More Applique . . .

Last night, we left off with me having prepared all the pieces for the bunny applique. I don't think I mentioned it, but it probably took me about two hours to do that. One reason I like working with wool is because "prepping" the wool would have taken maybe half an hour because all I would have had to do is trace and cut the freezer paper pieces, iron them on the wool, cut around the shapes, and pull the paper off. Yep, I like it when that part goes quickly! Still, I don't always have wool to work with, or maybe wool isn't the right thing for the quilt I'm working on, and I suspect you may find the same to be true. And, of course, it's always nice to have other options!

From this point in the tutorial, though, the method will be the same whether you're using cotton or wool. I'm going to tell this part of the "story" primarily with photos and short explanations of what I'm doing at each step.

Here I've layered the backing (you can see it there in the right bottom corner, flipped up), the batting, and the background on top. Because this is a small piece, I've simply pinned everything together in the corners of the background piece using quilting or safety pins.

Next, I lay out all of the applique pieces, checking for positioning.

Since I need to work from the bottom up, after partly pinning the two main bottom pieces, I remove the top layers of applique and finish pinning, using straight pins, to secure everything in place for stitching.

Once that's done, using the free motion features on the sewing machine and thread to match the applique, I stitch along the edge of the applique. Where I know other pieces will cover the bottom applique pieces or where the applique meets the edge of the fabric, I don't sew--notice the neck and bottom of the head aren't sewn?

Again I roughly check positioning, and I can see the next pieces to be sewn are the cheeks, so those are pinned and the upper layers are removed. Of course, I need to change my thread to pink. (I don't sew the parts of the cheeks that go under the cheek/chin area.) The next layer to be sewn is the cheek/chin part--same thing: just pin and sew.

Then the mouth.

And the teeth. Don't forget to continue the sewing line up to create two front teeth. And since I have white thread in my machine, I might as well pin and sew the eyebrows at this point too.

Then the part above the mouth and finally the nose is sewn. With this method, while I stitch each applique piece in place, I also quilt the project.

Here I've added the inner borders. They're sewn just as you would any regular seam and then pressed back.

Same thing with the outer borders.

The final step for this part is to add some quilting lines for expression and texture in the ears, the neck under the chin, and near the mouth and nose. Then the edges of the quilt are trimmed.

All that remains to be done now is to add the binding, embroidery, and any other embellishments (like the yo-yo flowers and leaves in Bette Bunny).

These steps I've outlined tonight took about two hours or a little less, which I think isn't too bad for a little applique project. If any of this isn't clear or if you have any questions I didn't touch on, please leave me a comment so I can provide whatever follow-up explanations may help. Thanks for visiting!