Mary Mannakee, an applique adventure

The first block of the Mary Mannakee quilt that Kathie and I are doing together is this one. Kathie's a great inspiration to me and I'm going to enjoy doing this quilt with her and any others joining in. This photo is from the pattern pack.
I don't put time frames on any of my projects if I can help it, I don't work well with deadlines on myself, that's not fun. There are many quilters out there who do the most fantastic applique. I have taken techniques that I've learned along the way that work for me and I'll share some of them from time to time. It's nothing that's new or secret and I don't claim to be an expert, there are many ways to do the same things but I'll share what works for me and if you get a tip now and again that works for you, that's great Pieces are prepped. I like to store my bias strips that I make with the clover bias maker on a roll so they don't unravel. I use a medium weight vinyl overlay to place my pieces and I baste the middle lines of the background fabric.

I'm using freezer paper templates and you can see some dotted lines on some of them. That is to tell me that those sides will be tucked under other shapes and won't be stitched. I'll use my marking pencil to make a mark in the seam allowance where I should stop or start stitching. I also put crosses on the leaf shapes so I know which is the top of the leaf.

I'm using a Moda Bella solid in a cream colour and as I started appliqueing, realised how meaty to the hand this felt and started having doubts about whether I could hand quilt it easily. I like to keep my options open. I made a quick little sandwich with Quilters Dream cotton and tested it.

It's fine and I'm happy to say and the needle went through with no trouble, I did put a finer cotton on the back.

So I can carry on now with more confidence. For a large shape such as the ring of hearts with its inner and outer points, I thought it best to baste it on the background and use the cutaway method. This will help to stabilise it while stitching and cut down on fraying with the handling. It's just a matter of cutting the seam allowance a bit ahead of your stitching.

Here's a close up of my stitch, the idea is to put the needle into the background where you have come up. I put my needle in the background behind the thread to achieve that. I come up only in the fold of the seam, not into applique piece to make the stitches as invisible as possible. I'm only grabbing a couple of threads.

A common question is how far should the stitches be apart, easy answer is closer than the width of your seam allowance. I do stitch small and that's just how I do it.

This red is a looser weave fabric and sometimes that creates difficulty with getting those inner points nice when you snip through the drawn line and you get frayed threads. I cheat in these instances and use Fray stop. I only put only the tiniest little dot from the end of a toothpick and make sure its in the seam allowance because with age, this product will yellow so you don't want it on top.
Edit: I now use a little basting glue smeared on the area  instead of fray stop as it completely washes out.

When I come to the inner point, I take deeper stitches very close together. Better to see stitches rather than loose threads. Look at the photo and see the angle my needle is going in at, I pull the needle through from underneath with stab stitches towards my body. If I were to pull the needle away from me, it might pull out some threads.

Whew, long post. I'll tell you about my curves and outer points next time. Oh that sounds funny! If you have left me a nice comment or asked me a question and you haven't had a reply, it's because you are down as anonymous or no-reply blogger. You can either change that in your profile or contact me at my email address which is under my profile. Have a great weekend, I'll be stitching.