Quilts

I will spend a good portion of this day "Mother's Day" doing what I want. After all it is "My Day" right and yours if you are a mother.



I hope to get the last BOM traced to fusible and/or freezer paper as the block requires. The barns, the chicken and the dog quilts will have a good portion of the block hand appliqued and therefore this part will be traced to freezer paper. I like the freezer paper for my hand applique. I know others use a variety of different methods in their hand applique. But think you need to try several and decide what works best for you. Like anything else what works for someone else may not work for us.

Both the chicken and dog quilts (photos on side) have some very tiny parts to make them look realistic and these do not lend themselves well to needle-turn applique. I have one block of the chicken quilt done and there were a few feathers that were so small it was almost impossible to use this method of applique. With this I decided to combine the two methods.

Since I've not done the machine fusible applique method, I have done a lot of research on the subject and also took close looks at the details of this type of applique at quilt shows. Found some that were extremely well done and others well that lacked a lot.

No, I'm not a perfectionist, but do like my work well done. Somewhere just shy of perfection. I have taken a couple of flower stems from one of my In Full Bloom blocks and traced to fusible. I will practice on these and give each to the great grandson's I'm staying with at the moment. Kyron was excited, and Ty was also, but he is younger.

Once these are done and I see how I fare I'll feel more comfortable working on these blocks for the quilts. I'm not leery of my sewing machine for we were good friends for many years, sewing regular things like clothing. Just not so sure of my skills in doing a small zig-zag around tiny parts of a photo quilt. I know some just sew a small strait stitch line near the edge of these, but I don't like that edge left raw. I don't like the look of satin stitching as you have to try and match thread and change every time you move to another fabric. So I'm going with the invisible threads (clear and dark) and doing the small zig-zag stitch on mine. There again we have choices and depends on the look you like or want.

I will add photos as I can with my progress, so stay tuned for future posts.