The Lollipop Girl and her Techniques

Happy morning to all,

I thought that this morning I would share with everyone on how I put my blocks together. Due to the fact that I have MS, (not complaining, just explaining) I can no longer do much hand appliqué so I am using some different techniques in order to appliqué. I thought I would share with those of you that want to see what I'm doing.


The first step is to take my freezer paper and iron it onto my fabric. I then cut out my fabric a quarter inch around my entire piece to be appliquéd. I have these absolute wonderful electric scissors, for those of you that have never used electric scissors and that have maybe arthritis or trouble with your hands, you need to try a pair. They make life a lot easier.




I then take my iron and iron all the edges under. If I have a piece of applique that has a lot of different edges, sometimes I might need to use an acid-free glue stick to help me to get my edges stay under.






I then use an acid-free starch and paint around the edges of my applique. As I put on the starch, I iron the starch to hold the piece in place.




I then remove all freezer paper and as you can see all my edges are
neatly turned under and my pieces are ready to appliqué. It does take some time but I think the process is worth the time for me.
The lollipop quilt has a lot of circles in it, the perfect Circle templates by Karen K. Buckley will be used for this process.








Now I am ready to machine appliqué my pieces to my fabric.
Normally I would use the buttonhole stitch to do my applique, for some reason this time I chose a very small zigzag applique stitch, 1.0 in length and 1.5 in width. I think that the zigzag appliqué stitch will be a lot easier to use because there are so many circular shapes, trying to get a buttonhole stitch to go around a circle would not be a very easy task.

Looking forward to working on my lollipops with such beautiful and happy fabric as I sing the song. Thank you all so much for sharing your blocks, your knowledge and information. You are all such an inspiration, it is wonderful how we all can do things in different ways with different fabrics to create such beauty.
Happy Stitching to All,

Rosemary
The Lollipop Girl