Crown Making and Spray Starch

The Love Entwined quilt is quite fascinating to me. I think about it often throughout the day, which helps me tackle the next part when I work on it. I never thought of myself as an appliqué quilter. I know how to do it but usually don't choose this work....until I saw Esther Aliu's pattern. Love!

My center compass medallion is pinned onto the background fabric. I offset it slightly for interest. 

It needs to be surrounded by wedge shapes, which will resemble a crown. I'm pulling out all the tools for this job!

I'd like to take a detour about spray starch. I didn't have any in the house. I thought it saw a way to make it so I did a search and sure enough, there's a simple recipe for it. 1 TBSP cornstarch to 1 cup water. Add a sprig of lavendar or rosemary if desired. (I added a sprig of dried rosemary.) Put in spray bottle. Swirl to mix before spraying. 

It worked way better than I expected! Check out the crisp lines!

Using my wooden pointer to keep my fingertips burn free, the wedges took shape rather quickly. 

Here they all are, ready for placement and sewing down around the compass. 

Ta da!

I'll get to sewing them down tomorrow. 

Are you an appliqué quilter? 

The Right Tool For The Job

I am working on Esther Alua's quilt called Love Entwined. The center compass and the encompassing ring in part 1 are really looking great! 

Using a tool from my Stampin' Up days came in handy for it too. The pattern calls for 32 dots to go around the outer ring. Thanks to the Big Shot and a circle cutter, this part was a snap!

I cut a bunch of small squares out of the colors I wanted. 

The smallest circle in the cutter was just the right size for my dots. 

Run the cutter through the Big Shot. 

Take away the excess and be left with perfect circles. 

I had 32 of them cut in about 10 minutes!

Turning the edges under took a lot longer but they are all pinned in place and ready to be secured. 

Any time saved in this project will be worth it. The Big Shot will get more use as this project moves along. I can't wait to start part two!

Something Different with Appliqué

I stumbled across a yahoo group started by Esther Aliu, who is an amazing quilt designer. Her current, but almost completed, block of the month is called Love Entwined, which is a recreation from a quilt from the 1790's. It has pushed me into the desire to do appliqué. Not exactly a favorite technique of mine, bit it is something that can be done away from a sewing machine so I'm open minded to it. 

The first part of this project is to make a center compass. Here are my color selections. 

As I was looking at this drawing of the compass, I decided to tackle it in the paper piecing method. Progress was satisfying!

This technique worked very well for this part. The final compass came out very nicely!

The next part of this block is to piece in circles at the tips of each point in the compass. I'll work that put tomorrow. Tune in again!