Thursday 18 July 2013

Love Entwined and More

I have been very busy trying to get other stitching done before the next LE block came out. I think i did pretty well. I managed to get some Phebe things done for my daughters version and my own, as well as a little more done on the Sunburst Star block for the Morrell Quilt.



Nearly there.
This is arduous as there are so many pieces and hand piecing takes me a long time, but it looks great so its worth it.

DD's Phebe




Everything's coming together nicely now and DD is happy with it so thats all that matters !

My Phebe

 My Phebe is coming along as well and I'm really happy with it too.
Its "officially" A Phebe now thanks to LuAnn over at 
She kindly provided me with the Original Fabric for the dress and top!
THANKS LuAnn :)







I Couldn't resist a little Broderie Perse flower.


I also took extra shots of how i Turn my edges ready to applique

All you need is some freezer paper A quilting pin and some Elmers Glue or other washable quilting glue.

Start off by cutting your pattern out of freezer paper no seam allowance added
Iron your freezer paper onto the right side of your fabric. The freezer paper acts as a guide to our turn line instead of drawing on it. It also adds stability and makes turning the edge easy.
Cut your fabric with a very scant 1/4 " seam allowance. I prefer 3/16 but thats because I'm used to smaller allowances and I'm "Tight" with my fabric lol

Whenever you have a tip or point to turn always do this first. Pop the glue on the tip and turn it down, so it just shows the paper underneath as in the pic above. Sometimes to get the right point you have to turn it down even further.

Glue the bottom curved edge

Using your quilting pin and first (pointer) finger to turn the edge slowly and in little increments not big bits.
Slow and small wins the race.
Glue down one side of triangle. Please excuse my edge. I cut a little too deeply but I'm a fabric miser so i made do anyway 
Start at the bottom curved edge and work your way up to the tip. 

Glue down the other side but this time work from the tip down.

You should end up with a nice neat tip.
Finished Triangle neatly glued and all ready to applique.
I then take my glued pieces and use "Roxanne's Glue Baste It" to baste them in place on my quilt.

I used the same technique for the small leaves that go in between the triangle border.













Now that i have finished the Compass and her borders I'm going to move onto the petal flowers and the Parallelogram borders. 

I wont be adding the borders until i have finished appliqueing all of the centre as i don't want it to bubble and not sit flat. So, I'm going to English Piece the borders and save them for later.

I have printed the template out on freezer paper and then ironed another sheet of freezer paper onto that so it is two layers thick. This will be sufficiently thick to use for english paper piecing.
I will be able to iron it onto the fabric as well. Bonus !








And i think that'll do  :)

Keep on Stitching,
Kel.














Wednesday 10 July 2013

Love Entwined Revisited

All i have been able to think about is the Love Entwined block. Mainly due to the fact that my first compass attempt was far from perfect. I scrapped it. I then decided it would be better to piece it on the machine. I tried this two times with two seperate blocks. I scrapped them. I then decided Applique would be the thing to do. I tried one applique block, was quite happy with it. Sat down ready to applique it down to the background fabric when my Lovely, Good Hearted Son said, Are you happy with it mum?
 Long story short i scrapped it.
I then decided after much head holding to retry it again in applique. It turns out that 5 times is the trick because this time it was perfect.

*** Except for the size :) 
it worked out a teensy bit smaller than the original but i made up for that  with the compass border, making it a tad wider ***

Taa Daa


Im happy with it and thats all that matters 
Finally....



I decided to change some of the colours as i was forgetting that this is a marriage quilt.
 I wanted to make it a bit more romantic looking.

I love how the applique stands out, applique is so yummy looking, it gives another dimension to the quilt.




Besides the planning of what fabric was going to go where and under what, it was pretty easy to achieve. Having done both methods i prefer the look of the applique block, but i still love the precision of the hand pieced and machine pieced compasses as well.


Glue and layer



I turned all the edges of the compass pieces first and basted them down with 
Elmer's Disappearing purple glue.
I then stuck each piece down on top of the next until i had the entire compass Glued together and ready to stitch!



I appliqued the compass together before i went any further.
I then prepped the compass border in the same manner.




I only cut the inside ring so it would bend around the curve and sit nice and flat.
I was going to freehand the circles, but i talked the MOTH lol,  into punching the circles for me with his hole punch, so that was easy. 






And that was it. Thats how i accomplished the compass and I'm more than happy its over! 
It was worth redoing as it was something that would have nagged me to the end.

Hope you guys are all getting there in anticipation of the upcoming second installment.

Till next time, Keep on Stitching :)