I have finally posted a picture of my border. I'm doing the hand appliqué method so it has taken me some time. I uploaded the center section to the show and tell area. Thanks Margo for the idea of the gold paper. Made a big difference.

Denise

Thanks, Gail and Denise!

I wish I had thought of making stencils last year when I was doing a Jacobean BOM through my local quilt store. I spent hours (literally) measuring and moving and resetting and occasionally swearing, and finally reached a state of nirvana-it's-good-enough. If I had stitched the patterns, it would have reduced a couple of hours on each block to maybe 15 minutes. That one was all raw-edge, which went fast after I got the placement accomplished.

Of course, the Jacobean is waiting on me to quilt it, but by golly it's all assembled.

Barb in Alabama

I may have to re-visit that pounce method. I bought all the stuff buy have never been very successful with the results on just regular stencils never mind the paper. My husband is a sign man and has used this method for years when doing fine hand lettering.

It looks quite beautiful regardless.

denise

Makes for a very pretty pic Barb....love your pounce idea too, makes it look very accurate for placement of the many and varied pieces to be attached to the border.

Thank you, Rita! I would LOVE LOVE to visit Ireland and see the Irish flowers. Maybe some day....

Barb

Thanks, Margo! I was kind of dreading stitching the pattern, but it took maybe 20 minutes and I know it saved me a lot of time in the long run. (Not to mention the benefit of avoiding the aggravation factor involved in getting the placement just right )

Barb in Alabama

It looks really great Barb - very neat and tidy. They must be Irish flowers in those colours.

Good job Barb!! And I LUV your perforate/pounce method for transferring the pattern!

There are no quilt police allowed here, so your leaves can be any color you want them to be!!

Just reporting in.

I decided to stay with turned-edge applique for the whole quilt so have spent the first half of June doing the Stable Stuff / template / glue / orange stick routine. Oh, also doing the circles - now a piece of cake, thanks to Margo!

I again stitched the pattern without thread to create a stencil and then pounced chalk through it onto the border strip for an accurate layout. Well, there was a slight cat-related incident that meant I had to dust off a portion of the chalk and re-position the stencil. But it all worked out (doesn't it always when you have cats in the sewing room?), and I have completed glue-basting and then doing a quick thread-baste on the pieces, all ready to finish the applique stitching.



The 1/2-inch vine works for me, except for the short pieces. I just now saw the separate post on making 3/8-inch binding from our 1-inch strips and will give that a shot, with the hope of switching out the short pieces.

So my 2 glaring errors for this month (which I will leave in, because I am not perfect and so my quilts contain that imperfection as a reflection of me) are: (1) somehow I missed that the small pairs of leaves are both light and dark - mine are both dark; and (2) one of the smaller tulips slipped slightly when I was doing the inner applique before glue-basting the piece to the border.

Of course, that doesn't account for all my not-yet-noticed errors, but I'm not looking too closely hah.

So much fun - I can't even begin to say how much!


Barb in Alabama

idaho wrote:

Need a LIKE button!!

Don't cha just love an excuse to go shoppin' ?!

I got new fabric today for the bias stems so I can use the rest of what is left of the darker fabric to make bigger leaves.

I agree with Marilyn. Chunkier leaves and more of them. I like the 1/2" wide stem, and the bias tape maker makes that part go really fast.
I found that I didn't need to join my cut stems, but could work with the shorter lengths as we were instructed to cut them, and just had the raw ends tucked under the flowers.