Starting a Back Basting Applique

I work in a quilt shop. Out of the five quilters that work in the store, I am one that loves hand-stitching. I am gonna spread that hand-stitching love to anyone that is willing to join me in the joy of this slower paced quilting process!

My boss requested that we make an applique Block of the Month.  She chose a pattern from Laundry Basket Quilts and I am to pick fabrics for each month's kit. This BoM is scheduled to start in October '21. I don't think I'll be sharing progress photos of the finished blocks until closer to the start date. However, to keep my blog updates flowing, I'll sneak a technique post in here and there. 😉

The pattern is written for any applique technique. My favorite technique is back basting applique. The pattern is traced onto the backside of the background fabric. Special care must be taken to make sure the applique will be in the correct direction. That means, the pattern needs to be traced in the reverse so that it will be correct in the finished applique. If you were stitching letters, you wouldn't want your words to appear backwards.

After the pattern is traced onto the background, the applique fabric is pinned to the front of the background. Then basted on the stitch line from the back, exactly on the traced pattern. 

Using a thick contrasting color thread helps when the needle turning is started.

Be careful to have the applique fabric covering the piece you need. I pin from the back, using the pins to show me the area or I hold the piece up to the light to see the shadow of the applique fabric.

After the piece is basted, it can be trimmed. I am going to be stitching on this soon, so I'm trimming to the small seam allowance that will be turned under when stitching.  If I baste a lot of pieces or bigger pieces and I know that it's going to be handled a lot, I'll trim with a larger allowance and then trim again when ready to stitch down.

The first pieces to be basted are the ones that will have parts under other pieces. Here the blue flower buds have to be stitched down before the sepals can be basted on top of them. And stems will be placed over some of the leaf bases.

Ok, time to pack up. A hand stitcher's group comes into the store on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month. That's tomorrow. This will be my project to work on. 

Thanks for dropping by! I hope to see you soon!