Teapot No. 4!

Filed Under Hand appliqué, Show & Tell | Comments Off on Teapot No. 4!

Happy Easter and AFD!!

Kay

By Kay Mackenzie
Kay’s Etsy Shop
Instagram • kaymacquilts

This fabric is a pillar print. I fussy-placed the large bouquet in the center of the teapot so you can’t even tell!

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Kay’s Etsy Shop
Instagram • kaymacquilts

Teapot No. 2!

Filed Under Back-basting (no-template), Hand appliqué, Show & Tell | Comments Off on Teapot No. 2!

I’m using a layer cake of the gorgeous Ann’s Arbor line by Minick and Simpson for Moda. It has lots of scrumptious prints for the teapots!

Instagram • kaymacquilts
By Kay Mackenzie
Kay’s Etsy Shop

Teapot No. 1!

Filed Under Back-basting (no-template), Hand appliqué, Show & Tell | Comments Off on Teapot No. 1!

I’m posting a teapot a week for 16 weeks over on Instagram. Here’s the first one!


Made with Ann’s Arbor fabrics by Minick and Simpson for Moda. I hand appliquéd it using the back-basting method of preparation. It feels great to be going back to hand work for awhile. You can click Back-Basting in the Categories for a visual tutorial of this fabulous method.

Until next time,
Kay

By Kay Mackenzie
Kay’s Etsy Shop
Instagram: kaymacquilts

Teapot Appliqué-Along

Filed Under Hand appliqué, Instagram, Show & Tell | Comments Off on Teapot Appliqué-Along

Greetings fellow appliqué enthusiasts! I’m planning a project this year appliquéing new blocks from my first collection of teapot designs. I’m kind of excited about it!


When the top is done, it’ll be donated to a charitable kids’ quilt group in my guild, to use as a fundraiser for supplies.

A few months ago I joined Instagram and have been having a wonderful time over there. I’ll be “insta-gating” a Teapot Appliqué-Along and posting photos of the new blocks once a week starting Sunday, February 4.


If you’re on Instagram and want to follow along, the account is kaymacquilts. I posted all the info about the #teapotaal on December 29. Would love it if you joined in the fun, and spread the word!

I’ll show the blocks here on the blog as well, so if you’re not on IG you’ll still see them.

Here are the fabrics for my first teapot, from the Ann’s Arbor collection by Minick & Simpson for Moda.

Cheers,
Kay

By Kay Mackenzie
Kay’s Etsy Shop
Instagram = kaymacquilts

I recently received an order for my book Teapots 2 to Appliqué from a quilter living in New Zealand. She told me she had see a quilt made from the designs in a show in Orewa.

I was intrigued!! I asked her for a little more information, and she sent me a photo of the gorgeous quilt. It’s made with all Liberty fabrics!!

liberty-tpots-450

liberty-label

The Hibiscus Coast Quilters of Whangaparaoa, New Zealand, put me in touch with the maker, Julie Davis. Julie shared the following about her project.

“I would be very happy for you to use my quilt on your blog. It is such a lovely pattern and I thoroughly enjoyed hand appliquéing the teapots. The Liberty fabrics I purchased from a Liberty club at my regular quilting shop. There were six different Liberty fabrics in a pack for six months. I couldn’t wait out the six months so I purchased them altogether. I am going to use this as a tablecloth when I have a High Tea for my quilting friends.”

Those are some lucky friends! Thank you Julie, for allowing me to share, and I’m so glad you had a good time with the designs. And thank you Tish for letting me know about the beautiful quilt. Will look forward to seeing your teapot creations as well!

Cheers,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Kay’s Etsy Shop

Have you ever finished an appliqué block and then had second thoughts about the background fabric you chose?

Maybe It doesn’t look the way you thought it would. Or the appliqués end up blending into the background a little more than you’d like. Maybe the project ended up taking a different direction. Whatever the reason, sometimes you wish that cute block you stitched was on a different background.

Maniac that I am, I have actually twice successfully swapped out the background on a completed block, without starting over!! I’ll show you how I did it, then you can decide if it’s crazy or total genius.

Note: This applies to hand-appliquéd blocks, not fused or machine-stitched.

Here’s the Apples block from my first Martingale book, Easy Appliqué Blocks.

See, there it is, right on the cover.


Now, that beige stripey background is okay, but when I was looking for a block to use for this tutorial, I got to thinking, wouldn’t that bowl of apples look nice zhuzhed up on some red polky-dots?

I’ll walk you through the process. You will need to do some basting, some trimming, some tweezering, and some re-stitching. BUT you will not have to restitch everything! Where one motif goes over the top of another one, that part does not have to be restitched. (Except for a little overlapping to secure threads.) Here’s my attempt at telestration in Photoshop to show you those areas.

What you’ll need:

• A new background fabric
• Needle and threads
• Sharp-tipped hand scissors
• Tweezers
• Seam ripper

Start by cutting a square of the new background fabric that is the same size as the existing one.

Take a deep breath.

On the back of the stitched block, cut away the background fabric inside each appliqué piece, close to the stitching. Keep the lower blade of the scissors on top of the turning allowance.

Starting to cut away the interior background.

Remove the interior background fabric.

Those little lines of background behind the stitching that is going to remain… just leave ’em. Okay, if they really bother you, you can tweezer them out, but leaving them in place will keep the stitches tight, and will not affect the appearance of the refurbished block.

Interior all cut away, leaving lines in place that do not need to be restitched.

Layer the block on top of the new background.

Both right-side-up, of course.

Baste them together all around the perimeter of the appliqués, a scant ½” inside the stitching lines.

Basted together, inside the stitching.

A closer look.

A little at a time, use the seam ripper to remove the previous appliqué stitching. Once you get it started, this is easily done by lifting the edge of the appliqué. The old background fabric outside the perimeter will come loose and you can cut it away in hunks. Tweezers come in handy for removing little bits of thread and background.

Old stitches removed, a hunk of the old background gone, starting to restitch.

Restitch the appliqués to the new background, changing thread color as needed. You’ll find this to be easy stitching! The edge is already turned and creased, and behaves itself beautifully, acting like prepared-edge appliqué.

When you come to a place where one motif crosses on top of another one (as shown in the telestrated example above), sew over the area a little bit to secure the existing stitching, then continue on around the perimeter.

Halfway done!

Once everything is restitched, remove the basting.

Presto Change-o!

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Kay’s Etsy Shop

Inside points, notches, whatever you call ’em, hand appliquér extraordinaire Susan Taylor Propst has posted an illustrated tutorial to stitching these potentially pesky areas, over on the Martingale blog.

And, my pal Cathy put up a post on machine quilting that is hilarious and inspired, with a touch of genius, and at once bittersweet if you are a Trekker or even an MI fan.

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

This month, courtesy of AQS Publishing, we have Rebecca L. Campbell’s charming book Plant Your Own Garden.


This little book features a dozen original flower blocks that you can use to plant an appliqué garden. Each design can stand alone in a project of your own creation, or join the others in a sampler quilt.

Rebecca shares with us what inspired her to become an appliqué enthusiast and to develop her own system for pleasing results. Take it away, Rebecca!

I belong to a quilt guild, Quintessential Quilters in Columbus, Ohio. I thank that organization for the opportunity to take classes from an amazing list of famous quilters. Those teachers inspired me in a so many ways. I wanted be a part of the quilting business. but what was I going to offer? A seed was planted and I was searching for my way to inspire.

I fell in love with an appliqué pattern and became determined to learn turned-edge appliqué, but my results left a lot to be desired. I wanted perfect shapes right off the bat and didn’t want to spend time tracing or ripping freezer paper out. I matched up products that accomplished those tasks. I eliminated tracing by using a copier to create a placement guide (June Tailor’s Perfect Piecing) and templates (C. Jenkins Freezer Paper Sheets). If I ironed the freezer paper to the right side of the fabric it could be pulled off once the piece is in place. Print n Fuse ironed to batting enabled me to create trapunto without stuffing.

Now I had a method that worked well for me. Teaching classes was a test to see if it worked for others. Beginners were excited with their results and experienced appliquérs found it increased their accuracy and productivity.

I had a proven method that I titled Innovative Appliqué. Someone suggested I should create an original pattern to teach from. Sixty-one patterns and more in the works are available. All individual patterns are full size.

Designing, teaching, vending and trade shows lead to connecting with America Quilter’s Society to publish a booklet, Plant Your Own Garden. Twelve flower patterns, quilt construction, and Innovative Appliqué instructions are all included. I like to provide lots of pictures to show what I am explaining. The booklet patterns do need to be enlarged 111%. That is something I hope to avoid the next go round.

I hang a sign at shows that says Appliqué is not a four letter word. I think that is so funny.

At a recent Checker Distributors open house, Rebecca filmed a video presentation showing her appliqué techniques.

Rebecca’s video.

If you’d like to win this booket, please leave a comment before 7:00 p.m. California time on Monday, October 6. Open to U.S. mailing addresses only.

Good luck everyone!
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

Great hand appliqué tip

Filed Under Fabrics, Hand appliqué, Photo tutorials | Comments Off on Great hand appliqué tip

There’s a fabulous hand-appliqué tip from Martingale author Cynthia Tomaszewski on their blog, Stitch This!

Go see What to do when your appliqué fabric frays. This one’s going straight into my bag of tricks. Thanks Cynthia!

Linda Franz is one of my most revered associates in the quilting world. When I first stuck a toe into publishing, I saw that she had produced the fabulous Quilted Diamonds on her own, and I contacted her with questions. Linda immediately became a mentor to me, answering at length and providing the most wonderful encouragement.

I’ve watched over the years as Linda has continued trail-blazing. She is the inventor of Inklingo, a system of printing on fabric that provides a myriad of benefits for both patchwork and appliqué. Recently Linda posted a tutorial on Quilting Hub about back-basting with Inklingo that you’ll just have to go and see. Among Linda’s many skills is photography, and the quality of her photo tutorials is unsurpassed. You’ll also meet Linda’s friend Monkey, who helps demonstrate during the tutorials.

Coming up: Tuesday is my birthday. I have a date with the hubby for dinner-and-a-movie, but I’m also feeling inclined to do some sort of something here on the blog to help celebrate. And, on Christmas day I post my annual Cavalcade of Kittens, so be warned if you are averse to fluffy baby felines. :)

Cheers,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

I have a super-sized holiday treat this month as our featured book and giveaway! Landauer Publishing sent me a copy of Janice Vaine’s The Art of Elegant Hand Embroidery, Embellishment, and Appliqué.


It’s truly something special. It’s a great big, hard-cover, spiral-bound book, and with it Landauer also sent me the companion pack of 124 Block Patterns.

If you like hand embroidery and embellishment, you are sure to drool over this fantastic award-winning publication. Go on over to the Landauer website and watch the short video about the book. Click on “Look Inside the Book.”

Here’s an inside sneak peak:

The book and the companion patterns will both go to one lucky reader. If you’d like to win them, please leave a comment here on this post before 7:00 p.m. California time on Sunday, December 9.

The fine print: Open to U.S. and Canada mailing addresses only. Comments left on a different post are not eligible. Replies to an email feed are not eligible.

Many thanks to Landauer for providing us this wonderful resource for appliqué, embroidery, and embellishment enthusiasts. Good luck and happy holidays to all!!

Cheers,
Kay

Anybody up for some old-school, not-quick-and-easy, very detailed, completely captivating holiday appliqué?

Then I have just the thing for you! Santa’s Loading Dock Quilt by Mary Buvia is this month’s featured book, courtesy of AQS Publishing.


Wow! What a quilt! You can see a closer photo of it on Mary’ website. This is a masterpiece, and accordingly Mary was awarded Master Quilter status by the American Quilters Society.

The book gives you all the patterns and information you’d need to recreate the entire jolly scene; however, Mary encourages you to use whatever smaller elements from it that you like to make a smaller quilt or decorate other projects.

Mary’s appliqué method involves double freezer-paper templates, starch, and glue to create prepared-edge pieces for hand appliqué. The book also gives information for raw-edge machine appliqué if that’s what you prefer.

Many of the templates are given full size; however, some of them you’ll need to enlarge 200%.

So, who’s itching for some exceedingly cute holiday stitching? If you’d like to win this book, please leave a comment by 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 1. Open to U.S. and Canada mailing addresses only.

Holiday cheers,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

P.S. I’ll be in Lodi, California, this weekend for the Tokay Stitch ‘n Quilt Guild show. This is a lovely show put on every other year, and the ladies serve a delightful afternoon tea for all!

Oooh, I’ve been waiting to get my paws on this one!

Back at Spring Market in Kansas City, I attended author Angela Lawrence‘s Schoolhouse presentation, because I’m always interested to hear what other appliqué enthusiasts have to say. Angela has been teaching hand appliqué for many years, and for her new book she’s broken down every step and laid it out in a beautiful visual guide. As she made her way through her presentation, I was like, “Check, check, that’s the way I do it, check, awesome.” With one exception, which is our placement method, Angela and I are “like this” when it comes to hand appliqué.

I spoke with Angela after the presentation, and she was delighted to hear that I wanted to feature her beautiful new book on the blog. But guess what? The copy she had in her hand was the only one in captivity! It was an advance copy and the book wasn’t even out yet!

Later in the weekend I stopped by the Landauer booth and made the acquaintance of E.B., the digital marketing person. She was also very happy to have the book featured once it came out. I gave her my card but afterward realized I hadn’t written my email address on the back for her. Argh! Since then I’ve been pondering the best way to follow up. Excelsior! I got an email from E.B. asking for my address so she could send me the book! Thank you Landauer!


I’d show you some more images, and tell you what-all’s in the book, but Landauer has gone to all the trouble, so just click on over to their website and watch the short video! Let me add that there’s a packet of full-size templates inside the back cover for the nine projects.

I have a copy of the book to give away to a lucky reader. If you’d like to enter the drawing, leave a comment at the bottom of this post before 7:00 p.m. California time on Wednesday, September 5.

Contest open to U.S. and Canada mailing addresses only. Remember that you can’t enter the drawing from your email program. You have to be on the blog itself on the internet to leave a comment.

Good luck everyone!
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

At Spring Market in May, I stopped by the Landauer booth to find out more information about one of their upcoming appliqué titles.

I happened to speak with the right person! The staff member in charge of digital marketing was thrilled at the prospect of sharing their appliqué titles with All About Appliqué and handed me a couple to peruse.

One of them was Janet Pittman‘s Appliqué: The Basics and Beyond. I sat down and looked all the way through through the book. It’s fantastic, and I was presented with a copy to take home in my suitcase. Thank you, Landauer!

Janet has really done a comprehensive job of presenting information about appliqué… several kinds. After a section on equipment and supplies, we’re on to the preparing, stitching, and embellishing! There’s paper-backed fusible-web, turned-edge with template and starch, turned-edge with freezer paper and glue, turned-edge with freezer paper on the wrong side and also the right side, faced appliqué, marked-line and thread-basted, you name it, Janet has covered it. And it’s all beautifully photographed and illustrated for you.

One of the really cool things about the book is that it’s spiral-bound inside a hardback cover so it lays flat. What a nice convenience.

The subtitle of the book is, “The Complete Guide to Successful Machine and Hand Techniques with Dozens of Designs to Mix and Match.” In addition to all that appliqué information, there are a bunch of projects with complete instructions. There’s even an index in this comprehensive resource.

If you’d like to win Appliqué: The Basics and Beyond, please leave a comment here on the blog before 7:00 p.m. on Friday, July 7.

Please pay close attention to the following. There are always a few who don’t understand how to leave a comment.

If you receive this blog post in your email, replying to that email will not enter you in the drawing. You’ll need to click on the title of the post, which will take you to All About Appliqué on the internet. Scroll to the bottom and leave your comment there. Open to U.S. and Canada mailing addresses only.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Kay

More felines!

Our PVQA guild member Mickey Beebe, designer of the world famous BB Bag, is coordinating our opportunity quilt for 2014.

At our last guild meeting she doled out dozens of a cute little cat block that she had designed to those members not afraid of hand appliqué. I took three.

Mickey had already traced the cats with a silver pencil and had provided a measurement-based placement system. I put on my thinking cap and came up with a method that slops into back-basting, except that it’s front-basting! That’s why I call them hybrid cats.

I positioned the cats on the background as directed, pinned in a couple places, then front-basted along the silver marked line. Take out the pins, and voilà! it’s ready to stitch, just as if I had used my favorite back-basting method.

Trimmed to shape, leaving the turning allowance, and a little reverse appliqué to delineate the legs.

Stitching away, removing the basting a little ahead.

Three cats all done and ready to go back to Mickey! I feel like there are more in my future, since there are a whole lotta cats in Mickey’s quilt!

Notes:

Cat block is © Mickey Beebe. Mickey is a natural-born quiltmaking soul. You can see two of her Road to California ribbon-winning quilts, #6711 and #6712, at the R2CA site.

When I looked at the webpage I was tickled to see one of my quilts on there too! We had a good year!

If you didn’t win a copy of Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks, Volume 5 in last week’s blog hop, I now have it available on my website, on the Patterns page.

Also, if you can’t wait until the Book-A-Round June 7-16 to see if you win one, you can order your signed copy of Scrap-Appliqué Playground now! It’s on the Bookshop page.

Cheers,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

I’ve been waiting and waiting for this one to come out!

baltimore-garden

Our featured book this month is Barbara Burnham’s Baltimore Garden Quilt from AQS Publishing.

My maiden name is Burnham so I’ve often wondered if Barbara and I are long-lost cousins. After all, Burnham is a good old “up east” name (my dad is from Massachussetts) and Barbara is a charter member of the Baltimore Appliqué Society, but alas we still haven’t figured that out LOL.

Today I’m turning the blog over to Barbara to tell us all about her stellar new book. It’s quite something!

Barbara M. Burnham, author:

“My dear husband thought I was crazy to buy that old worn quilt I found in 1999. “But it really does have potential,” I told him. “Try to imagine that quilt as it looked in 1848 when it was made.”

M.E.C. 1848

M.E.C. 1848

“So he smiled and said “Whatever you want, dear.” (Love that!) I wanted to reproduce the quilt and make those designs come alive again. When the quilt arrived, we had fun looking over all the appliqué, some completely gone from age and wear, and dense quilting with florals in between all the appliqué. This is the quilt that became the new “Baltimore Garden Quilt.”

M.E.C. Remembered

M.E.C. Remembered

“Flowers on the antique quilt had been stitched on one petal at a time –- one flower had almost 50 petals! But I devised a method of appliqué to do those flowers in layered sections. Over the next ten years, I traced the designs and appliquéd the blocks. (Not that I’m so slow, but also working a full-time job). Meanwhile, my friends at the Baltimore Appliqué Society cheered me on to publish the patterns.

I kept a journal noting techniques, drawings, problems, and solutions. I wondered what the original quilter might have been thinking about her world in 1848, and what she grew in her garden to inspire these flowers. Techniques on her quilt include buttonhole stitching, woven baskets, embroidery, inked signatures, and tiny cross stitched initials.

Those techniques and more are described in my book using today’s tools and methods. The companion CD includes all the patterns for appliqué blocks, border swags with 40 florettes, quilting designs, alternate sets, and an 1848-era cross stitch alphabet.

Finally, I must give credit to my friend, Marty Vint of Dogwood Quilting, for her masterful machine quilting of all the original designs from the antique quilt. The Baltimore Garden Quilt, or “M.E.C. Remembered,” will be displayed in the Author’s Row exhibit at the American Quilter’s Society shows in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Paducah, Kentucky.”

I asked Barbara to tell us more about the intriguing topic of her appliqué methods.

Barbara: “My favorite method for hand appliqué is freezer-paper-on-top with needleturn (blind stitch). I leave the freezer paper on until the piece is stitched. I don’t mark the applique fabric or background. But this quilt required a LOT of techniques! All my techniques are in this book, plus:

• A new technique for creating symmetrical multi-layered flowers
• No-mark placement
• Buttonhole (blanket stitch) and iron-on fusibles
• Reverse applique
• Embroidery stitches
• Several ways to make a woven basket
• Bias stems
• Tricks for handling small pieces like berries and bird’s eyes
• Back-basting on the sewing machine
• How to trace designs from an antique quilt
• How to find just the right fabrics, including Turkey Red
• All the quilting patterns that appear between the applique
• How-to’s for adapting quilting motifs for your quilt
• Marking quilting motifs
• How to assemble the quilt (joining blocks, joining borders and adding corner swags)
• Backing and batting, basting the “quilt sandwich”
• Quilting by hand or machine
• Preparing your quilt for machine quilting
• Binding
• Signing and dating your work, ideas for labels

Included Patterns:

• Twenty-five 15-inch appliqué blocks
• Border Double Swags and 40 Small Florettes to join them
• Quilting Motifs from the antique quilt
• Alternate Set for arranging the blocks
• Cross Stitch Alphabet from 1848

Here’s who will enjoy this book:

• People who enjoy or collect antique quilts and patterns; Baltimore style quilts, red-and-green quilts, appliqué quilts and antique quilting patterns.
• Beginning appliquérs who could learn techniques with a simple tulip block.
• Advanced appliquérs who will enjoy the more challenging and complex designs and techniques, or modify them for their own quilts.
• Quilters searching for unique border designs and ideas.

I do hope you enjoy the book!”

Thank you, Barbara! All I can say, is WOW. I mean WOW. How much more could an appliqué enthusiast ask for??

Courtesy of the publisher, I have a copy of Baltimore Album Quilt to give away to a lucky reader. To enter the drawing, leave a comment here on this post before 7:00 p.m. California time on Sunday, March 11.

The fine print: Contest open to U.S. and Canada mailing addresses only. Do not reply to your email feed; instead, click over to the blog itself and leave your comment at the bottom of the post. Good luck!

Until then,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

Fran V. wrote:

I have found that there are a lot of assumptions made when it comes to actually stitching the pieces together and in what order. For some blocks it is rather obvious, but for others not so much, especially in more complicated blocks. Some direction here would be nice.

Fran, there are two ways of thinking about what a pattern should provide. Some patterns come with little numbers all over them indicating stitching order of the pieces. To me they look like they have the measles LOL. I’m in the other camp. You know that old expression, “If somebody’s hungry, you can give them a fish, or you can teach them to fish.”

numbered-roseRose block from Easy Appliqué Blocks.

The same process applies whether the pattern is simple and the order is obvious, or when the pattern is quite complicated and has many pieces and layers. Take charge! Just look and see which pieces are partially behind others, and start with them. Build from the back to the front. If it helps you, you can jot down your own measles on your master pattern. :)

Fran also wrote,

Also some hints on deep curves and points would be nice. Could you use your wavy blades to cut these out to eliminate the fray while you work with them?

We’re covered points, notches, and curves in previous posts. As for the wavy blades… wow! Now that’s a thought! A scary one! It’s a good thing Clover makes microserrated scissors with this very idea in mind. They’re like teeny tiny pinking shears. I carry them on my website in the 5″ hand-scissor size, in the Notions section.

scissors

Karen Kay Buckley also has her own brand in a larger and a smaller size on her website.

Miscroserrated scissors don’t exactly eliminate fraying. I don’t think anything can — it’s cut fabric after all — but they do make the cut edge less prone to fraying.

Hope this helps! Thanks for your question Fran! So glad you are enjoying the blog.
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

This just in from my pal Holly Mabutas of Eat Cake Graphics:

I’m SO excited to announce a new project! I’ve teamed up with author Terri Thayer, actually she’s the one that approached me with the project over a year ago. She’s writing an 8 month series of stories called Tales of the Quilt Shop, and I’m creating an applique project to go along with it called Sugarplums.

You have GOT to go and take a look at the first block on Holly’s Blog Sprinkles of Thought. If there were anything cuter it wouldn’t be allowed by law. Way to go Holly! Not only that, Holly includes a link to her glue-stick turned-edge hand-appliqué tutorial.

Back soon,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

In the Call for Topics, Debbie asked,

I need to know how to tackle (handle the excess background fabric) of an appliquéd ‘whole cloth’ piece — in other words, one design on a large (say 36 x 42) background. Do you start at the top, middle, random, where? How do you keep that background fabric stable? Do you appliqué the vines first?

Debbie, there’s a reason that appliqué projects are usually done in block format LOL! Working on blocks is more manageable than working on a big honking project, with all of that excess fabric to deal with.

4-baskets

If you do have an appliqué project that’s one design on a large background, never fear… it can be done! I’m thinking we’re talking about hand appliqué here, and your question ties in with the recent post Support for your appliqué. The information given there on support for the background fabric is totally relevant to tackling large appliqué projects.

What area to start in? It’s not like machine quilting, where the conventional wisdom is usually to start in the middle and work your way outwards. I use the back-basting method, which ensures that your motifs end up stitched exactly where you marked them, so no worries about migration of pieces. Using this method, I personally wouldn’t be worried about what section I started on, but knowing me, I would probably work all over as opposed to finishing one section and then moving on to the next.

As for what order to go in, it would be the same as any other appliqué pattern. Start with the motifs that are in the back, and work your way forward. Vines are often the first things to go down, because they are usually behind other elements. You’ll need to study your pattern to see if this is the case.

Another tip about handling appliqué projects: Hold the work from the bottom of the target area. Make sure your wrist is not twisted or bent. Fold or roll the project in your non-sewing hand until you can get a good over-and-under grip on the area that you’re working on.

holding-project

If your project is large, there’s the true challenge. You might have quite a bit of fabric rolled up in your hand, and that’s why the block format is so popular! You’ll need to unroll, reposition, and reroll as you work.

Suzanne recently wrote and asked, “Please review for all of us how you mark the pattern on the back of the fabric w/o using templates. Very interesting approach that I must try.”

Suzanne, go the the back-basting link above and that’ll give you all the information :).

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

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