Once it's complete, your artwork needs to be finished.

Nannette Zeller shows a practical, cost effective approach to framing art quilts for display or sale.

Russ Little finishes his work with a floating finish that preserves the treasure irregular edges of his work.

Add these two methods of finishing to your quilting knowledge base.

Quilting Arts TV is brought to you by.

The Bernina 990.

If it can be imagined, it can be created.

Gentle fuse fusible web made for quilters from Maywood Studio.

[Upbeat music] Mixed media textile artist Nannette Zeller does beautifully framed work.

I just love how professional your work looks.

Thank you.

- Yeah.

So tell me about why did you start doing it this way?

Well, when I first started working in art quilts, I realized that when people saw them on the wall, they won They were confused by them because they were used to seeing them on the bed.

So just the quilt hanging on the wall kind of confuses people sometimes, and especially when you're working with something small, it looks like a pot holder.

We don't want pot holders as our art.

- Right.

So what I decided to do was learn how to frame my own quilts.

And the very first thing that I did is I went to a framer and they framed it for me.

And - And it cost you an arm and a leg.

It cost me an arm and a leg, and I want I said, how does this become cheaper?

I don't necessarily want to pay hundreds of dollars every time that I try to frame, because then if you're going to sell something, you have to bump the price away.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

- Exactly.

So I started thinking about it.

Well, you go to big box stores or art supplies stores.

They all have frames relatively cheap, depending on where you get them.

You could also go to thrift stores and pick up frames.

So it's like, okay, how do I use that instead of making a quilt and building a frame for it?

I now by the frame and build a quilt for it.

You have to make it to.

The right size.

- Make it to the right size.

So this is what I'm going to demonstrate today is my process.

So first off we'll go to the frames itself.

So this is a basic frame I like to use gallery frames because they're deep.

It allows room for the quilt and all of the things that we need to support it in there.

When I get it, sometimes they come with the hanging hardware on there, but I deconstruct the framework at it.

So the first thing I do is I remove this backing.

I don't need that anymore.

It's gone.

- Okay.

Usually that little piece of paper, this little piece of paper, I don't need that anymore.

And there's also a piece of plastic in there to cover it.

Now, we don't want, as textile artists, we don't want plastic or glass covering our artwork because it needs to breathe.

This would hold moisture and could possibly damage our quilts, so I don't need that anymore.

So what I have is this frame.

Now, one of the things when I was first going into this is like, how do you know what size a frame is, especially if you're buying it at a thrift store?

Like I always thought that it was here to here was the size of the frame.

Well, I realized that was wrong because we have to build a quilt to fit in there.

So how do we know the measurements?

Well, the size of the frame is the inner opening from the back.

So that's eight inches.

That's eight inches.

So this is an eight by eight frame.

Now if I were to measure the opening here.

Oh It's a lot different.

It's smaller because there's a little bit of a ledge in here to hold all of this stuff in place.

So from the front it was more like what, seven and - Seven, five, eight by seven and 5/8.

So if we're building a quilt to fit, we have two options.

We can make it so that it fits within that opening.

So that would have to accommodate that seven by 5/8 measurements.

- Okay.

Or we can make it.

A little bit bigger.

Get in there.

We can make it so that it goes in and it's resting behind them.

But then you don't see the edges.

Then then you don't see the edges of the quilt.

- Right.

So you have to decide what you want.

And that's that's basically how you do it.

I also use a foam core to mount my quilts on.

Now, this is an acid free foam core that you probably have to buy at the more higher end art supply stores.

And we want acid free again, because we don't want the cheaper stuff with the acid to damage our textile work.

So that's what I do.

It's a little bit more expensive.

You could go into the art supply store and say, could you cut these down for me?

And a lot of times they'll do it for you.

- Oh that's nice.

But it's fairly easy to do it yourself.

- Yeah.

So what I do.

I'll move this out of the way a little bit.

What I do is I use a quilter's ruler to measure on the foam core itself.

Now I want to ruler that doesn't slide around.

A quilter's ruler is really bad.

We don't want to use that.

We want to use a ruler that has sort of a grippy back to it in that it's metal.

Nice.

- Line up with the line and then use a utility knife to cut the map.

Super easy to cut the mat.

So to put this all together, what do you do?

So what I do is I want to put the quilt onto the mat board.

Okay.

And I use a tape onto the quilt itself on the back of it.

And this is a special tape.

This is tape that's designed for the framing industry for textile works.

So for embroidery work, if they're trying to mount a piece of embroidery, they would use this tape to secure it in place so it doesn't come off of or away from the mat board.

And it's acid free.

It's acid free.

So it's really good quality.

To use this.

You have to find it online.

I haven't found it in any stores locally.

And so what I do is I put a little piece of tape in the center and each of the four corners.

If I have a bigger quilt, I might put some more in there.

But then I peel away this paper backing and you could see that.

Oh It's just a little plastic.

It's clear, but it's sticky.

So I'll take that all off and then position it onto my foam core board and secure it at that point.

Once it's secured to the foam core like I have here, it's nice and tucked in there that isn't permanent because it's tape it might give away in time, I don't know, I haven't done this long enough to know how long it lasts, but I usually go in and secure it with stitches.

Okay.

- So I've tied a knot.

This is button and carpet thread.

I have some of it over here.

It's very, very strong.

I can pull on it.

It's not going to break.

It's easy to find in the any place that sells fabric.

Okay.

And you've got a curved needle.

I have a curved needle.

So the curved needle it could be, it could be a quilter's needle that's curved or it could be in a pulse needle that's curved.

But I want something curved so that I could go from the back of the foam core up to the front.

So I'm going to pull that.

Not through like that.

You haven't gone through the quilt yet?

I haven't gone through the quilt yet.

And I'm going to take that needle and just curve it through.

I don't want it to go through the front of the quilt.

I'm just grabbing the back layers of the quilt.

Oh, so much easier with a curved needle.

I've never done that up.

And then I could put it back down.

Back through the same hole, or.

Moved over a couple inches.

Pull that through.

And you want your thread to be pretty long because you want to be able to go.

Yeah.

- Right?

It's a little bit unruly because the thread so long.

But I do that.

And the knot kind of went through there.

But I put a not a piece of tape there.

And then what I have is over here.

So you go all the way.

So I go all the way around.

- So this is where I started.

I went through to touch the catch the quilt down, up, down, up, all the way around on this to secure the quilt in place.

But there's slack in there.

So I want to remove that slack.

So I start at the end and I just start pulling up and pulling up, and you could see the slack that's coming up.

Getting bigger and bigger.

Bigger.

- Yeah.

And then when I get all the way to the end, I do a little slip knot connecting to that and it's secured in place.

And tape it again.

And tape it again.

- Okay.

So that's what we have at the end.

So it's double taped at this point and it's ready to put into the frame.

Beautiful.

- So I'm going to move this to the side.

You're so precise and tidy.

- It's a lot of practice with.

So starting with the frame again.

So the first thing I want to do before as I put all the frame together is I want to pay attention to the hanging hardware.

If it has hanging hardware on it, I need to make sure that my quilt - Yeah.

is in the right direction.

You don't want to finish it all and go to look at it.

I'll just not need to be standing on its head.

So we need to put it in there based on where the hanging hardware is.

And that little ledge that's in the front is going to hold that foam core in place.

And it looks so beautiful.

Yeah.

- Great.

And then I think that looks a little messy.

And I want to clean it up.

So I take a second piece of the same foam core and I put it in place.

So it's nice and neat from this point I take.

And you can't use the other or the old hardware because it's a different thickness than for.

Correct.

Correct.

- So you have this.

Well, yeah.

- Yeah.

So it's just to build it up.

And this is why we need the thicker frame is because I'm putting so many layers of foam core in there and the thickness of the quilt.

You need to make sure that your frame is big enough, deep enough to handle all these layers that.

You have.

- Right.

So do you always use wood or some kind of particle rather than metal?

Because you.

Yes.

- Yeah.

- That's a good point because I'm going to nail put a nail into this frame.

I need to make sure that it's all wood.

- Something nailable.

Something plastic, not metal, because I need to get a nail In there.

- Okay.

And so I take this is four steps.

Or I can use a pair of needle nose pliers.

But I put it I put it in there and I take a Brad hammer.

And I need to put it in a slight angle down and tap it.

Is a Brad hammer just this more narrow.

Yes, that's a Brad hammer.

So it's got the skinny end as well as a fatter end.

So whatever end works best when you feel like you're.

Yeah.

So you just tap it in.

- Tap it in.

And then I need to do that all the way around.

So if I'll grab that one you can see it finished where this one.

Because it's a smaller frame.

I could get away with putting it in four different spots to hold it top bottom in the Side.

- But on a bigger one.

- On a bigger one.

I need to get more in there just to keep it secure.

So this will keep it secure so the the quilt won't shift around so much and it won't fall out of the back.

It's just a beautiful presentation.

And I've had that experience to in I do an Open Studios event and people come and they're like, well how do I hang this?

Or yeah.

- So you have to kind of explain to people.

Yeah.

So when you when you are doing that, trying to sell your artwork and you have it like this, they know what to do.

- Exactly.

They're used to that.

I also try to do everything in the same color.

So I'm always using black.

That's why I use the black foam core because it matches the frame.

Now if you had a different color frame, you might want a different color matte board for it.

So I want I just want all my artwork to look cohesive when Yeah.

- It hangs on the wall.

So have you gotten good feedback from people in the galleries?

Yeah.

- I sell very well.

It fits well.

It doesn't have to be in a textile based studio to sell my work.

I could sell it in a regular art gallery and people get it because it's a framed piece of art versus, oh, it's a. Quilt.

- Right.

- Right.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot in the last couple of years, and I think I need to follow your tutorial - Yeah.

- And and start to do it.

I did want to ask you a little bit about your work itself - Okay.

- Because it's so lovely.

You do a lot of nature based work?

I do.

I have a master's degree in wildlife biology, so it just fits me to do patrons.

And you live in an area with a lot of birds near near me in North Carolina.

- Yeah.

I do, I do.

So you do beautiful free motion stitching also in the background.

And I love the fabrics.

You've chosen to get a little bit of the texture from, you know, for the birds.

And I also try to choose things when I'm doing silhouettes of birds.

I like to have things that look like sky or, or some sort of background.

So like the swirls in this one.

So hands or natural.

- Yeah hand dyes or.

Or something like that.

- or fabrics that have a lot of modeling - Yeah.

- into it.

- Well, it's just beautiful work and you've presented it beautifully.

Thank you for teaching me.

- Well thank you.

Yeah, I'm happy to do it.

- We'll be back in just a minute Fiber artist.

Russ Little is here.

You do You spin, you weave, you dye, and you create these beautiful woven pieces.

You're here to show us how to make it work as an art quilt too.

- Thank you for saying it that way.

You could also say you're obsessive or you're, you know, I don't know a magpie.

So yes, I a couple of years ago I became interested in in weaving and took a little weekend class that led to buying a floor loom, which led to what if I spun my own yarn, which led to a couple of spinning wheels and a drum carter.

- Oh my gosh.

And buying fleeces at wool shows.

And anyway, so as a consequence of that, I've been a quilt maker for 35 years, traditional cotton, and then a surface designer and a whole cloth quilt maker.

So I'm trying to find a convergence for those two things.

So bring the weaving into the art quilting.

Yeah, exactly.

- Yeah.

So I started thinking, can I make whole cloth art quilts?

And the answer is, yeah, I think I can, but the edge finish was an issue.

Because what makes weaving so beautiful is this uneven, lovely, you know, all the imperfections.

Yeah.

The eccentricity, the this is the selvedge edge.

So the it went through the loom this way.

And I was throwing the shuttle back and forth and different weights and tensions, different weights of yarn in different tensions.

When you're throwing the shuttle result in these, these ways.

You don't want to lose that.

No you don't.

Ideally, you know, the weavers go for perfectly straight and even.

But this is art weaving.

It's improvizational.

It's a different thing.

But I also think that we're going to talk about why we're talking about this in a moment.

This is a piece little square, and it's in a regular shape.

And this is the way it was sitting on the design wall.

And I thought, oh, I really like that shape.

I don't want to lose that shape.

And I can use the same edge finish, which is what we're talking about today as a way of preserving that.

- Okay.

So what this edge finish is, is it's batting and binding, but the binding is wrapped around the batting, just the batting first before the quilt top in the backing are applied.

And then you quilt as normal.

But we're going to wrap the binding, quilt the binding, make the sandwich and make the sandwich.

And then and then quilt it.

- Oh great.

So where did you get started?

- Yeah.

So first we have to look at some supplies.

And some of them are a little odd.

This one is not odd.

It's neutral colored tightly woven, something like a broad cloth.

- Okay.

We're going to do a lot of folding and a lot of flipping back and forth.

And a really lightweight muslin might not be the best choice.

Okay.

We're certainly going to need our quilt top.

And for today we're going to look at a handwoven piece.

We'll need.

Something that's like batting.

But you don't use regular batting.

This is a felt?

It is.

This is a synthetic.

They make it out of polyester or acrylic.

This is felt and it's very dimensionally stable.

And then we'll need a backing fabric obviously.

Okay.

We're going to talk about this again a little bit in a minute.

But the reason that dimensional stability is so important is when we're quilting this, it just wants to walk all over the place.

So anything that I can introduce as an ingredient into the process that adds stability is a help.

So there are two other things that we need.

We're going to cut some strips of tear away paper stabilizer.

This is what machine embroiderers use to stabilize their fabric.

When it's going through the embroidery machine in a hoop, we won't be using a hoop.

- Okay So we're going to cut this 1.5in wide.

And then I want you to draw a line the length of the strip half an inch from the edge.

This is like a seam allowance.

- Okay.

We're also we're going to attach this to the batting using quarter inch.

And this is not a perfect quarter inch.

It's an eyeball quarter inch.

- Right.

Paper backed fusible adhesive.

- Okay.

So let's set that aside and forgive my notes.

It's a fiddly process but it is absolutely achievable.

I want everyone to know that we're not going to get into a lot of details about measurements today, but the directions are available and you can do this.

- Yeah.

Information is online.

- Yeah.

So I'm using a pencil to do the marking here.

I strongly recommend drawing an arrow to indicate the top.

So there is there are slightly different things you do and measurements for top and bottom versus left and right.

And that's not going to show because that's where you're.

No it'll all be buried inside.

You could certainly use an ink pen or something.

But people are concerned about something bleeding through pencils not going to go anywhere.

A 2.5in guideline off of each edge.

Flip it over.

And here's where those little quarter inch strips come in.

We're going to place them around the perimeter and iron them in place according to the manufacturer's directions.

And then peel off the strip and you can see the little The glue.

- The shiny glue.

Yeah.

Now it starts getting fun with this still facing down and the adhesive facing up, I'm going to take my strip and with the pencil line facing up, I want to look through the strip.

This won't show on TV so well, but this is slightly translucent and against the the contrast of the table versus the white batting.

I can position this and see where this line lines up with the edge of the batting.

And then I'm going to heat set this.

So with an iron.

- Precisely.

And I want to trim it even to the corners.

- Okay.

You do one at a time.

- One at a time.

- Okay.

And what that will become is this.

So again here it's trimmed edge to edge, edge to edge.

And I get these little knockouts at the corner.

Then we go to the sewing machine which we're not going to do today.

And we're going to sew with a zigzag stitch with a walking foot.

- Okay.

Walking foot is important here because we want our result to be as flat as possible.

- You don't want things to shift And also we still want to be able to fold.

And we'll see some folding in a minute.

Now these are 4.5in strips of that binding fabric we looked at.

And here's where the guidelines come in place.

The strip top and bottom first lined up along that line and stitch a quarter inch seam.

And then.

The whole way across.

The whole way across stem to stern, and then press that and do the same thing at The bottom.

- So top first, then the bottom.

Top and then bottom.

And then with those folded out, imagine two fold it out.

We're going to do the same thing left and right.

- Okay.

And through the magic of television this is what we get.

So now you see what it would look like with everything done.

These little dots are here to remind me to talk about bulk.

So when we finish, we're going to turn our corners and be pressing things down and hand sewing.

And we don't want bulk in the corners.

That makes them look lumpy.

- Okay.

And here we've got bulk.

So this fabric doesn't serve any purpose.

- Okay.

So you would.

- Yeah.

So I.

- Cut that off.

There's a natural point where it folds.

It's not a perfect 45 degree angle, but it's from that stitched line to this stitched line.

And then with nice sharp scissors I simply cut along that line.

- And I'm pointing out that you're only cutting that piece of fabric not the pieces underneath or on top.

Absolutely.

This is still important for business.

That part isn't.

This part is.

- Okay.

So now I'm going to get rid of these little reminders.

And we're going to do one more thing before we go to the sewing machine.

- Okay.

We need to make a good tight fold against the batting.

We need to make a good tight crease here.

And just your just finger pressing a nice crease.

- Yep.

That's what it's going to look like.

And this is going to be these would be our guidelines.

We need to quilt at least beyond this point.

Let's pull back an example.

We need to quilt at least beyond that point because that's the edge we want it to wrap around to the back.

So it's hidden.

So there's no stops and starts.

But we don't want to go off the edge because that's where our support is.

- Okay.

So we're going to take this in the machine.

Yeah.

- Okay.

So you're going to be quilting just in that zone where those creases are right.

Precisely.

So we need to quilt far enough in toward the center so that it goes underneath the quilt top.

And remember we don't want to quilt out beyond this line.

- Okay.

- So how do I want to do this.

Let's start this way.

So I'll start inside.

I can even do a little practice stitching here if I want to.

So we're using a stitch regulated foot, which I certainly recommend if you have one.

Nice even stitches.

And you could do.

Any motif you want.

Absolutely.

Yeah I could do some little Circles.

And you like to use a thread that kind of blends in so that it doesn't.

Draw too much attention away from the quilt.

Absolutely.

The quilting does a couple of things.

It gives a nice smooth, cohesive finish and it adds some texture, but I don't want it to detract.

Okay, great.

Well let's take take this off and we'll go back to the table.

Excellent.

- All right.

Let's talk about the next step.

Indeed.

So we've just done a little quilting here, but there are all sorts of different patterns you could use.

I mentioned pebbles, I was doing something like this.

But this is a creative decision that you get to make - Great.

about your own quilt.

So now it's time to put together our quilt sandwich.

And I recommend fusing because it's going to stabilize this to the greatest extent possible and prevent it from creeping around.

And with a weaving that's really important because it's so stretchy.

There's so much bias.

Absolutely.

And I recommend and this is what I use a non backed very lightweight fusible web.

- Okay.

And we're going to steam set that according to the manufacturer's directions.

Then we can turn it over.

And here I would use either little dots of this material or one inch squares of the same material that we use to based the edges in place.

The paper backed fusible.

- Exactly.

But the paper on heat, set it, peel the paper backing off and then place your backing on.

That is cut to the same size as the batting.

And then we're going to heat set that as well.

Okay.

Then we're ready to go and do our quilting.

And that's this is what the finished product is going.

To look.

So you've added quilting on top of the weaving to add even more texture.

Exactly.

Yes.

And now we do the finishing part that every quilter knows you have to do.

We're going to turn our facing finishing to the back or binding.

And we're going to roll over the edge and then finish this - By hand.

- By hand.

Then you're done.

And you've got something.

Exactly.

- Lovely.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Well the weaving is so gorgeous.

- Thank you.

And I think this is a great idea for any kind of irregular edge, whether it's, you know, cotton, traditional quilting or whether it's a textile like this.

And I'm really pleased with the fact that it feels like an art finish, a respectful finish that honors those edges.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

We'll be right back.

From applied design theory to innovative technique.

Learn what fellow artists are up to within the art quilting community.

Join us for finishing touches.

Hey, Marcia.

- Hi.

You brought some kind of vintage era style blocks.

I sure did.

And I'm just charmed by both of them.

And the first one here is one that's paying homage to the suffragettes back in 1912.

And this is actually an early road trip.

I don't know what kind of road trips you took in college, but this is what these young ladies are doing.

That's awesome.

And this is a postcard that was sent to a friend to let them know that they were on their way.

Oh.

- That's amazing.

- Yeah.

And I love how it has the date here.

Suffragettes.

And still we March 2025.

- Yes.

Which is absolutely true.

And then this one also has a lot of floral elements.

And we're really looking at the materials and colors of the era.

- Yes.

And I love that because that's kind of a picture into what life was like and what was decorating everyone's kitchens - Yeah.

and all of that.

- All this amazing crochet.

- Yes.

I have a bunch of this and draws at home -Oh do you?

and it's great to be able to use it in something like that.

You're right.

Absolutely.

- This is a doily because People used to put doilies out on things.

- Right.

Yes, life was lovely.

And here's another one in the corner.

Right.

Very textural.

I just think this artist did a great job and brought everything together so well.

- It really does.

- Fun.

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