Heartland Block of the Month

I love applique quilts...especially Baltimore type applique quilts. Picking out the fabrics takes a lot of time and you have to make sure there is enough of this and enough of that. So! I decided to take part in a Block of the Month from Homestead Hearth. It was not easy to decide on which program to sign up for as their BOM's are gorgeous and there are SO many of them!

Well, I decided to do the Heartland and received my first installment of fabric today, as well as the pattern. It is going to be very pretty and it is such a joy to be able to dig in without having to figure out fabrics. I will be doing my favourite method of hand applique using fine non-fusible interfacing as the base which I learned from Applique My Way by Patricia Mclaughlin. She is in England.

You trace parts of the applique pattern out on the interfacing, using a Sharpie marker, and then you baste the bits of fabrics along the lines, turn it over and needle turn applique the bits down. The beauty of this method is that you can do *parts* of the applique design and audition them on the background and THEN applique the parts to the background fabric. If you don't like how your, say, flower spray is looking then you discard it and make another one. Since you are not appliqueing immediately onto the background fabric (and you don't have to mark on the background...yay!), it is very portable and practical.

Last night, while watching Dancing With the Stars, I traced out Block #1 (Pansy Wreath) onto paper from the master pattern...in pencil first...then I redrew the lines in black Sharpie to make them show up well. Then I lay my interfacing on that and traced it, again using the Sharpie. The Sharpie on the interfacing makes it easy to turn the interfacing over and see the markings...no mirror image problems! Yay. :o) I don't know about you but I am always in trouble trying to remember if I am supposed to flip the designs or not....

Here is the pattern and the traced out interfacing. I don't use the interfacing method for things like leaves or stems...I will make freezer paper templates of them and trace around them onto the fabric and then needle turn them onto the background fabric. I use the interfacing method only for designs that have *bits* in them. After the fabric is needleturned onto the interfacing and all the applique parts are done I will then applique them to the background fabric...which is a pretty cream tone on tone in this project.

You can see the fabrics...they are all labelled with the piece numbers and the block name...so organized! I think I am going to enjoy this year-or-so long project.

Will try to post pictures as I go along and show the various steps. :o)