Old appliqué quilts always look so beautiful, especially the ones lovingly stitched by hand. Anyone who sits down to do endless hours of needleturn has my boundless admiration.
Off and on over the years I have scoured books looking for a method of appliqué that wouldn't take me several decades to complete, and which wouldn't end up looking modern. Any method that involved spray-on starch, iron-on backing or zigzag were automatically out as being contrary to my vintage principles. What I wanted was a reasonably quick and easy method using straight stitch machines, where I could do fairly complex shapes and not have the horror of turning under tiny weeny hems. I never found a book that gave me the answer.
Eventually I thought up my own method. I won't claim that it is original, because the result at times looks so 1930s I can't believe that sooner or later I won't find an old book or magazine that shows how to do it.
So here is the result. The photo shows the top part of the Diamond Jubilee wall hanging. Over the next few posts I will show how it was done...
Hello to Jessica Bohannon! - Jessica has her grandmother's treadle, a Singer 66 redeye treadle. Go to her blog and admire it!
Very nice indeed my dear ........x
ReplyDelete