Go Leafs Go! Outta my house that is (=

My step-mom picked up the quilt top I made for her while she was visiting today. I finished the top, as well as a matching bib, as she requested. I don't often remember to snap progress pictures, but here are a few to outline the process. I've never done an applique before, but I think it turned out pretty well, especially since it has so many sharp inside and outside corners.



After using fabric paint and a freezer paper stencil to add the lettering to the blue fabric, I cut it in a rough square slightly larger than the final leaf shape. Then I traced the shape onto a similar square of fusible interfacing and just stitched along the two lines to attach the interfacing to the leaf (fabric was right side up and fusible was adhesive side up). My original plan was to fuse the leaf onto the background fabric, but I flubbed by putting the adhesive side up instead of down...turned out better in the long run, just not what I expected. Anyway, once the fabric and fusible were sewn together, I cut away most of the centre part of the leaf shape and turned the fusible to the back, and pressed it down so it stuck. You can see on the left where the edge has been pressed down, while on the right, it's still loose.


Here's the finished applique. I was pretty impressed with myself at this point.



Next step was pinning the life out of the applique to so it wouldn't be crooked on the background fabric. I used an edging foot that came with my sewing machine to keep my stitching even around the edge of the leaf as I top stitched it in place. Once again, turned out pretty well. I'll be using that foot again...it really made things easy!



And here's the final quilt top. My step-mom will be hand quilting it for a baby shower in two weeks. The bib (forgot a photo) was made of the blue and white leaf fabric with a simple blue binding border and diagonal quilt lines.

Up next on my sewing table are some alterations and repair I've taken on to support my craft habit. Not much fun, but necessary. All of my spray painting projects are on hold because it's STILL raining pretty much every day.