Winners, Progress and Prompts

Winners:
The great folks at LAPEL stick told me I could pick 2 winners who will each receive one to keep for themselves or give as a gift, the randomly chosen winners are Just Pam and Royce.....emails from me are on the way ladies. Hope you love this product as much as I do.
Progress:
All of the flowers, leaves, buds and vines for the borders are prepared, in place, and ready for the hand stitching to begin. ( a couple of pieces can't be put on until after all the seams are stitched) but I love that with this method, I can see exactly what the finished border will look like
Prompts:
I thought it was time for a couple more papercut snowflakes in response to The Creative Prompt Project. #133 is Green..........since I am in applique mode and doing it in a "scrappy"fashion, I did notice that choosing colours for the flowers can take a while, but leaves and vines are easy......greens, of course! So this snowflake is made up of leaves and vines
CPP # 132 was Ocean......in this snowflake, you will find ocean waves, sea horses, turtles and of course plenty of fish.

Designing applique borders and a "Giveaway"!!!

Earlier in the year, I appliqued a block called "Miss Kelly" designed by Erin Russek. I have decided to finish it in a "Round Robin" sort of fashion. I wanted to start by designing an applique border for this piece, first I scanned a few my own flowers/buds and leaves that I planned to work with. After a little tweaking on the computer, I printed out several pages of these elements (actual size) in greyscale. Now I could cut them up and start arranging, a little dab of LAPEL stick ( I love this product) holds it all in place as I play to find a layout I like. As an added bonus, the paper version can be used as my placement template.........its just too easy!!!


Then I got busy making the required number of pieces in fabric using my preferred method (freezer paper and gluestick) you can read an earlier post that describes this method here

So......you want to know about the giveaway?.....have you seen LAPEL stick for sale at your local quilt shop? Have you tried it yet? They are terrific and have many uses............want a chance to win one? Leslie Durand, Sales and Marketing Director for LAPEL Stick contacted me yesterday and generously offered to let me host a giveaway. She has told me I can pick 2 winners, so....... just leave me a comment in this post. I'll post the winners Monday Dec 5th. and Leslie will send you your very own LAPEL stick......keep it for yourself or use it as a stocking stuffer
You can learn more about this product at www.lapelstick.com or www.fashionemergencies.com

Applique - Glue Stick and Freezer Paper

This is my preferred applique method. Press your freezer paper shape to the wrong side of the fabric
For ease of applying glue, I do this on an old magazine. The glossy pages make this part of the job super easy and keeps everything much cleaner. You'll want to apply the glue onto both the seam allowance as well as a small amount along the paper's edge.

On this piece, I began with the corners firstThen the sides

Finally the curve
I do NOT remove the freezer paper, it stays in place until all of my pieces are stitched in place and is removed from the back as I showed in my most recent post.

Until recently, I have been using a regular glue stick that you can buy at any office supply store. These work fine, but there are some drawbacks. I find that they are quite "gooey" and can be a little bit of a mess, on top of that, areas where you may have been a little generous with the glue tend to be difficult to pass your needle through. Michele at Quilting Gallery asked if I would like to try a new product called Lapel Stick and offered to send me a couple. I must say that I am impressed with these. They are smooth and easy to apply, rinse out very nicely, stick well, are not nearly as messy and do not leave the fabric quite as stiff, so they do allow for much easier stitching. I did not hesitate to order more so I have a good supply of these on hand.

There has been some discussion in our Yahoo group about how to go about getting nice thin stems. I'll get some photos prepared and show this in my next post