I'm currently working on an Aunt Millie's Garden block. The stems in the pattern are less than a 1/4 inch so instead of trying to get all those ends tucked under eachother I made the stems one piece.
I use LOTS of 1/2" pins and my vinyl overlay to position and anchor the piece onto the background.
With pieces this skinny (and anything with a deep "V") I use the cut away method. This gives you someplace to put pins and helps keep the piece stablized while you are stitching. I remove a few pins at a time then trim away the excess.
I showed this before but instead of using knots, I gently fold back the piece and take a stitch, then back stitch into the background. I give it a tug to make sure it won't pull out.
Once it's anchored, I fold over my seam allowance and bring the needle up into the fold, without catching the background.
I then bring the needle down just behind where I came up, under the edge and again come up in the fold.
I put the needle down behind the last stitch because it gives me straighter stitches and trying to align the needle with the last stitch is just too hard for these old eyes. My stitches aren't perfect (I'm working on that) but they are pretty good.
Oh, one more thing, I leave the ends of my stems long and trim them after I pin the overlying piece. Better to have too much than too little...ask me how I know about that LOL.
So that is how I am handling the stems on this block :0)
Crispy
18 Comments:
Great pictures. I have not seen this method before but I am going to keep it in my memory bank.
Never thought about doing them as one piece. Thanks for the excellent idea!
it is always great to see how someone else do these pieces.
Karen
http://karensquilting.com/blog/
Great idea to do those stems as one piece! Thanks for the tutorial, Crispy - I hope you do more :)
Linda
TERRIFIC idea to do stems all in one piece. Thanks for showing this!
I like the idea of the stem as one piece, much easier to work with, that's for sure. I also like using vinyl overlay to double check positioning of pieces, works very well for me :^)
Great pics with closeups! Thanks for posting this.
A very good and easy to understand tutorial,
Gret tutorial....can you do one on turning corners and making them sharp looking???
Crispy nice job. I wish I had the patience to do it that way. Plan on making a goal to try again. Chris
They look perfect to me.. Thanks for sharing I went to a class although they only gave me the pattern, no lessons can you believe it? My friend says she'll teach me, so between your tutorials and some lessons from her I may be able to hand applique one of these days.
Great tutorial. I love the tip about folding the piece back and taking a stitch to anchor the thread. I am going to do that on my next applique piece. (may be 5 years from now, hope I remember! LOL)
Very good Toot!!!! Now when can we see the rest of the block?
Wow Crispy, that is so well done. I don't think I could ever do that kind of intricate work. Yours is amazing.
Thank's Crispy! It's always great to see how others quilters do theyr work. Thank's for the wery good idea! Hope to see more of your skill soon :o)
Thank you for the tutorial. I have never seen stems done in one piece before. A great idea!!!
Your instructions are very claer and the photos are good too. You're applique is wonderful.
Excellent toot! I like how you are doing the stems in one piece.
Thanks for showing how to do this - very helpful!
Heidi
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