Tamara Leberer started her fiber arts exploration learning knitting, embroidery and sewing before settling on quilting. Her journey introduced her to other fibers, and though her early quilting was traditional, she was inspired by many other fabrics and wanted to work with them. Her quilting has transitioned into silk fusion, a process that binds silk fibers into a material that resembles felt, though it can be whisper-thin or as thick as leather. Tamara teaches you the process for making silk fusion (and the tools needed), and includes both Alex and Ricky in her demo. She shows how to work carefully with the wisps of silk roving (slightly twisted strands). She layers the fibers, then stabilizes them with a soapy wash. Once dried, she builds a free-form mosaic design with her newly created fabric. Tamara shows you how to fill in your design, and how to work with any negative spaces.

Have you ever wanted to preserve a child’s illustration? Alex shows how to take a drawing, transfer it to fabric, and create an embroidered memento. Guest Designer Jill Finley then displays some of her quilting creations, which she deems traditional, but makes with fresh, clear colors, white backgrounds and accents of black. Jill loves to add appliqué vines, and she shows you a clever and easy method. You will learn how to “lick ‘n’ fix” a wrinkle, to appliqué a leaf point using the needle turn technique, and easy methods for making a border with inverted and convex curves. Jill then turns her attention to bias tape, showing how you make it and use it. Appliqué can soften the look and create additional interest in your quilt projects.

Ricky starts off the show by teaching you how to add extra dimension to your quilts with decorative stitches using an embroidery circle attachment. He also demonstrates free-motion couched yarn stitching, which does the quilting at the same time! Guest Jane LaFazio came to quilting with a graphic design degree and a passion for sketching and watercolor. She started stitching through paper and gradually made the transition to fabric. Jane shows you how to create your own cloth by adding surface designs to fabric using a stencil and acrylic ink. She then uses the same stencil as a template for stitching to add more texture and interest. Using Prefelt as a base (a partially-formed base material that is used for layering fabrics and designs), Jane adds bits of wool roving, sheer fabric, and ribbon creating a “sandwich” of elements that are felted together. Further embellishments include beads, sequins and whatever else comes to mind.

Sherry Rogers-Harrison doesn’t make appliqué quilts; she creates whole cloth quilts that look like appliqué using fabric paints and stitching. She loves seeing the reactions of people when they realize how her work is done. Starting with a design transferred to white fabric and stitched to create a complex design, she uses paint to create the look of different pieces of fabric. She discusses the tools she uses and shares a clever trick for using an extra-fine paint pen to create the look of stitching. TQS also visits the studio of Jean Ann Wright, who makes log cabin blocks look curvy. She shows you how to use various sizes of fabric strips and finished blocks to create the illusion of curved designs.                                   

Learn how to give a "retro feel" to your quilt as Alex demonstrates how you can bind a quilt with a Zigzag edge without using bias-cut fabric. Our featured artist, Barbara Yates Beasley, was introduced to quilting with a stack of quilt tops she inherited from her mother. Her quilting career might have ended with finishing the quilts, but a friend sent her to an animal portrait class and she was hooked. A lifelong lover of animals, Barbara says, "It is all about capturing the expression of the animal and finding its soul, that makes a photograph or a quilt look realistic." She demonstrates how to create a pattern from a photograph with clear plastic film and a Sharpie. Using a muslin base and silk fabrics for the eyes, she adds shadows and sparkle with other threads and fuses fabric pieces into place to create her animal portraits.

When Allie Aller began quilting in high school, she started with the basics, moved on to broderie perse, followed by landscapes, and then found her true passion with crazy quilting. With a large collection of doilies, feedsacks, petticoats and other antique textiles, she shares with you a unique way to give them new life, turning them into quilt blocks. Allie then combines machine stitches with embroidery, paint and beads, making it all look like hand stitching. Our second artist, Barbara H. Cline, a Mennonite, considers her work to be traditional, but with flair. She tackles difficult blocks and finds ways to simplify them. She demonstrates her technique for taking apart a block using templates, then reassembling the block in a much easier way. As the author of four quilting books, she definitely knows what she’s doing!

The show begins with Ricky sharing a quick-and-easy method for backing a small quilt top, which cleverly renders the backing seam almost invisible. Quilting friends Lois Podolny and Nancy Arseneault then tell the tale of their meeting and mutual admiration, and offer a trunk show of their work. The two have very distinctive styles, but often critique and offer suggestions for each other’s works in progress. Each then shares a technique for machine quilting. Lois gives you a clever way to quilt concentric circles in metallic thread, using a drafted freezer paper pattern that acts as a bumper guard for your machine foot. Nancy walks you through her machine quilting process, offering advice from preparing your sewing machine and work area, through proper bobbin winding and making sample thread sandwiches. Their combined wisdom will do wonders for your quilting!

Carol Morrissey’s love of nature has had an enormous impact on her quilting. It propelled her from making traditional quilts to creating realistic images of flora and fauna. Carol shows you how to add details to objects (in this case, a bee) using paint and inks. The end result looks almost like a watercolor. She also demonstrates how to make a fast, fun, fused postcard you can actually mail. Her tips include how to remove fused pattern pieces, as well as fabric-saving techniques. Later, Cyndi Souder takes you through her process of creating personalized celebration quilts, using both traditional and original designs. She shows how to enhance personalized pieces with free-motion written messages.

As a successful pattern designer, Cathy Wiggins' life took a major turn when she discovered and fell in love with the beauty and flexibility that leather offered. Not one to shy away from a challenge, she sold her entire fabric collection to fully embrace leather and to take quilting to a whole new level. Cathy teaches you the properties of leather and a wide array of options for incorporating it into your quilting. From embellishment to quilting, you will never look at leather the same way again. Then TQS visits the home, studio, and gardens of North Carolina artist Hollis Chatelain to see where she works, creates, and plays.

Cyndi McChesney is going to take what you've always thought about a pre-printed quilt panel and turn it on its ear. As the 2015 NQA Certified Teacher of the Year, she is often asked, “what can a quilter do with a pre-printed panel?” Cyndi says that it comes down to a bit of basic math and some imagination. From creative cutting to the addition of other quilt elements, Cyndi shows you how to take a panel from dull to divine!

Then we meet fabric and product designer Stacy Iest Hsu, whose adorable fabric panels featuring a doll and animal friends encourage story telling and creative play in children. Stacy shares creative ideas for personalizing the individual doll or animal for the little person in your life. 

Canadian artist and writer Cheryl Arkison juggles a quilting career along with a busy house filled with three children, so finding time for personal creativity can be a challenge. When you only have snippets of time in your day, it’s about ‘getting into the zone’ every day to just ‘do some sewing’. Cheryl shares Slabs and Curves, two fast, fun and very addictive methods for sewing together elements that allow you to build a quilt in a very short amount of time. She then shares how these basics can be used as a jumping off point for more creativity.

TQS visits the studio of fiber artist Catherine Kleeman who loves to create surface design and texture by shrinking a quilted piece in the washing machine before adding paint and other elements.

Being a perfectionist and frustrated with her own traditional hand appliqué results, Rosa Rojas was determined to find a better, faster, and easier method for achieving the beautiful hand appliqué she desired. The result was the Apliquick tools that allow a person to make even the tiniest of perfect circles. This Spanish designer and artist says that it is all about ‘letting the tools’ do the work for you. Addicted to appliqué, Rosa even shows you how easy it is to design and make your own Hawaiian quilt.

Ricky also has a demonstration of a twisted thread chain, by machine, that will add texture and interest to your quilt work. Variations and interest can be enhanced depending on the size and type of silk ribbon or cording used.

Born the fifth of seven children, Katie was encouraged by her parents at a young age to follow the path which spoke to her instinctively, and that path was art. She knew at an early age she wanted be an artist, and over the years that focus has never wavered. Thinking that painting would be her life, fate then stepped in when she discovered that an "embroidery class" she had signed up for in college was actually a beginning quilting class. Exploring art through fabric was a new and exciting journey for Katie. Always one to push herself to continue to grow as an artist, Katie's work has evolved over her thirty-year career.