- Hi, I'm Deanna Springer.
On behalf of Nancy Zieman Productions and PBS Wisconsin,
thank you for joining us
for this special educational presentation.
Please add your questions for the presenter in the chat
and stay tuned for a Q&A after the lecture.
Then be sure to explore everything else
The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show has to offer,
including beautiful quilt exhibits
and an interactive vendor mall.
Thank you and enjoy.
[bright music]
- Hello, my name is Donna Bularz
and I am a BERNINA longarm expert.
I also work and teach at Bigsby's Sewing Center
in Elm Grove.
And in addition to that,
I do a lot of longarm quilting for customers from home.
Today, I'm going to share with you
a really cool idea I came up with.
It's a bench pillow, and on the bench pillow,
I couched the word "Summer" and when I was making it,
I was trying to figure out how can I do this on a longarm.
And so today's class, I'm going to be sharing with you,
step by step, a series of videos
on how I created this really cool bench pillow.
All you're gonna need is a BERNINA Q24 with Q-matic.
And if you come see me at Bigsby's,
I will be sure to help you get yours.
All right, so now you can see that I'm at the computer screen.
And the first thing I've done is I've set my safe area
and we can talk about that at the end.
I'm going to assume we all know how to do that.
And I'm going to go down here
and I'm going to select the rectangle.
It is now on my screen and I'm gonna move it
so that you can see it, right, there it is.
And if I go over to this icon here
on the lower right-hand side, I can resize this rectangle,
and I'm gonna do it using my keypad.
And I'm going to not maintain the ratio
because I know that my pillow form is 16 by 38.
So I want to make that pillow form just a little bit bigger.
So I'm going to pick 40 inches across and click okay.
And then I'm going to call it 18 inches tall and click okay.
And when I apply that change and hit the green check mark,
you can see that I have created, I'm moving it here.
You're gonna see two red boxes.
I'll unclick that so it looks blue.
There, that rectangle, if you can see it,
represents the top of the pillow.
So now I'm going to select one of the edge-to-edge designs
that is in my file folder.
And if I double click that it came onto the screen,
and I'm going to adjust my camera
just a little bit here for you.
So I'm going to fill this area with this edge-to-edge
by simply hitting the plus key
until I fill that blue rectangle.
Now I need more rows.
So I'm going to go here and I'm going to add
a second row and a third row.
And I don't like the spacing that I see here.
So I'm going to bring things in closer.
I'm doing this all with my mouse and this looks pretty nice.
I'm gonna say, "Okay."
So here it is, it's bigger than my pillow top,
but not to worry.
I can trim it by simply selecting my scissors.
I'm going to make a horizontal cut right
at the top of my pillow,
slightly above the top of my pillow.
You can see the top has turned black.
And when I hit okay, that's gone.
When I select the design again and choose my scissor,
I could do a vertical cut, and I'm going to go just outside
my blue rectangle and everything that's in black
is going to disappear.
I don't want that, so I'm going to invert it.
So just the outside edge is removed
and then I'm going to click okay.
I'm going to come over to the other side, the left-hand side,
which you might not be able to see right now,
but I'm going to do the same thing.
I'm going to take my scissors.
I'm going to make a vertical cut just larger
than that rectangle that's on my screen.
There it is.
It's long at the bottom, but I can chop that off
when I get down to that roll.
Effectively, I have created an edge-to-edge,
and on my pillow sample,
prior to putting the "Summer" on it,
I did a background quilting design,
and all I have on my frame is one layer of batting
and then the pillow top.
Once I complete stitching this edge-to-edge
over the rectangle that is the front
or the face of my pillow,
I'm going to come back and add "Summer."
So I'm gonna get the machine set up
and show you a little bit of stitching
and I will meet you back here soon.
[machine whirring]
All right, my machine is almost done
stitching out our edge-to-edge.
You can see I stitched out the rectangle,
which represents the top of our pillow in a different color.
So that later when I want to cut it out,
I can see exactly where to cut it.
And as soon as it has done finishing this last little bit
of the third row of our edge-to-edge,
I'll meet you back at the computer
and we'll look at how we couch the word "Summer"
on top of our pillow.
Now that I've finished stitching out
the edge-to-edge on the top of my pillow,
I'm going to show you how I created
the couching word "Summer"
in Art & Stitch and brought it to the front.
So at the bottom of our screen in Q-matic,
we have this colorful button and if I click it,
it will open Art & Stitch,
which is a digitizing software located within Q-matic.
And it allows you to edit designs
and create your own designs.
So down here,
I'm going to just click on the TrueType fonts.
And I'm going to open up the screen that allows me
to type in the word "Summer,"
and then I'm going to select my font,
which happens to be Lucinda Handwriting.
And then I made it as big as it would go, 72.
I'm gonna click okay and okay.
You can see my word "Summer."
So there are a couple problems with this.
First of all, it's an embroidery design.
And I would like to convert this to a quilting outline.
So I'm going to go to the upper right-hand corner
and I'm going to unclick the fill and click apply.
Now you can see that I have the outline
of the word "summer."
I still have a few things that I have to clean up here.
You can see where the U and the M
and the M and the E and the R overlap.
There are these extra stitches in there.
So in embroidery, they kinda sorta
get covered up by your satin stitches.
When we do couching, we want those to disappear.
So in order to do that, I have to combine these in a way
that will eliminate these extra stitches.
So I'm going to apologize.
My computer does work a little slow here in my basement,
but I'm going to walk you through how I do it.
I'm going to select the first letter, which is the U,
I'm going to hold down the control button
and select the next, the M.
So you can see I have both of them combined.
And what I need to do is I need to right click
when I see a picture of a hand,
and here's where my computer is running a little slow here
because of my internet connection in the basement.
But when I see the hand on one of them,
eventually when I right click, I will get this pop-up.
And it says "transform artwork."
When I go to unite and click that one time,
you can see that the overlap here has been removed.
So I'm going to finish that.
I'm going to take this portion now,
I'm gonna hold down the control key,
and I'm gonna select the next M.
And so when I get the hand,
if you were doing this in Art & Stitch on your laptop
prior to coming to your Q-matic, this would go lickety-split.
I just happen to be in a basement here
where my connection is slow.
So I right click, go down to transform artwork,
click unite, and you can see now
I've eliminated that area of an overlap.
So I'm just going to continue this.
I'm gonna hold down the control key, select the E.
And when my computer catches up with my right click,
I will transform artwork.
I will click unite, and that has been removed.
I'm going to do it one more time.
Hold down my control key, click the R.
And when my computer catches up,
I will transform artwork and unite.
The one last thing I need to do is fix this S.
It is not connected, so I'm going to highlight it,
and I'm just arbitrarily grabbing a corner
and making it larger.
And this is something I just did visually.
And then I'm going to move this S
so that it slightly overlaps the U.
The key to all of this is they have to kinda sorta
overlap, then I'm going to hold down my control key,
select the rest of the word.
And when my computer catches up and lets me go,
transform artwork and unite.
Now I have one continuous stitch out.
So I'm gonna end my video here now
and I will see you back at the machine.
So when I saved this file as "summer,"
it came back over to Q-matic,
and this is exactly how it looked.
And so it is a stitchable file.
So what I did is I just kinda took it up here
and I plopped it in the middle of my pillow top.
And you can see to me, it looks a little too small,
so I'm just gonna take it down here.
I'm going to go over to my resize button
and I'm just going to pull this till it looks kinda nice.
I have to make sure that it can still fit
in the middle of my pillow.
So visually, you can see I've stitched out
the background already.
The only thing that's going to stitch right now
is what's highlighted in red, it is selected.
So at this point, I am going to cue up this design
and I am going to stitch it out
and I will switch my video over to my iPad.
And I will show you the stitch out of the "Summer."
So I'm standing at the machine and I wanted to show you
a few different feet.
This is the number 43 couching foot,
and it is the standard foot for couching.
All of the feet are interchangeable
between the longarm and the BERNINA domestic machine.
So this is typically my first choice.
Also, many of you recognize the number 72 ruler foot.
And on the bottom, I had put on one of the couching inserts,
and these little inserts come as a pack of three.
They are little discs that fit on the bottom of the foot
and they come in three different sizes.
So the hole on the bottom of the foot
can be three different sizes.
And so that can accommodate thinner threads
and thicker threads.
Today, I happen to be using the number 26 embroidery foot.
It happens to be the right size for this yarn,
and so that is the choice for today.
Any of the feet that can support and allow the thread,
the yarn to flow through freely could be used for couching.
So it's not just one size fits all.
I am going to go ahead and send the design over
from Q-matic and the machine is going to move
to its start position.
I'll get these feet out of the way here.
When it's ready, when it's done thinking,
it's going to move to the start
of where I want "summer" to start.
So I'm gonna readjust my camera here for you.
And so it has dragged my yarn and my thread.
So I am just going to say, yes,
I'd like to pull up that bobbin thread,
and I'm gonna pull it out from underneath,
just like I would for regular quilting.
And I'm going to hit start.
My job is to just keep the thread yarn moving freely.
[machine whirring]
I'm gonna hit pause here for a moment
and just slow things down and then resume stitching.
[machine whirring]
So it's going to take a minute or two to stitch this out,
and I will meet you back when we get to the end
and I'll show you how I'm going to tie this off
and finish everything out.
[machine whirring]
I advanced and rolled my fabric up
so I have a nice, new, clean spot that
I can do my stitching out.
And what I want to do now
is make the back two pieces of the quilt.
So I'm going to go back down here to my design center,
and I'm gonna double click on the rectangle
and you can see that it has shown up on the screen.
And that little X represents where my sewing machine is.
So if I were to move my machine,
which I'm doing right now, you can't see it,
the design would move wherever I needed it to go.
I just want to play with it.
And so I'm gonna unconnect it by clicking on this little hand,
I disconnected it from the sewing machine,
and now I can move it and do what I want with it,
just with my finger,
this is a touch screen, or with my mouse.
So the first thing I want to do is resize this.
So that's that button in the lower right-hand corner.
When I click on it, I am going to use my key pad
and I'm going to not maintain the ratio, right,
because I'm making rectangles, not squares.
And so I know that I want this to be
at least 22 inches wide.
Now that's really gonna give us a lot of extra room
for trimming up later.
And we know that from the front that we want it 18 inches high.
So I've said 22 by 18.
And when I click apply,
you can see that this is one half of the back of my quilt.
And I'm gonna just say okay.
Now I can take that and I can move that up.
Remember, the big red rectangle you're looking at,
this one right here,
represents the area that I told my machine
I can safely sew, it's called my safe area.
So I need two halves to the back because I have inserted
a zipper in the back of my pillows.
So I'm going to stitch two separate halves,
and then I'm going to cut it all out with my rotary cutter
and simply insert the zipper and then sew it all together.
And with this size, 18 by 22 on the two halves,
when we get to the part of cutting it out,
you'll be able to see that we have plenty left over.
So you don't have to worry that, oh, this is tight.
So I'm gonna take this one design
and I'm gonna go up here and I'm gonna duplicate it.
And I'm going to move it up side by side with the first one.
And I'm gonna move this a little closer over this way.
And I could also do this with my key pad.
Again, this is completely a touch screen,
which is really nice.
I'm trying to keep my fingers out of the way here.
So what I'm going to do next
is I'm gonna stitch these two squares out.
So it's kind of like I have the outline
of where I want to place my edge-to-edge quilting.
So I'm going to pause now,
and I'm going to get that stitched out
in a separate color,
and then we're gonna go right back in
and we're gonna create another edge-to-edge that covers this.
So I will see you in a moment.
[machine whirring]
I finished stitching out the two rectangles
that represent the back of my pillow,
and I'm going to now double click from my design center,
the looped flowers design that we used on the front.
And I'm just going to place that on my screen
so that I'm covering both of the squares,
and I'm going to fill the screen
and I'm going to create an edge-to-edge like I did
in the first, on the front by selecting three rows.
And I'm going to adjust my vertical spacing and bring it in
so it looks pleasing to my eye, and I'm going to say okay.
I don't care that I'm overlapping the quilting here
because I'm going to show you in a photo
that I stitched out the rectangles in a different color
so I have a cutting line.
I could have just sewn an edge-to-edge
over this big piece of fabric and then cut it out
to fit my pillow, but I wanted the cheater lines.
And so I stitched those out first in a different color.
So now I'm gonna stitch this out,
but in order to do that, I have to trim off the extra edges.
So this'll be just like we did in the first for the front.
I'm gonna go up here, and you can see,
this is the start of my rectangle.
So I'm going to trim it right there.
I'm going to select this design
and I'm going to trim it horizontally,
and I'm gonna trim it right at that edge
and I'm gonna hit okay.
I'm also going to select it by clicking on it.
And I'm gonna trim it along this line right here,
which is the left-hand side.
And that will be a vertical cut.
So I'm going to go just outside the line of my rectangle.
I'm going to chop that all off.
And now I'm going to go to the other edge
of my pillow and here's my outside line
right here of my rectangles.
So when I click on my design, it turns red.
I'm going to trim it vertically.
And this time, I need to invert it so that I'm going to cut
everything off on the outside, not from the left side.
If I didn't invert it, that's what it would look like.
So I wanna invert that and just cut this extra off.
For the front, I didn't do it.
I decided I would do it this time to show you on the bottom,
when I click on the design,
this is the bottom of my rectangles.
So I'm also going to do a trim here, a horizontal trim,
just outside of that.
And again, I don't want the top part to be missing.
I want the bottom part to be cut off.
So when I click okay and I zoom back out,
you can see that this is the design
that's going to stitch out.
When I go down here and hit play,
my machine is going to turn the design green, green for go.
And it's gonna ask me,
where do I want to start stitching?
Of course, I want to start at the start point.
If I had broken a thread, or if I had run out of bobbin,
I could just line my machine kinda close
to where it happened.
And if I selected at the closest point on the design,
my machine would automatically move where it needed to
to begin stitching again.
So I'm gonna say at the start point,
and you can see it's thinking down here,
and after it's done thinking, my machine,
which is represented up here by this little crosshair
is going to move to the start position,
and you can see it move on the screen just a little bit.
And it's asking me,
do I want to pull my bobbin thread up
and secure stitches using the sew head?
So I am going to pause this.
I'm gonna go over and get my machine stitching.
At the machine, I'm about ready
to start stitching out the backside of my pillow,
and you can see my sew head is asking me,
would I like to pull up my bobbin thread
and tie a knot when I start?
And I'm just gonna go over and say yes,
please bring up my bobbin thread.
So when I pull that, I have both threads.
And when I click the green check mark,
my machine will start stitching.
[machine whirring]
Trim my tails.
And I will see you back in a few minutes
after this is done stitching.
[machine whirring]
Now that we finished stitching out our pillow top and back,
we're going to remove it from the frame.
So if you remember from my earlier videos,
we stitched out the outline of the top and the back
in a different color thread.
So when I unpin it from the frame,
and I'm talking about the batting and the top right now,
when we unpin it and we take it to our cutting table,
with our rotary cutter and our mat and our ruler,
we can simply cut along those pink lines.
That way, I don't have to measure the 40 by 18
and the 18 by 22 pieces
that we stitched completely on the longarm.
So I'm going to cut out all three pieces,
and I'm going to insert a photo here
and show you how it looks on the back.
It's a very simple construction.
I take the two halves of the back and I will put the zipper
between both halves.
When I do that, I'm going to add
a little tab of fabric at the top
and a little tab of fabric at the bottom.
And I'm going to stitch down both sides.
When I stitch that together,
I will have a panel about the same size as the top.
Now, before I sew the entire pillow together,
I have to open the zipper because
what will happen if I don't open the zipper
before I sew the pillow together?
That's right, I won't be able to open up the pillow.
So at this point, I have to open my zipper.
I'm going to put right sides together
and you can pin if you want,
but I used a one half-inch seam allowance,
and I simply stitched around the entire outside
of the pillow.
One other tip and trick that I will share with you,
and you don't have to use it if you don't want to,
but I did, I tapered my seams when I came to the corners.
That way, I didn't have a pillow that had wings on the end.
You can choose to do that or not.
If you just sew it straight around the outside edges,
you might want to stuff a little batting up
into the upper corners.
That way, your pillow will be nice and firm
and fluffy all the way around,
but in the photo that you see of the pillow I created,
I did taper the edges so that my entire pillow
is really stuffed tight with that pillow form.
So once I have sewn around the outside edges,
I simply flip it inside out,
and I put the pillow form in, that's the end of the story.
The great thing about this project
is it was done entirely on the longarm.
Okay, well maybe two seams,
one on each side with your regular sewing machine,
but the sky is the limit with the creativity
that you can come up with on your BERNINA Q24, Q20, or Q16.
And this is just one of the projects
that I'm sharing with you today.
As I was creating this project, I did have one more idea.
I wondered what would project look like if I had actually
put an appliqué for the word "summer"
and then couched around the outside edges.
So I'm going to share a photo with you of a sample
that I did at the store at Bigsby's.
And I thought it turned out really quite nice.
I think with COVID,
it's been extremely difficult to find really colorful,
bright yarns to work with.
So I really wanted that to stand out on the black fabric,
and you will see all I did was stitch down the word "summer"
right on top of that pink fabric.
And I increased my stitches per inch
so that I had a really tight stitch
so that when I used my embroidery scissors
to snip around the outside edges,
I wouldn't accidentally pull those stitches out.
And then I did just like I did in the video,
I put the yarn on my foot and stitched around the outside,
and you cannot see that raw edge appliqué.
And I thought that was really cool,
and I'll have to have a few pillows like that.
And so I used the word "summer."
You could use winter, you could use fall,
you could make a small pillow.
You can make a hexagon-sized pillow, the sky's the limit,
your BERNINA and your Q-matic are the key.
So please come and see me at Bigsby's.
I'd be happy to show you how to use one
and get you set up at home with your very own.
Thank you.
>> HI.
I'M DEANNA SPRINGER.
THANK YOU FOR JOINING US FOR THE
GREAT WISCONSIN QUILT SHOW AND
FOR TUNING IN FOR LONGARM
QUILTED SUMMER BENCH PILLOW WITH
DONNA BULARZ.
WE'RE SO GLAD TO HAVE YOU HERE
FOR THE LIVE Q&A.
>> HI.
IT'S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU.
>> SO GREAT TO HAVE YOU HERE AND
WATCHING YOUR LECTURE WITH YOUR
PILLOW AND WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH
A LONGARM MACHINE IS CREATING
SOME QUESTIONS.
SO I'LL START SHARING THOSE WITH
YOU.
A VIEWER IN THE CHAT IS ASKING
CAN I CREATE MY OWN STITCHING
PATTERNS?
>> ABSOLUTELY.
IF YOU WANT TO CREATE AN EDGE TO
EDGE DESIGN, YOU WOULD DO THAT
IN ART AND STITCH.
AND YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE SAME
START AND END POINT WHEN YOU'RE
CREATING AN EDGE TO EDGE.
OR YOU COULD CREATE A TRIANGLE
OR A BLOCK THAT STARTS AND ENDS
AT THE SAME EXACT SPOT.
SO, YES, YOU CAN DO ALL OF THAT.
>> AMAZING.
AND A VIEWER IS ASKING WHAT
OTHER PROJECTS HAVE YOU MADE
WITH THIS TECHNIQUE?
>> WELL, I'VE MADE A LOT,
ACTUALLY.
I'VE MADE SOME CHRISTMAS CARDS.
ACTUALLY, THAT'S AN IDEA SHARED
WITH ME FROM ONE OF THE
CUSTOMERS FROM THE STORE.
AND SHE DOES APPLIQUE.
SO I HAVE DONE THAT.
I'VE MADE HANDBAGS, TOTE BAGS
AND COMPLETELY ON THE FRAME,
WHICH YOU HAVE TO COME TO A
CLASS TO SEE THAT, BUT REALLY
THE SKY IS THE LIMIT WITH WHAT
YOU CAN DO.
YOU CAN PIECE IT RIGHT ON THE
FRAME, ALSO.
YOU CAN HAVE YOUR FLIP AND SEW
AND HAVE A QUILT COMPLETELY DONE
AND QUILTED AT THE END BY THE
TIME YOU TAKE IT OFF.
>> AND IT'S SO FREEING.
IT'S LIKE THERE IS NO MACHINE
BODY IN THE WAY, GETTING IN YOUR
WAY, SO YOU HAVE ALL THE EDGES
AND THE SIDES OPEN SO YOU CAN
REALLY GET CREATIVE.
>> THAT 24 INCHES IS SWEET!
AND THE MACHINE GLIDES LIKE ICE.
SO IF YOU HAVEN'T TRIED A
BERNINA Q24, COME AND SEE ME,
FOR SURE.
>> WE HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS
COMING IN.
A VIEWER IS ASKING WHAT DO I
NEED TO KNOW TO GET STARTED WITH
THIS PROCESS?
>> WELL, YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT
KIND OF SPACE YOU HAVE IN YOUR
BASEMENT.
SO THE FRAME COMES IN 9, 12 AND
13-FOOT LENGTHS.
SO YOU KIND OF SORT OF PICK
WHERE IT'S GOING TO GO IN YOUR
HOME AND THEN WE GET THE MACHINE
THERE AND WE TEACH YOU THE
BASICS.
REALLY A LONGARM IS NOTHING BUT
A STRAIGHT STITCH MACHINE.
IT'S YOUR CREATIVITY THAT BRINGS
IT TO LIFE.
AND THE BERNINA REALLY IS HANDS
DOWN THE BEST MACHINE AND YOU'LL
BE UP AND RUNNING FASTER THAN
ANY OTHER.
SO GIVE US A CALL.
AND I CAN HELP YOU FOR SURE.
>> THAT LEADS TO ANOTHER
QUESTION THAT'S COMING IN.
SHE'S ASKING WHAT IS DIFFERENT
ABOUT THE BERNINA Q24 THAN OTHER
LONGARM MACHINES?
>> WELL, QUITE A BIT.
NUMBER ONE IS THE DOMESTIC
SEWING MACHINE NEEDLE.
SO THE SAME NEEDLE YOU USE IN
YOUR STANDARD SEWING MACHINE IS
THE SAME NEEDLE THAT'S IN LA
LONGARM.
SO IF YOU NEED A LEATHER NEEDLE,
THAT REALLY CUTS DOWN THAT PUP
ERUPPERTHREAD TENSION GETS YOU UP AND
RUNNING.
THERE'S MANY MORE I CAN SHARE
WITH YOU IF YOU WANT.
>> THANKS FOR SHARING THAT TIP
ABOUT THE NEEDLES.
THAT'S ALWAYS HANDY, THE SAME
NEEDLES WE USE IN OUR REGULAR
SEWING MACHINE WE CAN USE IN
Q24.
MARLENE ASKS WHEN YOU SAY TAPER
THE PILLOW CORNERS ARE YOU
MAKING THE SEAM ALLOWANCES WIDER
OR NARROWER AT THE CORNER?
>> WIDER.
SO IF I USE A STANDARD, I WOULD
GET PEEKY POINTS.
SO IT'S ACTUALLY TAKING A BIGGER
BITE AT THE CORNER WILL GIVE YOU
A MORE SQUARE EDGE LOOK.
úOTHERWISE YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE
YOUR PILLOW -- YOUR PILLOW FORM
DOESN'T GO UP INTO THOSE CORNERS
ENOUGH.
SO I TAKE A BIGGER BIETD.
>> GREAT TIP.
GREAT TIP.
THANK YOU.
ANOTHER QUESTION, WHAT PRESSER
FOOT DID YOU USE WHEN YOU WERE
STITCHING THE WORD "SUMMER"?
>> I USED THE BERNINA 43 FOOT.
THAT CAN GO ON YOUR REGULAR
BERNINA.
AND IT HAS A HOLE IN THE SIDE
THAT YOU CAN FEED THE YARN
THROUGH.
SO WHEN I'M SEWING THAT WORD,
THE NEEDLE IS ACTUALLY STITCHING
ON TOP OF THE YARN.
IT'S DRAGGING THE YARN AROUND
INTO THE WORD "SUMMER" AND IT'S
STITCHING IT DOWN AS IT GOES.
SO GREAT FOOT.
>> THAT LEADS TO OUR NEXT
QUESTION.
WHAT IS COUCHING?
CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN BY
COUCHING?
>> SO ON A REGULAR SEWING
MACHINE IF YOU WERE GOING TO
COUCH SOMETHING, TYPICALLY YOU
WOULD LAY DOWN SOME YARNS OR
FIBER AND YOU'D USE A ZIGZAG AND
YOU'VE COVER THOSE.
YOU'D COUCH THEM.
AND SO BERNINA CAME UP WITH THE
43-FOOT THAT CAN BE USED IN
EMBROIDERY, FREE MOTION AND ON
THE LONGARM.
AND SO IT ACTUALLY PULLS THE
YARN THROUGH THE SIDE AND THEN
IT'S FEEDING THE YARN AND THE
NEEDLE INSTEAD OF COUCHING OVER
THE TOP OF IT WITH A ZIGZAG IT'S
GOING DOWN THROUGH THE CENTER OF
WHATEVER FIBER YOU PICK.
SO I'M USING A FUZZY YARN THERE,
BUT YOU COULD USE ALL DIFFERENT
KINDS OF ACCORDING AND THINGS
LIKE THAT TO COUCH.
>> GREAT TO KNOW.
THANK YOU.
OUR NEXT QUESTION IS ABOUT THE
BATTING.
WHAT QUILT BATTING DO YOU
RECOMMEND FOR THIS PROJECT?
>> WELL, FOR THIS PROJECT I
WOULD USE A HIGHER LOFT.
I USED WOOL.
IT WAS SOMETHING THAT I HAD.
BUT IF I HAD A THICKER
POLYESTER, I WOULD DEFINITELY DO
THAT.
IN A PILLOW I WANT TO SEE THE
OOMPAH.
SO I WOULD CHOOSE THAT.
IF I WERE CHOOSING A FLAT
PROJECT LIKE A WALL HANGING I'D
USE A FLATTER BATTER.
>> THE NEXT QUESTION IS ABOUT
THE QUILT BEHIND YOU.
PLEASE TELL US ABOUT THE QUILT
HANGING BEHIND YOU.
>> OH, NO!
I KNEW THAT THAT WOULD COME UP.
SO THIS QUILT IS A KIT.
I THINK IT'S CALLED "FRESCO."
AND IT'S ABOUT FIVE YEARS OLD, I
THINK.
AND IT'S ALL BA BATIQUES.
IT'S QUITE LABOR INTENSIVE.
I'D LIKE TO TAKE FULL CREDIT FOR
IT.
I QUILTED IT.
I HELPED MAKE IT.
IT WAS A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT
FROM EVERYONE AT THE STORE.
SO I THINK WE MAY HAVE A KIT
THERE YET IN CASE ANYBODY WANTED
ONE.
>> WELL, IT'S TRULY IS
BEAUTIFUL.
>> YEAH.
>> THE NEXT QUESTION, DONNA, IS
HOW DID YOU GET STARTED WITH
SEWING?
>> WELL, I'M SELF-TAUGHT.
I STARTED WHEN I WAS LITTLE.
SOMEONE GAVE ME -- MY GODFATHER
ACTUALLY GAVE ME A HAND
STITCHING CRELE SET.
THEN I STARTED WITH THAT WALMART
$99 SPECIAL ONE DAY, AND I
DECIDED TO SIGN UP FOR A CLASS
AND I REALIZED EVERYONE WAS
SEWING ON A MUCH NICER MACHINE
AND WAS GETTING MUCH BETTER
RESULTS.
AND SO THAT'S HOW I GOT INTO IT.
I STARTED AND I SAW WHAT OTHER
PEOPLE WERE DOING AND I THOUGHT
I WANT TO DO THAT.
SO I'VE BEEN DOING IT A LONG
TIME AND I LOVE IT.
>> IT SHOWS.
YOUR PROJECT IS REALLY FUN.
AND IT SHOWS EVERYONE WHAT YOU
CAN DO WITH A LONGARM.
IT'S NOT JUST FOR MACHINE
QUILTING.
BEDSIZE QUILTS.
YOU CAN DO SO MUCH MORE.
THANK YOU FOR OPENING OUR EYES
TO THAT.
WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOUR
OTHER PROJECTS YOU'LL BE MAKING
WITH THIS TECHNIQUE.
TELL US HOW WE CAN GET IN TOUCH
WITH YOU.
>> WELL, YOU CAN GET IN TOUCH
WITH ME AT BIGSBY'S SEWING
CENTER IN ELM GROVE, WISCONSIN.
SO THAT'S A SUBURB OF MILWAUKEE.
WE HAVE A WEBSITE,
BIGSBY'SSEWINGCENTER.COM.
YOU CAN CALL THERE AT THE STORE.
IF YOU YOU GOOGLE IT, YOU'LL GET THE
PHONE NUMBER.
BUT THAT IS THE BEST WAY TO GET
IN TOUCH WITH ME.
AND SUE AND ROSEMARY AND DONNA,
THE OWNERS, EVERYONE THERE IS
REALLY KNOWLEDGEABLE AND HAPPY
TO HELP.
>> WELL, THANK YOU FOR SHARING
THAT AND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND
EXPERTISE TODAY AND ALL YOUR
INSPIRATION.
AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO
CONNECTING WITH YOU THROUGH THE
BIGSBY SITE AND YOU CAN CONNECT
WITH DONNA THROUGH
quiltshow.com AND CLICK ON THE
VENDOR MALL.
THANKS SO MUCH FOR BEING HERE
TODAY, DONNA.
>> THANK YOU.
THANKS FOR HAVING ME.
HI, EVERYBODY.
>> IT'S SO GREAT HAVING EVERYONE
TUNING IN THIS WEEK FOR THE
GREAT WISCONSIN QUILT SHOW AND
BE SURE TO HEAD OVER TO
quiltshow.com AND TAKE IN ALL
THE BEAUTIFUL QUILT EXHIBITS,
TOO.
ENJOY.
- Deanna Springer: Thanks again for joining us.
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