends, your potluck lunch, your pizza box,
your rotary cutters and you'll have a cutting bee in the near future.
Today we'd like to share with you some suggestions and tips for keeping your sewing and your
work area much more organized.
Our first tip is from Shelly Granfield from Lorimer, Iowa.
In fact, all our tips today are from our quilting friends in Iowa.
Shelly suggests using a small plastic container such as a margarine container or a whip topping
container, any kind of little plastic tub like this that you can put on your table near
your sewing machine and those little threads, those little scraps, you can just drop them
in there and it saves you the time of putting them in the wastebasket and then when this
is full you can just dump it right into the trash.
Judy Allen from Nevada, Iowa suggests that you keep a wastebasket on both sides of you
while you're sewing, one to your right and one to your left.
Then no matter which way you drop threads, you're likely to hit the wastebasket.
Didn't she call that power sewing?
She called that power sewing.
Power sewing days.
She also suggested that when you go to a workshop and it's not convenient to take your wastebasket
along that you take some paper lunch bags and then turn the top over, take a piece of
masking tape, fasten that masking tape on the top of the bag.
Why don't I just tape that on the table?
Then tape that on the table.
You need to fluff the bag out a little bit.
You need to fluff the bag out.
And I've often had monitors at workshops, my student helper at workshops will bring
a whole supply of paper bags and we'll tape them on everybody's table and that's very
helpful.
Another great tip we have and I like to quote my friend Dolly Donhauser of Fairfield, Iowa.
She said one time, I was commenting to students, please trim your threads off your quilt.
I really like to advocate neat sewing.
And Dolly chimed in and said, yes, you don't want the back of your quilt to look like the
inside of a pumpkin.
So here we have a block, a kind of a hairy block showing you what a mess you can get
if you haven't trimmed your threads.
So it's a good idea to trim your threads as you go along when you're sewing your patch
work.
I like to trim off points.
I like to pay attention to my seams, make sure they aren't twisted.
See we have a twisted seam here too.
Well it's tempting to think that you can do it all later.
Right.
But it's really a chore at that point.
You aren't going to.
You aren't ever going to come back and clean the whole thing up.
It would just be too terribly boring.
So keep your sewing neat.
Here's the good block.
That's the bad block.
Here's the good block and the back side of it is just as neat and tidy as the front side
is.
This is what you get if you clip as you go.
Clip as you go so you have no pumpkins on the back of your quilt.
And we'd like to thank all our Iowa friends for sending us their tips.
And we invite you to send us your quilt making tips.
If we use them on so many quilts, we'll mail you an autographed copy of our Quilter's Complete
Guide.
Send your tips to Quilting Tips, So Many Quilts, P.O. Box 171, Winterset, Iowa, 50273.
We hope you enjoyed today's program.
Please join Mary Ann and me next week for So Many Quilts.
The patterns and instructions for most of the quilts shown on today's program are in
the book Quick Quilts from the Heart by Liz Porter and Mary Ann Fons, published by Oxmoor
House and Leisure Arts.
This book is available at your local quilt shop, sewing shop, or bookstore, or by calling
1-800-SO-MENY.
Or send your check for $19.95 plus $3.50 shipping and handling to Book Offer.
So Many Quilts, P.O. Box 9320, Des Moines, Iowa, 50306.
Funding for So Many Quilts was provided by Oxmoor House, publishers of fine quilt, sewing,
craft, home decorating, and cooking books.
Leisure Arts, a leading publisher and distributor of quality needlework and craft publications
and products.
Bernina of America, delivering sewing technology and education to sewers worldwide.
And Omnigrid, manufacturer of quilting rulers and Omnimat rotary cutting mats.
Omnigrid means versatility, visibility, and accuracy.