Thursday, March 3, 2011

Hearts Desire

Well, I couldn't resist another BOM, this one applique, so I joined Esther Aliu's "Heart's Desire". Here's a picture but please do not enlarge it or look too closely. I admit that I'm not very good at applique; my points are not pointy enough and my inner corners get a little frayed. But my intentions are good:I post it more for your information than for any intent to brag. Seriously, I need to get better at this. My technique stinks.

A small craft iron has been ordered and a bottle of Best Press procured, along with a small brush to apply starch to the turned under edges before pressing. Ms. Aliu illustrates this as the way she prepares freezer paper applique. Me, I just turned under the edges and basted them. Who knew? I'm admittedly low tech.

Since it's a mystery BOM I'm going the safe route and mostly using her colors; however, I had different hearts prepared but changed them for the ones with blue flowers because they just seemed to blend better with the blue center petals. And, by the way, that circle in the center is my addition because my points weren't going together as I wanted.

All in all, this is supposed to be a full-on applique quilt top, 74" square. This might not be a good thing, and I fully expect that it won't be finished by the end of the summer when the last installment is released. I just hope it doesn't turn into a WIP.

3 comments:

Nancy said...

Don't you know the Quilt Police does not exist?

I've never applique and probably never will, but I admire anyone who does. Nice Job.

Paula, the quilter said...

Practice is all it takes. But go to Erin's blog at http://www.erinrussek.typepad.com/
She has lessons, and freebies and beautiful applique. O my. She does the spray starch method too and recently started doing videos, but her tutes are wonderful.

*karendianne. said...

I think it's pretty!!! But here's what I think. I'm taking my first class now and could not even attempt what you're doing right now. I think it's so pretty and fun to do that it's perfectly okay if it ends up being an enjoyable skill building practice. Absolutely just fine!

We should practice on pretty things, don't you think?