Snowman Sew Along with All About Christmas: Week 2 – Raw Edge Fusible Appliqué

Hello again!

Is everyone ready to move on to the

All About Christmas quilt

SNOWMEN?

Good. Let’s get started!

You should already have your three background snowflake fabrics cut and set aside to receive the snowman appliqué items per instructions.

So, first thing is to tape your snowmen template sheets together. There are six sheets per snowman included in your pattern. You will want to take a little time with this to match up registration marks and get them squared up to the correct block size.

Now you’re ready to begin tracing the individual shapes of each item in the snowman image onto your fusible web products. We like using a fine tip Sharpie in any color however, using a different color for each block will make organizing your fusible pieces much easier to access readily. The All About Christmas quilt pattern templates are already in reverse so trace with template sheets, printed side up, on the paper side of you fusible products. Again, just as in the fabric cutting suggestions last week, place and trace your largest glue pieces first to assure you will have enough of the fusible to complete this process.

Next begin laying out all of your smaller appliqué pieces in the remaining areas where they fit best for utilizing all of the fusible materials. We strongly suggest numbering the pieces too as you go. This will come in handy later when you begin to arrange and fuse the difficult to recognize pieces on your background fabric blocks. Once all of your fusible web pieces have been drawn, rough cut them out and organize by block.

Side Note: You will be tracing your Riley White snowman and snowy ground twice, first on your chosen fusible web product and a second time on a lightweight fusible interfacing product. We use Pellon Fusible 911FFW1 Featherweight. This will help to block the fabric underneath from showing through your white appliqué fabrics. You may want to use this method for the yellow fabrics in your piece also. Layering sequence when you are ready to fuse these, will be wrong side of appliqué fabric to interfacing, that unit to fusible web and then onto background fabric in the indicated order. You will end up with a heavier/thicker appliqué unit.

Next, making your raw-edge appliqué pieces.

Refer to the pattern cover art to begin fusing the correct, numbered fusible web pieces to their corresponding fabrics, according to the manufacturers directions. After all of the appliqué pieces are fused, you can cut them out accurately with a good sharp pair of scissors. I do not use my ‘for fabric only’ scissors for this but rather a specified favorite. We recommend letting all of your appliqué pieces cool completely before attempting to remove the paper backing. If time allows we prefer waiting overnight but a couple of hours may be enough. Another tip for removing the paper is to score a line with anything sharp but not enough to cut through the fabric, anywhere on the paper side of your fused appliqué. Then begin peeling the backing paper away from the fabric using the scored line as a stating point. This will help to prevent fraying your fabric edges.

Now, building the snowman blocks!

After all of the paper is removed from your appliqué pieces, you are ready to arrange and place them in your snowman blocks. The numbers on each snowman template indicate which piece is the next to be fused. As stated in last week’s post, placement is best achieved using a placement sheet. Since you cannot view the template sheet through the background fabrics we like tracing the template onto a sheet of ordinary tracing paper to make a placement sheet ‘door’. Explained last week here and shown below.

You can see in the above phoyo that we opted to cut out the small snowman (block 3) both in cotton and batting to offer a little extra pouf . This is your preference.

Having fun yet?

I like the cutting and fusing best myself, but next week we are

READY to SEW!

Show us your progress as you follow and tag me on Instagram @jweckerfrisch

and please use #allaboutchristmasfabric to share your photos.

I would enjoy hearing from you!

 

 

 

Snowman Sew Along with All About Christmas: Week 1- Reverse Raw Edge Appliqué Technique

 

Hello Everyone, good news!

All About Christmas fabric has delivered and is in a shop near you. Find a list of retailers in my last blog post here.

This collection is beautiful! It includes the Christmas story from Luke 2 making it VERY Christmas-y and we especially love those details. In addition, the printing quality is wonderful thank you to our fabric partners at Riley Blake Designs.

So, here we go with another little Sew-A-Long. This time it will be a mini. The two items that we will be sharing over the three weeks are,

  1. Our three large snowman blocks (row 4)
  2. Reverse raw edge appliqué blocks (rows 1 & 5)

This week we will be looking at number 2, reverse raw edge fusible appliqué for the ornament blocks. The snowflake blocks are done the same way only much less detail so we will be focusing on row one.

Do you have your pattern and fabric ready? If not, visit this link to find a shop.

Are you ready to sew?! Let’s go! According to the All About Christmas pattern instructions, it is important ‘To Get Started’ by cutting fabrics for the large snowmen blocks FIRST. This assures that you will have the larger fabric cuts set aside when you need them. Follow the cover art for the fabric choices and make cuts according to the pattern instruction page(s) and directional fabrics. If you are new to the technique of reverse raw edge appliqué I highly suggest reading the pattern in it’s entirety before starting or cutting into your fabrics.

Since some of our designs for this quilt were stencil-like with white as the main center image (see the snowflake and ornament rows), we selected this reverse appliqué technique. Often with appliqué we will use a second interfacing product to mask the background fabric from showing through our white however, we found this to be a better option for the ornament and snowflake blocks on this quilt. The photos below will offer a visual aid so-to-speak to support this explanation.

Once you’ve cut your fabric squares for blocks in Rows 1 and 5, you can begin tracing the designs onto your fusible web product according to manufacturers directions. We like Pellon Featherweight Fusible 805. Be sure to trace all of the pieces that make up the inside ornament designs before fusing. You will be using those to help your fabric remain as a continual image. Fuse to wrong side of fabric considering whether your fabric square will be using a directional print and align accordingly.

When you go to cut out the ornament rounds, be careful not to cut through the outside square itself or those tiny pieces. You can see at the bottom of our ornament photo below where we began poking the scissors through to cut around the perimeter only. This way, when the traced ornament is removed, your background stays completely intact. Then cut your smaller (traced beforehand) pieces and set them aside somewhat in order, or you can number them if that helps.

Once all of your ornament pieces are cut out you are ready to fuse. Sandwich the colored fabric silhouette squares on top of your Riley White squares that will show from underneath. You can place the pattern flipped upside down (since already in reverse) beneath your layered fabrics to use as your placement guide. Or, another method that we like to use, is a tracing paper door, as we call it. The photos below plus this link will explain. Simply put, we trace the block template image(s) onto ordinary tracing paper and pin down on one side of your block to help with accurate placement in the event the paper pattern does not show through your fabric. We also found that using tweezers was the easiest way to then nudge the tiny pieces into place. When you get them where you like, fuse!

Here are our results. Now for the fun part, stitching them down. I will be using thread to match and a blanket style stitch. I find both are somewhat forgiving. You may choose to use any number of decorative stitching to add these details if you prefer over these tiny appliqué pieces. This is where your sewing skills will shine beyond my limited experience so please, send progress photos! And have fun of course 😉

I hope you had fun sewing along with me! If you have any questions about this technique, leave a comment below! See you next week for the BIG snowmen blocks.

Follow and tag me on Instagram @jweckerfrisch

and use #allaboutchristmasfabric to share your photos.

I will be posting progress shots as well!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snowman Sew Along with All About Christmas

It’s time!

To gather your supplies for the mini

SEW-A-LONG,

featuring my All About Christmas fabrics,

&

just a pinch of Painter’s Palette fabrics.

Why is it called a mini sew-a-long? Over three weeks I will be demonstrating the reverse raw edge appliqué technique used to make my All About Christmas Quilt & sewing along with you to make the three large snowmen blocks! Grab your supplies and sew along with me!

SCHEDULE:

July 7th: Learning the Reverse Raw Edge Appliqué Technique for top & bottom rows

July 14th: Snowman Blocks

July 21st: Snowman Blocks continued and wrap up

SUPPLIES:

To participate in this sew-a-long you will need my All About Christmas Quilt Pattern (or a quilt kit), All About Christmas & Painter’s Palette Fabric, and a few other appliqué supplies. See list below for retailers!

WHERE TO SHOP:

Check with your local quilt shop to find the supplies needed for this sew-a-long! You can find a store locator here. If your local shop is not carrying it, see list below for online retailers:

Quilt Kits available at Nuts for Bolts Etc.

Shops Carrying the Pattern:

Fat Quarter Shop

Must Love Fabric 

Sew’n Save of Racine

J N Harper Co – Canada Distributor

Quilter’s Playhouse

Checker

 

Shops Carrying the Fabric:

Fat Quarter Shop

Fort Worth Fabric Studio

Over the Rainbow Fabrics

My Favorite Quilt Store

Happy Little Stitch Shop

Nuts for Bolts Etc

Nanakaboodle

Fabric.com

Etsy Shops

RebsFabStash

 

Did I miss your shop? Leave me a comment and I will add you to the list. If you are a quilt shop you can shop my patterns & fabrics from Riley Blake Designs. I can’t wait to sew-a-long with you right here on July 7th!

~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow-A-Long, Wk 5

Week 5, The Finish, Part 1.

Since there is a lot of info to cover this last week will be in two parts.

Assuming that everyone has all of their blocks completed and trimmed or will have, it is time to assemble!

To start assembling the quilt portion, I cut five one and a half inch strips of Riley White fabric for the short sashing pieces. Check your pattern for accurate amounts if you want to cut all at once. I inched my way into this process, no pun intended.

From my five I cut eight and a half inch lengths, enough to attach my first couple of horizontal rows of blocks together. Refer to your pattern cover for block placement.

Beginning with block one (top left) lay one of your Riley White strips (1.5″ x 8.5″) on the right side of Block 1, right fabric sides together. Split the difference of the extra half inch between top and bottom of your block to be trimmed later.

Sew together using a quarter inch seam.

Press the seam toward your block.

 

Repeat the steps to connect block one and two together with this same sashing strip. This time lay block two on top of sashing strip lining up at right (see photo), again right fabric sides together, being careful to also line up both blocks top to bottom. You may want to pin in place before sewing.

Continue working this way until you have all of the top row of blocks connected. Then move on to row two!

 

And so on, until you have all of the blocks that connect using the short sashing pieces as shown on the pattern cover art. Seeing it all come together is the most fun for me, agreed?

I will post Part B on Saturday so stay tuned.

Embellish Options.

This festive project is loaded with possibilities to stitch on some fun extras! We plan to add buttons for our snowmen eyes and gingerbread man but remember to do this after your quilt top has been quilted.

Snow Sweet fabrics are from our partner at Riley Blake Designs are available in shops now.

To see more:

Pinterest, Instagram & Facebook,

and please post your progress with #snowalong and/or #snowsweetfabric.

We would enjoy seeing!

 

 

Snow-A-Long, Wk 4 B

Continued

Hello!

Pieced blocks, continued.

How is everyone doing so far?

I am happy to report that our piecing portion of our quilt is complete! Whew!!

A couple of items I should have mentioned earlier, pressing your seams. Always press as you go is highly recommended for a neat job and press the seams toward the darker fabric whenever possible.

And something I learned along the way to get my points closer to each other. Sew on the side that allows you to see your seam and stitch right across that. Who knew, not me. 😉

Below are the last four blocks that I saved until last. They appeared a bit more unfamiliar to me because of the corners which are all similar, and on an angle. However, following the sequence on the Pieced Blocks Guide in the pattern, I could quickly see that there was little to no difference in difficulty and all went smoothly as the others.

I think these are my best blocks to date! Perhaps I’m getting better the more I make.

In each block I did the corner work first. Once that was done, I attached pieces in the same sequence as all of the other blocks from Thursday’s post, horizontal rows. Last I attached the three horizontal rows from top to bottom, to complete.

Our gallery.

Row 1, block 2.

Row 4, block 3.

Row 6, block 1.

Row 7, block 6.

Trimming.

Trim each to eight inches, square for your seven and a half finish size blocks. In most cases ours only needed a smidgen cut off to clean up and even each block.

Again, voila!!

I feel quite accomplished or should I say quilt, and I hope you do too.

Again, share, share, share:

When posting photos use #snowalong and #snowsweetfabric in your social media so we can find/see your progress.

Let us know if you post on Pinterest as well and we’ll add to our board.

We’re loving the Snow Sweet fabrics from Riley Blake Designs!

Aren’t they beautiful?!

See you Thursday when this quilt will come together.