Covered in Threadmalaka’s adventure in sewing

After nearly completing 6 bags, I felt the need to break from being a bag lady and get back to being a quilter.  Applique, how many times have I thought about doing it? A million - I’ve read and researched and looked at pictures online for months.  I even gave it a short-lived try once, I quit before I even had the pattern cut out.

The issue, that I recognized, was that I started with an applique pattern that was way out of my league.  Let me dig it up.. oh yes, here it is:

I know, I know.. it looks easy!  I purposely picked an easy pattern.  The problem? Those red petals and green stems are TINY.  Tiny = difficult in the world of applique.  I gave up, very frustrated and didn’t think about it again until a few weeks ago.

My instructor at The Stitching Studio said that Freezer Paper Applique was the best technique, so that’s what I’ve been “studying” since day one.  It requires tracing the pattern onto freezer paper, then ironing it to the fabric (the waxy substance adheres to fabric but can be removed and re-fused without problems), then cutting it out, with a turn-under seam allowance.  If your pattern isn’t symetrical, you have to keep that in mind when you’re transferring back and forth.

I finally found a pattern that looked nice and big and easy, and figured I could do something cute.  I could obviously have started with a square or circle, star or heart.. but that’s boring.

I used a charm pack that I had laying around (5″ squares for quilting) called “farmer’s market” - there were tons of cute prints and I figured they made good flower petals.  This thing is huge, it’s a 12″ block finished.  I had the choice of 8 or 10 petals, I chose 8 because I was worried about the frustration factor ;)  I’m glad I picked this pattern, by the 8th petal I was able to get the point just right and the curves look like curves.

Then came the applique part - attaching it to the background.  I did some research, and as usual, there were several different machine stitches to use.. all of them had their pros and cons.  I chose zig-zag stitching because I love it - it’s forgiving.   It turned out to be not that forgiving when you’re using cream colored thread on a dark brown background.  I debated using bright pink or dark brown and every color thread in between.  If I’ve learned anything in this adventure, I’ve learned that less is more - so I used white!

I like the way it turned out, I might play around with some other applique stitches next time, just because I’m not 100% thrilled the way the zigzag stitch looks.

The next task was to cut a hole in the background fabric and pull out the freezer paper that is fused to the fabric.  Yeah, right.  I cut the hole (it was difficult, everything in my being said DONT CUT THE FABRIC) but the damn freezer paper will not budge.  I can’t even get a hold of it.  I’m not sure how on earth I’m supposed to accomplish this task, but the good news is that I don’t have to - I can leave it in there.  If this was a real quilt, I probably wouldn’t want the crunch crunch sound of the paper, but it’s practice so I won’t stress over it.

This just opens up SO MANY possiblities! Applique’d pillows! Applique’d bags! Quilts, quilts quilts!