Sweet River Studios

I thought I'd go over the process of making some of the applique pieces for this quilt. I did some testing (see Part 3) and they came out really well and went fairly quickly. Let me tell you though, this process makes a ton of trash! After cutting on the 12x12" mat, you peel off the excess which is trash. Do that to interfacing and the fabric and you can see how this generates a lot of trash but the pattern pieces are getting cut and cut quickly. After scanning the images and importing them into the Silhouette software, I can place them on the 12x12" mat and have the Cameo cut out interfacing or freezer paper backed fabric. You just have to remember that if you're cutting out the fabric to enlarge your pattern piece first so you have plenty of fabric to turn under once the interfacing is ironed on. Once the interfacing was cut out, I did some test pieces by just ironing the interfacing to some fabric and cutting around the shape leaving a generous 1/4...

I found a great book called Applique Mastery by Philippa Naylor. In it, she throughly goes over her techniques for applique and her pattern for her quilt called Bird by Bird. I admit, I don't usually follow a pattern exactly unless its making a tote or bag or something and I kinda have to for it to turn out. I simply mean that where a pattern says use X color or X shape, I probably won't. I'll change little things making them more mine so by the time I'm done, I doubt my quilt will look exactly like hers. And that's okay. The quilt has a lot of applique pieces. Hence the title applique mastery. No I didn't count all the pieces but clearly there are a several hundred or more in this 74x74" quilt. If I would use a pair of scissors to cut all the interfacing pieces and fabric pieces and do it all by hand, I would be dead by the time it all got cut out let alone sewn down. So, that's where my handy Cameo Silhouette comes in. I bought one to cut ou...