Cogito

Cathy (Macybaby), your information is so helpful and so appreciated! I don't know where you find the time. You must be the most organized person because you are also always helping us on the vintage thread and you indicate that you work! Your experiments here are going to help me a lot.
I used to love hand appliqué but to even remotely keep up here I know I will have to do by machine and that I have never done. So I look forward to the wisdom of others in this group. My book arrived and now I need to get hopping and figure out fabrics, etc. I already feel way behind and the official start date hasn't even arrived. Lol!

So Cathy what type/brand of stabilizer did you use? I too will be using a vintage machine.....think I'm going to use one of my 401's.

kaelynangelfoot

Jane, I used dressmaker's tracing paper and a ball point pen or other blunt tip to transfer the pattern to the background square. It seemed to work very well.

kaelynangelfoot

Centering Your Pattern

I thought I'd throw this up here, a quick tutorial on how I get my pattern pieces centered and properly placed.

1. Fold your background square in half horizontally and press the fold lightly with an iron to crease (red line). Open and fold the other way and repeat. You should now have a "plus sign" of creases.
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2. Now do the same along both diagonals.

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3. You should now have a"star" of creases. I highlighted them in red to make them easier to see.

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4. Working with one quadrant at a time, layer a pieces of dressmaker's tracing paper under your pattern. The red lines show the center creases. Your pattern should be square with these lines.

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5. Firmly trace over your pattern with a blunt instrument (you do not want to poke holes in the pattern and get ink onto your block). I'm using a blunted colored pencil. The chalk on the tracing paper will be transferred to you fabric. Repeat in other three quadrants to get a complete tracing. It is hard to see on camera, but the red trace is quite obvious in person.

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6. Place your applique pieces according to the pattern instructions, using the creases and traced pattern to align and center your applique.

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leakus

I started this one here a couple of years ago but never finished. I was going to start working on it again! I am joining! I wonn't be able to do one per week but I have some done so I might be able to stay in the run.

Macybaby

Cogito, I used pellon 806 stitch-n-tear. It's heavier than I expected, but does tear OK and seems to work OK. Since I've never tried anything else, I can't say how good it is compared to others.

though with something lighter it might not move around as easily - which may not be a good thing.

kaelynangelfoot

We're happy to have you for whichever blocks you want to make. Welcome!

Macybaby

I found out today that there are two blocks that aren't quite symmetrical, IIRC it's 15 and 19 - the corner motifs are mirror images. I ended up with one that is not and one that is because one was traced using a corner and the other I traced the entire motif, so got exactly what was there.

What surprised me the most was how much the outlining changed the look of the block. My "test" is cream, green and gold and I didn't like all the green - but after adding the outlining and the gold embroidery- the green is much less prominent and I really like it now.

I'm considering doing my hand applique blocks using a theme of gradient colors in each block instead of the more random nature of them. I'll have to look over my batiks to see if I'm missing colors.

It's kind of funny how we all tend to have our favorite colors and are attracted and buy them more often. I was putting together a color wheel and discovered I had nothing in the blue/purple area. Plenty in green/blue and the purple/red side. When I buy blue, I tend to like those shaded towards the green, and when I buy purple I tend to like those shaded towards the red.

HouseDragon

Mahalo for the head's up!

My book arrived and it looks brand new: I bought it through Amazon at an excellent price. But I am shocked at the poor workmanship: the publisher should have used the author's version for a photo of the whole quilt (galloping by on a horse, you can only see the beauty) and had new blocks made for the individual block photos. A How-To section on applique would also be nice. I hope this book is republished because Affairs of the Heart is a spectacular quilt!

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do the Quilt-Along: my UFO basket became a box and is now entering the "omg, how am I going to finish all these stage". I'm really enjoying reading along with your adventures. I'm keeping an eye out for the perfect fabrics for my version and taking notes of all your so generously shared hints and tricks.

I'll probably use Eleanor Burns' method of doing applique. It worked beautifully for several mug rugs I made last year.

Is anyone else using her method?

HouseDragon

I use Fons and Porter's mechanical pencils exclusively. The white chalk is perfect for dark fabrics and the graphite is perfect for light fabrics. The marks wash out completely.

Macybaby

I've been playing with fabric again. I pulled out the batiks from a few sampler packs I bought and laid them out with the Gold Fairy Frost background.



Then I started pulling out those that I felt didn't play well with the background - which was the yellow/gold/orange tones.



I think it looks better in the picture than in person - I just could not get excited about working with it. I think it would be great with black but it just didn't want to click in my brain with the gold. I thought about ordering some black fabric - but at this point then I'd be doing four sets of blocks. At least with machine applique, they go faster.

So I pulled out some of the fabric I ordered with the Fairy Frost and came up with this.



There is so much variety in the print that I can get a lot of different "looks" using it, from colorful to lots of black. I had a few other prints but decided there was enough choices with the one and the others detracted from it. I may only use the honeycomb print for the border. It looks kind of brown in the picture, but it is black. I think I'll also use the background fabric for things like flower centers when they are in the middle of other fabrics.