Creative Living; 102; Dominique Isbecque

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... ... ... ... ... ... ... This particular design uses all of the different shapes that I'll be talking about with a product called Quilter Secret. Quilter Secret. All right. Or using the same combination of triangles, different size triangles and different size squares for the front of a tote bag or this could be a pillow. Okay. Same procedure would be done either way. Or making patchwork and it's not really quilting but it's the same patchwork process to make the little accessory items. And this is the kind of thing that would have been very tedious to do if you're using traditional patchwork techniques with the templates. Because of course the traditional way to do patchwork was to find a fabric and then with a template draw on the backside of the fabric, each individual shape and cut them out and then mark your stitching lines. And then after all of that you finally had something ready to start sewing together.

I think that's what discouraged a lot of people from writing these instructions. It was very time consuming and if you were just to begin your results might not be too good. Okay. So the alternative is to use a new product called Quilter Secret. It's feasible. And this is right, it's from Pellon and it's a very lightweight fusible material and it's been pre-printed with basic template shapes. So that on this particular style which is the assortment paddle, we have printed the cutting line and the stitching line for a two inch square, a two inch right triangle, a four inch square, a four inch right triangle or a four inch quarter triangle. Oh. And with this variety of shapes you can then create almost any patchwork pattern. We also have individual bolts with just the two inch square printed or just the two inch right triangle and so forth. So if you're doing just a checker board of two inch squares, that's all you need to buy. That's what you buy.

But we might emphasize even though this is fusible, we're not talking about fusing like we do for our clothing. This is more like you say for a template. Right. It's the same fusing process as far as how you do it. But the material itself is very, very lightweight so that after it's been fused to the gear material, it doesn't make it appreciably stiffer. It doesn't make it hard to stitch through for your piecing or if you're going to actually hand quilt through it later on, it won't make the needle sticky or it won't make the thread drag. So that it's just an extra layer and a quilt that makes it that much more exact. Now, so here it is. The quilter secret comes with a pad of instructions and right across the top, we show you some of the basic quilting designs you can use. And what I thought I would show today was creating an Ohio star and I have one over here. That's this pattern. Pink and white. Now, patchwork is really combining different triangles, different size triangles, and different squares. So this whole design is made up of right triangles, quarter triangles, and a square in the center.

So you decide what shapes you need for the design. For this one, we need one 4-inch square, four 4-inch squares that are divided into just single triangles, and then four squares that are divided into the quarter triangles. So then you find those shapes on your quilter's secret, cut them out, and then you actually fuse them to the different fabrics that you've selected for your patchwork block. Now, I fuse most of them, but I've left the beige color to the end to show you how to fuse. In the beige for the block that I'm doing, I need two squares that have been divided into right triangles, so I end up with four right triangles, and then two squares that are divided into quarter triangles. So I put them as a unit down onto the fabric, cover it with a damp press cloth, and then the same way I fuse my interfacing, I fuse the quilter's secret to the fabric. I put the iron down on top, I press on the iron, and I hold it for about 10 seconds.

So the same technique, the more same technique, the heat. Then once the 10 seconds are over, now I'm going to speed it up a little bit here so we don't spend all of our time fusing. Then you lift the iron, move it to the next spot, hold and press, and then you finally work your way all the way across the fabric. Until the quilter's secret is really fused right onto the material. Then you can see the cutting line is already marked, so you just cut right along the outside cutting line that's marked on the quilter's secret. Well this does take all the guesswork out of it, doesn't it? And you get nice straight edges, nice square pieces, cut all of your outside cutting lines. Now here we're cutting it into the quarter triangles, so we'll cut it. Now this allows a quarter inch seam, which is standard for quilter. Right, the quarter inch seam allowance is already marked inside with a dotted line. So you just keep going, and you try to be very exact, and cut out all of your pieces.

Now if we come back over to the table, you'll see that I finished cutting things out, and finally positioned them in the shape that I wanted, and I pinned them down. Now here I have it on just a piece of fun felt. What I actually do at home when I'm not so worried about being pretty is I'll just tape it onto a piece of wax paper so that I can see exactly where my pieces are supposed to fit together. See the layout, the overall pattern. Once I decide I like it, I then start sewing my pieces together, and you start by working with the triangles and sewing them into squares. For the two right triangles, all you'll do is you'll match them up, right sides together, and stitch on the dotted line right through the middle. I said that you have your square stitched, which is over on the other side, where it's all finished. Now with the quarter triangles, you'll start by sewing two of the smaller triangles together, two more, and then you end up with the same right triangle.

That again, you match up, just like we did in the first just like we did before, stitch on the dotted line, and our quarter of inch seam allowances are all marked. Once we have all of our squares joined, we then start to sew the squares together to form a strip, and that's the progression we've made up to here. Then when you have all of your squares sewn into strips, you finally match up all of your strips until you finally complete the block, which is what we have here. And that's all there is to it. With the quilter's secret, you're sure you're getting nice even corners so that you get nice sharp points on the outside, and pieces just fit together that much more easily than if you had to approximate on each line. And I think it would stabilize it enough too that the fabrics don't shift, so that are very thin, and some of these little cotton prints are due to tend to move.

That's exactly right. In turn, some traditional quilters are afraid that the quilter's secret is then going to make the fabric too stiff to quilt through later on. No, it doesn't feel like it. It gives the fabric a little bit of body, but you'll find that after the block is finished, you can still take a backing fabric and batting, and at this point is when you actually quilt, but the quilter's secret won't make the fabric so stiff that you can't hand stitch through it or machine quilt it later on for the final texture. I don't notice any difference at all. No, it's just a stabilizer, and it certainly adds in your accuracy because everything's been so accurately marked. Well, it's always fun to know a way that we can do an age old craft, but do it a lot faster and more accurately too. I took a traditional quilting class, just as this product was coming out, where they taught me about the sandpaper, and I finally took samples of quilter's secret in for all of the students there, and I was demonstrating it to them. And one of the ladies said, that's cheating.

And before I could respond, somebody else said, who cares? Very good. Well, thank you very much for showing us how to do this. Helen, when we talk about or think about nutrition, good nutrition especially, there are certain things we all know probably, but I think we take for granted. Let's review the basic four food groups and the numbers of servings and things that all of us children, anyone needs to keep in mind when we're thinking about nutrition. Well, first of all, milk is the first group I think, I've since our products are milk products, and we need from two to four servings depending on the age group. Now, the very small child, probably three cups a day is enough for the teenager five to six cups is too much. And it varies with the activity, of course, of the child. The next group is the meat group, and we need two servings of meat daily. And this doesn't have to be meat, I should say, have protein, because we know that legumes are very good peanuts excellent, and we're going to use peanuts today.

We also know that fish and poultry are excellent, and then we get some from the cereals, but not complete. And it's important to vary these menus. Absolutely. Then we need fruits and vegetables, four servings daily, and we would hope that one of those would be green leafy, and one would be high in vitamin C. And when we think of vitamin C, we're getting into the time of year when other than citrus are coming in, citrus, of course, is always an excellent source of vitamin C. But we have strawberries, and melons, and cabbage, and lettuce, and all these have a fair amount, so it takes a lot to make it, but at least to every little bit helps. And then we need cereals. This, of course, fiber has been very much in the news recently, and cereals are good sources of fibers, plus the B vitamins, which are very important for healthy skins, and nerves, and so forth. And we need four servings daily, and this, of course, could be prostitute. Right.

So, depending on where you live in the country, you can have these four servings. What kind of cereal you actually are using, right? Let's go ahead. Now, you're going to share with us two recipes that if kids are watching, or if their parents are watching, I think they'll want to include this as one of their snack foods, but it is a nutritious food. And let's talk about, as you prepare this, and tell us what you're doing, but why cooking for or planning recipes for children is a bit different than it is for adults. Well, this, of course, is something that the child could do, because so easy, all you do is take a banana and squish it. They're like doing common vernacular. Common vernacular. And I chose to use a mixing bowl that has a cover so that this can be stored and refrigerated. So, I'm not lazy. I'm just sort of conservative over my energies. So, why have to transfer this to another bowl? Now, this could be done with the electric mixer, it can be done in the blender, but with a child it is so easy to do. So, you take one banana and squish it up. Potato masher is also very easy to use. And this is a spread for sandwiches.

Right. You know, I can be used on crackers or whatever. We're going to put them bread today. And then, this is lemon juice. We need two tablespoons of lemon juice. And this, of course, is high in vitamin C, as well as most of your viewers, I'm sure already know. This helps to keep the banana from getting dark. So, this helps to keep it nice and bright. The next thing we're going to add is the peanut butter itself, and we have one cup. Creamy or crunchy or whore? I like crunchy. I did buy creamy today because a lot of people aren't so fond of crunchy as I am, but the crunchy are the better so far as I'm concerned. So, it could be either one. Whichever. And we sort of blend that in just a little bit. This looks kind of like the old fashioned mud pies at this point. So, this is the reason children enjoy doing this. We'll get that blended just a little bit, not completely. We can have either sugar or honey, but I chose to use honey today because I think most of us these days are trying to be a little more cautious about having too much sugar in the diet. So, honey is one of our natural foods, and so this is two and a half to three tablespoons of honey, depending on how much you like.

Now, you've noticed we already have some fruit, two kinds, actually. We have some sugar. By the way, you know there is a fifth classification on the basic four. So, they've added a fifth, and that's honey, sugar, jelly, jam, etc. Anything else comes under that. And then we're going to use milk in the form of full-strength milk, not here, and that's a half cup. So, we have everything added to this, and we blend it together, and then it will be ready for spreading. And as I said, this is something you can do in the electric blender, or the electric mixer, food processor, whatever you'd like. But the ram bottom bowl makes it nice when you're doing this by hand. Right, and then as I said, then you have a lid, and this can be stored. This keeps well in the refrigerator. The content of this or the amount that we're making is probably two and a fourth cups. And that might be more than you'd want to use at one sitting, unless you're using this for a party food.

So, we have a large family. Right, so this way it can be put into the refrigerator, and it keeps quite well for several weeks. This also is easily doubled. So, there is our peanut butter banana spread. Peanut butter banana spread. Right. And to make it fun, we've done some other fun things. Just take your regular bread, either white or dark, and if you put whatever kind of cookie cutters you have, and I chose stars because they're kind of popular these days, did they were blast off? Anyway, you can interchange white and dark, or you can just make little stars. And of course, if you do make those stars, as I've done there, you would not want to throw away all the crusts, say that for breading, or for bread pudding, or something of that sort. So, again, we have our cereal then. So, you really have a very complete sandwich. And this makes me think that this is a good point to remember in serving foods for children. Any way you can make it look like fun, or a little bit different, or the funny shapes, or whatever. That's a point that I think we sometimes overlook.

And smaller servings, for instance, if you have a very small child who's a picky eater. Maybe this would be enough. Encourage the child to complete whatever they are eating. But don't make them. You know, that clean up your plate of syndrome is over. Smaller servings, so they feel as if they've accomplished something, and they want more, is usually a good idea. And of course, there is a new book out talking about rewarding children with food. This is not a good thing to do because it puts too much emphasis on cleaning your plate, and then finishing up and getting the food. So, give them lots of love instead of lots of food. You won't have so many fat adults. And I think, too, when we're trying to introduce new foods, if you had a small fun shape, something that would be fun for them to try. I think they'd come near trying it, then if you said, here's a whole plate of whatever, and you've got to try this. And I don't know if you knew this, but I chose a small plate to put this on, too. Instead of giving a child the big dinner size, go to a smaller size, and smaller portions, and they feel as if they really accomplished something. If they're picky eaters, this is very important. Of course, we know that colors and textures are important for children, or for everybody, actually. For children, particularly, this is a very important thing to remember.

Okay, now you have a drink that we're going to mix to serve with this, and we'd have a nice, nutritious snack, ready to go. This is Equal Parts of Millenite and Water. So, this diluted millenite is just about like milk, and this is just strawberry drink mixed powder, and you put in whatever amount you'd like. And that's about two tablespoons, and you stir. This would be fun to put in one of those covered containers, and just let them shake it out with it. Right, it's another good shake up, maybe a little shade ice in there, and of course, if you put straws in here, I thought I had straws, but they were too short to fit this glass. Make this curly straws, this would be a fun snack, an after-school snack that would be nutritious as well as a fun thing to do. It is nutritious, and it does have enough color that a child would enjoy it. So, it has everything that a child needs. Of course, if I were going to serve this as a meal, I would probably put a carrot stripper, too, with that, and maybe a celery stalk. And that would add a little more color, too. Or color and something very crunchy. Thank you very much for sharing this idea for children's foods with us. Thank you.

My pleasure being here. Had you ever thought about sending a flower arrangement in tune with someone's color personality? It's an interesting concept, and you might like to try it the next time you want to surprise someone with a gift of flowers. There's a new symbol which is gaining widespread consumer attention and favor, and on our next creative living show we'll tell you about it. It's the recycling symbol, and it's the focus of a unique recycle packaging awareness program currently underway around the country. And have you ever thought how a clothing manufacturer gets started? A very good friend of mine is a designer and manufacturer of a line of women's fashions, and she's going to tell us how she got started. It's an interesting story that began by creating Barbie doll fashions and has resulted in a line of high-fashion, a perilful women. We'll also be showing you some of her fall-fashion creations. I hope you'll plan to join me next time. Have a very creative day. Creative Living Volume 2 is 60 pages of ideas, recipes, instructions, and helpful information to help you live better in a busy world. For your copy of Creative Living Volume 2, please send your check or money order for $6.50 U.S. dollars to Creative Living. K-E-N-W-T-V, Eastern New Mexico University, Portalis New Mexico, 8813-0. That's $6.50, which includes postage and handling to Creative Living.

K-E-N-W-T-V, Eastern New Mexico University, Portalis New Mexico, 8813-0. Please allow 3-4 weeks for delivery. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Hello, I'm Cheryl Borden, and our next Creative Living Show will feature two very interesting topics. There's a new symbol which is gaining widespread consumer attention and favor. It's the recycling symbol, and it's the focus of a unique recycle packaging awareness program. We'll tell you more about it next time and explain how you can help. Next time, too, we'll meet a designer and manufacturer of a line of high-fashion women's apparel, and she'll tell us how she got her start. We'll also show you some of her fall-fashions all of this next time on Creative Living.