Applique, stems and leaves

I love the Clover bias maker for stems and starch a piece of fabric before I cut the bias strips. You can also see that I use a wave blade in an old rotary cutter to cut the backgrounds to size to prevent any unravelling while working with the block. The long tweezers are invaluable for placing the applique pieces in position under my vinyl overlay. Here's my pattern on the light table with the background fabric over the top. I like to place my stems by putting small dots of basting glue on the background an then placing the stem over the top. If leaf points have to go under the stems, I'll sew those in first then the stem.

Onto leaves and coping with the outer points. These two leaves have to meet in the middle. When a leaf point needs to meet a stem or be placed pretty precisely like these, I will start close to the bottom of the leaf on the right and get that bottom side and point stitched first that way I know it will be placed just where I want it.

Where the two leaves meet in the middle, I sometimes put a connecting stitch back into the first leaf I sewed, at the point.

In this photo you can see where I started stitching as I have just explained. I like to take two stitches to secure the point before I turn it under. Note where the pin is located, putting it there until those two stitches are in means the point won't float off to the left. Remove it as soon as the point is secured.

There's only so much fabric that can fit under that point and I do try to make it as flat as I can.

I fold the leaf back and trim out as much of the excess as I can. If you click on the photo, you can see it better. I am cutting off a little triangle of fabric at an angle.

I never needle turn this point, there's only so many times you get to do this before you get into trouble with fraying so out comes a dampened toothpick. ( put it in your mouth)

Look at where I hold it, I'm going to grab that seam allowance in the middle and sweep it away and under from the point in one movement, I then finger press it in place with the thumb of my left hand.

The second movement with the toothpick is to push the seam allowance into the leaf but not try to push it up into the point. Like I said, there's only so much fabric that will fit under there.

Don't worry about the rest of the leaf at this point. Give alittle tug on the thread to pull out the point and take a couple of stitches down the side and carry on stitching the leaf. The tooth pick is a great tool for turning under the fabric.

The other alternative to the toothpick that I sometimes use, because I still have them in my hand, is the point of the scissors. Its amazing how much control these will give you.

In these photos, see how much seam allowance I have, it's very small, only 1/8" - 3/16" A seam allowance of 1/4" is too hard in my opinion to turn under without getting into trouble with peaks and bulk.

If you are the sort of person who likes to learn visually, , try this DVD from Piece o' Cake. It is very detailed with close up shots and covers just about everything you'll need to know. There is also a book that accompanies it.

I'll show a little reverse applique and small curves next time we meet. Until then, take care.

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.

There's lots of stitches

in this block but it was worth it because now I only have a couple of less complex ones to do for the Baltimore. Here's another one I'd like to do, the Mary Mannakee pattern was faithfully reproduced by the Baltimore Applique Society from the original in the DAR museum.
My dream is to do a series of these magnificent red and green quilts and so this will definitely have to be the next one. Anyone want to join in?

One part of doing these blocks I'm not fond of and that's those bitty little circles that get stitched over the bulk of seam allowances. I like to use these mylar templates with starch.

When I do really small circles, I don't cut it out until after I have done the running stitch around the shape, it's so much easier to handle.

I got some great mail this week, I won a giveaway on Ruth's blog, country log cabin. Look at the goodies I got, how generous is this? I love the sign which I'm going to find a special place for. The magnetic pin keep, in pink, and the gorgeous fabrics and just look at that pouch with it's special zip pull! Thank you Ruth.

I've only just caught up on my pies and tarts blocks and this next lot of fabric arrived. Aren't they a good mix? The fabrics I've been sent have been fabulous. I'll have to get busy because I have a few things I want to get caught up on.

Sawtooth Star

I have shown this older scrap quilt before, I do love star blocks and wanted to play with some new Sawtooth stars. This time, a bit bigger at 8 inches and using some reproduction fabrics.After making one block, I decided to have a go at the flying geese method that makes four, just the number I need for each block. I needed to know the formula for the measurements and found one on the Internet with a chart. That didn't go too well and they were binned because the formula was wrong wrong wrong. I want to figure it out because they're supposed to be faster.

I found another lot of instructions here that give the correct formula. Well, I just got through it but on two, I had a bit of trimming to do. What did I learn? well, apparently my sewing 1/4" from a line can be a little challenging for me. I might practice that because I think it's a good method. If you have any tips, feel free to share.

They don't look too bad so I did get away with it. Hopefully, I can get back to the machine soon, the Baltimore applique block is nearly done after a week of sewing on it.

Humble quilts

I'm getting there, these blocks take a while to make so in the meantime,let me show you a couple of my humble scrap quilts.
When I was new to quilting, I had very few fabrics, they could have fitted in a few shoe boxes. They were expensive and there was not the variety or the amount of fabrics on the market we have now.
There was a large shop half an hour away from where I lived that had a programme where you could get a pack of 7" squares of all the new fabrics coming in. At the time that's how I got some variety without the huge outlay. I took a class for a mystery quilt that required triangles of a huge variety. It's a leap of faith taking a mystery quilt class.
This is the quilt from that class. There was no matching of fabrics allowed, the pieces were put in a paper bag and pulled out in pairs, no looking or switching allowed. I bought the border fabric for $2 a yard on sale and machine quilted it with a simple stipple.

This friendship star quilt also has a story. We had a swap in my guild of triangles with about twenty people participating. Everyone ended up with a stack of triangles that we were challenged to make into a quilt. This is what I made and that's why there was a lot of fudging and points not meeting because that's what happens in swaps.

I hand quilted this one with a baptist fan pattern and it has a wool batting.

The fabrics in these quilts sure do date them, I love the humble nature of them and they remain favourites for the memories and the learning that is in every stitch. I remember the teachers, the other students, the quest for the fabrics, the guild friends and the fun. A quilt is so much more than fabric and thread, they can have deep meaning to the maker and they don't have to be spectacular or amazing to be loved and treasured.