Auntie Green's Center Completed

I have been experimenting with making bias this morning. The next step on Auntie Green's Garden is a large leaf wreath around this basket of flowers. There is a lot of chunky 5/8 inch bias stem in this quilt that will need to be pieced together. In my experience seams do not go through my Clover bias makers neatly. I remember reading about Jeanne Sullivan's technique of double fold bias making in her book Simply Successful Appliqué (a great appliqué reference book) and thought I would do a test.

She brushes liquid sizing down the center of the bias and folds in half and irons.

So far so good. I trimmed the seam dog ears, brushed the sizing on my next fold and pressed in half again, making sure I folded over the raw edges.

Yea, smooth over the seam, I think this will work. I might draw some permanent pen lines on my well stained ironing mat and have some guidelines for the correct width of the stem since I am going to be making so much of it for this quilt.

I also finished my first block in the Benjamin Biggs wedding quilt.

It is a freezing cold morning in Omaha, 5 degrees below zero. I am going to retreat to the sewing room with lots of coffee and start making bias.

Happy Stitching All,

Cheri

 

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A New Beginning and a New Beginning

Happy New Year!

I am starting my new year with two new appliqué projects. The first is Auntie Green's Garden, pattern by Irene Blanck.

This is my first block of the month that I have purchased the fabric from a store (homestead hearth.com). It is quite fun getting the fabric packet in the mail. Each fabric is labeled and cut into small blocks just perfect for an appliquér who back bastes. Other than the challenge of wrangling this huge pattern (the center section is about 50 X50 inches) and my fabric around to get it traced onto the back of my background fabric

I was stitching in a very short time.

My second new project is the Benjamen Biggs wedding quilt.

The patterns for this 1848 red and green album quilt are a free block of the month over the next two years by Gay from sentimentalstitches.net and Brenda from dearjane.com. This is their third year doing free block of the months under their Just Takes Two (see the button on the sidebar) BOM. The patterns are available for one month and after that available for purchase. There is lots of interesting reading about the history of the Benjamin Biggs family and each block, so even if you do not applique pop over and read about this wonderful quilt.

I love red and green quilts but I am playing around with doing this one in greens and yellows. It is a large quilt, 100 X 100 inches and this would fit nicely on my king size bed eventually, and green and yellow would match my existing decor in my bedroom. So far, I have just been pulling fabrics, there is a little touch of blue in the center block of this quilt, doesn't this blue paisley fit in nicely with these?

Over the last month I have been keeping up with my two cross stitch samplers. The peacocks are finished on And They Sinned and I am onto the next band.

 

And little Freelove Hazard is getting closer and closer to completion.

I have bonded with this little girl, I love the way she added her numbers, sort of - there is no number 5 - at the end of different alphabet rows. And in true Freelove fashion I omitted the letter D in the first row by accident, but I am just going to leave it. (The letter J was not included in the old sampler alphabets, so that omission is supposed to be there.)

I am going to have to make myself put down the hand appliqué and spend some time on the samplers in the coming months, but variety is the spice of life, and definitely of quilters and stitchers.

 

Happy Stitctching All,

Cheri

 

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