I always do my appliqué in the same way, I trace the whole lot out, cut them up and then start fusing them to the different fabrics. Once I saw them all cut up in this box I thought that perhaps I should have done the animals one at a time so that I don't get so confused!
I laid a lot of fabrics out on my lovely big ironing table and started fusing the pieces onto the fabrics. This worked well because I could just pick a random piece and use it straight away without having to think too much about it.
I fused about half of the shapes and I took them to my social sewing group on a Tuesday. I cut out the shapes steadily for the three hours that I was there. I did the other half the following Tuesday. So, it took me six hours just to cut the fabric shapes out! Yikes! This quilt really will take me some time to make!
Here are all the pieces for the girl farmer. I chose the colours of her outfit etc based up on the background square I was going to use behind her and the other colours in the quilt. I intend on sticking most, if not all, of the pieces together so I just have one unit to position and then sew. I was cracking on with this job and then I couldn't find the mat I have that stops the glue side of the fabric sticking to everything. That's not really much of a surprise considering the state of my sewing room, mind you. Later I realised I could use a teflon mat which I have in my baking tin cupboard but I haven't tried it out yet.
The pattern has a mixture of large rectangle and square background pieces but I'm using fat quarters and can only cut squares out of them. It was quite difficult trying to arrange them on my wall because I'd get them so that they looked nice then realise I was using an orange background where I'm putting my orange cat so a fair amount of thought had to go into it. The pattern suggests that you sew each row together and then add the appliqué but it seems like too large a piece of fabric to manoeuvre whilst blanket stitching them on the machine so I plan on doing as much as I can on individual squares and then sewing the blocks together before adding the pieces that sit on the join. I do intend to do a lot of this quilt at retreat in March but as there's a lot of work involved I should try to get as much done as I can beforehand.
I finished crocheting one side of my summer poncho. I showed my Mother in law and she thought it was hanky sized.
So I had to have a picture of it up against me for scale. I possibly could have made it longer but it measures (approximately ha ha) what the pattern suggests.
The annoying part though? I have to make another! I am so over this ha ha! I took it to my crochet group and the lady who made the one that inspired me to make my own told me hers went much faster because she's a loose crocheter. There's another lady doing one as well and she's using a bigger hook. Her version is growing quickly. Why didn't I think of that?! Both ladies oohed and ahhed over my "tiny neat holes" but I think they were just humouring me while thanking their lucky stars they didn't have to work so hard!
I think I'm a third of the way done. I'll get my summer poncho finished just in time for winter!
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