I’m back: Teaching, applique and working with a new-to-me thread

I’ve missed a few newsletters and blog posts lately; it’s been wonderfully busy! I taught a fabulous class last Fri and Sat at the Meissner Main location. I had the most enthusiastic students with me for 2 days of “Fills For Days”. I covered tons of designs, showed supporting photos to spark creativity and along the way talked about combinations and design. It was jam packed! I forgot to take one. single. photo, but luckily, Leah, the Director of Education took a few:

I was so jazzed after class that I had a hard time sleeping that night. I covered sooooo many fills, but (thinking at 2 AM), what about this fill, what about that technique? I think everyone left with an arsenal of designs that were thoroughly “quiltable” and ready to go on to their quilts. I can’t wait to see what they do with their new found knowledge!

I came home to a bit of a vacuum. I’ve been teaching a lot, Houston was not that long ago, then a few gigs, Thanksgiving, the seminar….now what? I have 2 quilts that just need finishing details, but I don’t know what I want to do with either of them. Hmmmmm, so I dug out this beauty that I started in 2018 on a family vacation:

It is a pattern; those birds are not paper pieced, but probably would have benefitted from pp. They all lay flat, so all is good. I have been thinking about that border for a long time. I deliberately made it wide to accommodate, um, something. I finally decided to keep it simple: simple petals and eventually, a circle in the middle of each petal group. I made yards and yards of stem that I was going to add flowers and leaves to, but that was so expected; I wanted to keep it simple. I adore those sweet petals!

The petals were created using the Apliquick method. It can take a beginning appliquer like me and make them look good:

That is not a complex shape, but the Apliquick method made it so easy and accurate. I find hand applique to be soothing and it’s a change of pace for me. I love that I can have 5 min of wait time and bang out a petal, maybe more.

It doesn’t show well in the photo, but the Apliquick paper gives it a bit of an uplift, a bit of dimension. I think I will trapunto them to create even more loft.

I got started on applique by taking Barbara Blanton‘s Apliquick class; she is the owner of the Applique Academy and knows just a wee bit about applique. She does not use silk thread and prefers a 50 wt cotton. Her thought: cotton is stronger and grabby-er . Silk can break when you tug, and won’t hold the tug as well because it’s slippery. That goes against what I had previously been taught. So I did do one with silk (I have a ton of 100 wt silk) and I agree. So I am sticking with cotton.

I was using Aurifil 50/2, and even though I thread conditioned every strand, started at the correct end and kept my cuts short, it was knotting up and twisting. I am used to that and didn’t think anything of it. On a whim, I grabbed some thread that I learned about at Houston, Scanfil, and oh what a difference! Scanfill is made in the Netherlands and is organic based. It is a family owned company has been around since 1970!

The Scanfil does not twist at. all! And I can tug pretty hard and it does not break. I literally am getting NO twist, break or knots. Game changer!

So I ordered some from one of my distributors:

They come in “collections” like neutrals, chromatic, pastels, denim blues, etc. And the collections come on this adorable wooden stand. Their thread is certified organic and is wound on wooden spools. I am considering carrying it in my shop, but I need to think through some practical parameters like weight of shipping (wooden spools), increased shipping costs due to weight and packaging, as well as other considerations.

At this rate it won’t take me long to applique those petals down, so I need to get the circles going. I sent off for a zillion pre-cut Apliquick circles from Kyra Rep and received them last week. Where. Are. They??? I’ve looked high and low and cannot find them!

I decided to try to cut them myself on my digital cutter. I haven’t used my Brother Cut ‘n Scan in years, but I dusted it off and tried to cut my own:

Hard to tell from the photo, but there are a bunch of 7/8″ Apliquick circles there.

I am mighty proud of myself that I remembered how to use the machine (welllllll, it did take me 5 min just to figure out where to plug the power cord) and was able to make these for myself! I hope to make a bunch up this weekend and get to appliqueing them on. And once I’m done, I’m sure my pre-cuts from Kyra will show up😊

I’ll be linking up:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday