Friday Quilt Along Block 5

We are getting near the end!!

Today we are making the CENTER block that’s appliqued.

Download the file here

Print it out – it’s 4 pages and tape it together on the lines

Here is what it looks like

I like to use Heat N bond, but if you have another brand you like to use that’s fine of course. trace everything out. Everything comes out reverse, but since the flowers are 2 and 2 in mirror image, as long as you trace out 2 of each, you’ll be fine.

Instead of tracing EACH little petal I connected them “under” the circle.

Rough cut out all the shapes and group them together

Now using a light table (if you have it) or a window or if you have good lighting and your background is light like mine, you don’t “NEED” the light table. Then trace out the pattern with a frixion pen or other erasable pen or pencil, I tapes the fabric to the paper and centered it the best I could.

It’s hard to see but here it’s all traced and ready

With a close up

Now take the Heat n Bond pieces and iron them to whatever fabrics you want for the flower pieces, the only time I sort of fussy “placed” them were the center of the flowers and the big center circle, this white fabric just seemed to FIT with that

Now cut out your shapes ON the line

remove the paper backing and place your shapes on the traced block, now since I used the frixion, which disappears when I iron over it, I ironed gently on these pieces first with just the tip of the iron

Then placed the rest of the pieces and ironed everything down.

Now onto machine applique!

I LOVE to use a button hole stitch, it takes a while but it’s worth it!!

Enjoy the process and maybe do one flower at a time and take a break?

One TIP I like to add it for turning/ pivoting.

When you pivot around a curve or corner edge. Do it after the machine has finished the side to side stitching, make sense?

So a button hole stitch goes, FORWARD, BACKWARD, FORWARD, LEFT, RIGHT…. this is the point where you turn WITH the needle down!!

I LOVE my needle down feature AND my knee lift! SOOOO easy to work with applique this way

With the small curves on the petals, maybe just do a few stitches then pivot and do a few more, again with the needle down and just doing a few stitches, it looks much nicer and not “crooked” stitches.

In between the petals, I had the needle down at the end of the stitch on one petal, then pivoted around, raised the needle and moved over that tiny bit and started again with the needle down, this way there’s not much thread to cut

Here’s the back of the block after I finished with red thread, I then used a light yellow thread

I started with the yellow thread on the large center circle right below a stem and went all the way around, then up one stem, did the complete center flower circle, then down the other side of the stem and moved over to the next stem, again it saves a lot of pulling and tugging and thread to plan your path!