Hi all -
I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here. Grace and Buttercup remain happy and healthy. I had my birthday last week so I'm another year closer to Medicare. Just two more years to go! I look forward to hopefully saving a lot of money on health insurance.
I mentioned last week that I got myself a Brother ScanNCut for my birthday. I spent some time this week learning how to use it. I decided to make an applique baby quilt for my niece's baby who is due in November. There are two applique shapes in this quilt -- a petal and a circle. I was able to scan the shapes and save them in a cutting format on a USB stick. I did some editing and created a couple of sheets full of the shapes and then cut the shapes out of the applique paper I use.
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| Brother ScanNCut - Applique Shapes |
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| Brother ScanNCut - Petals Page Leftovers |
I generally like to do turned-edge applique if the shapes aren't too complicated. I like to cut the shape out of a wash-away stabilizer, glue or fuse the stabilizer to the back of the fabric and fold the edges of the fabric over the stabilizer to create my applique shapes. I currently use the C&T Wash-Away Applique Paper for my appliques. This link goes to the sheets but I actually have a couple of big rolls of the paper. I got them for just $5 each a long time ago when C&T used to have these incredible annual warehouse sales.
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| C&T Wash-Away Applique Paper |
This paper has a light fusible on one side and is a little thicker than some of the other wash-away papers I've tried. It is thick enough that the edges hold up pretty well when folding the fabric edges to the back. I like the applique stabilizer that is included in the Judy Niemeyer patterns better, but I haven't been able to figure out what it is that they use so I can get some for myself. Back to the ScanNCut -- I did have a few problems while figuring out the interface. My first problem was when I tested my cutting setup using a piece of paper. Even though I tested a corner of the paper on the sticky mat to make sure that it would come off after the cutting, I had a lot of trouble getting the paper off of the mat after the cutting. What I found was that the sticky mat was stickier in the middle than it was on the edges. So, from now on I'll start with the low-tack mat and move to the regular mat if I'm having trouble getting enough stick. I also had some trouble figuring out the editing interface and would get to spots where I couldn't figure out how to back out of where I was without doing a cut. I power-cycled several times when I got into this situation. In the process, something happened to my USB stick so the ScanNCut doesn't recognize it anymore even though everything is fine on it when I put it in my computer. I moved my files from the original USB stick to a different one and everything is working fine now. I also figured out how you can get out of the editing without cutting anything. There's a lot of other stuff the ScanNCut can do, but this is what I'll be doing most with it so this was a really good start.
As I mentioned above, the project I'm using to learn the ScanNCut is an applique baby quilt. I'm working on the Spring Baby Quilt shared by Pat Bravo in the Bernina We All Sew blog. I'm following the design of the quilt in the blog, but using my own techniques. As mentioned above, I use a wash-away stabilizer. I cut the applique shape from the stabilizer and adhere the stabilizer to the wrong side of my fabric. I use a water-soluable glue to glue the raw edges of the fabric to the back side of the applique, enclosing the stabilizer.
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| Spring Baby Quilt - Stabilizer and Glue on Back of Applique |
I like to use the Apliquick rods when turning the applique edges to the back. These are a bit expensive, but they work really well for me. When just using my fingers for the turning, I would get glue on my fingers and the applique edge would then stick to my finger and it was a big mess trying to get things to look nice.
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| Spring Baby Quilt - Nicely Turned Applique Edge |
After folding the edge over, I turn over the applique to check the smoothness of the edge from the front. If it looks good, I press down on the edge against the table to flatten everything out and then turn it back over to do the next edge. For the petal shape, once the edges were folded over, I put a little bit of glue on the tips and then folded the edge over to make sure that the fabric would stay behind the applique shape when sewing on the applique with my sewing machine.
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| Spring Baby Quilt - Dab of Glue on the Point |
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| Spring Baby Quilt - Tip Folded Over |
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| Spring Baby Quilt - Finished Applique Shape |
Once all of the applique shapes were prepared, I positioned them on the background fabric. To hold them in place, I first put a dab of glue on the back of the shape and pressed it to the background. Then I added a pin to hold the shape in place since there is a lot of handling of the top while I sew the shapes to the background. My background is a solid (not quite) sage green fabric. My niece talked about doing the baby's room in sage green (and also used sage green in her wedding), but I I like a slightly yellower green better for this quilt so I pushed the color a little bit. Here is how it looks so far:
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| Spring Baby Quilt |
When placing the shapes, I was going to use an air-erasable pen to draw registration lines to make sure that the petals were aligned perfectly. But then I happened to look at the picture of the sample and noticed that the shapes weren't perfectly aligned and that gave the quilt a whimsical look that I really liked so I decided to be more free-form in my positioning. I now have about half of the applique shapes sewn to the background fabric. I'm using a double blanket stitch to sew the shapes.
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| Spring Baby Quilt - Blanket Stitch Applique |
I'm matching the color (but not necessarily the value) of the thread to the applique. I usually match my bobbin thread to my top thread, but I decided that I just didn't want to wind all of those bobbins so I instead am using a green thread in the bobbin that matches the background. I'll also use that thread for the quilting. So far I'm pretty happy with how this is turning out.
Last Wednesday I attended out quilt guild's workshop. It was the Guyon Grey workshop with Linda Hahn. Linda is known for her New York Beauty technique. I've made New York Beauty blocks before and I'm comfortable with them, but it's always good to try other techniques because you never know what you might want to use. Linda is an entertaining teacher and it was nice to try her technique, but I don't think her technique is right for me. She has you cut everything oversized and then trim it to shape after sewing. That does give you a block of the right size with everything placed pretty well, but I found that my background pieces were a bit stretched.
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| Guyon Grey - Blocks From Class |
I'll probably make a few more blocks with her method, then might go back to my previous methods. She does have her own foundation paper that you can buy from her Web site. I really liked how this paper worked with foundation paper piecing. It's stiff enough to hold its shape well while stitching, but, like the C&T applique paper, it's a leave-in stabilizer that becomes a soft, thin layer in your quilt after washing. I ordered more of the paper to play with (since the guild members bought all of the paper she had brought with her).
I also made more progress on my Scarfscape designed by Laura Nelkin.
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| Scarfscape |
I'm almost done with the bias strip that runs along the length of the scarf. When that is done, I'll be picking up stitches along the long edge and then will knit a beaded lace border. I like how the yarn has transitioned from dark purple to navy to teal in the section that's finished!
Finally, I made some more progress on my Flying Beauties cross stitch.
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| Flying Beauties |
I'm making good progress on the background and added the first dragonfly. It's fun to see this picture materialize!
Nancy
