Down the Rabbit Hole March Month 3 - Sarah Fielke Block of ... · Down the Rabbit Hole March Month...

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This pattern is for personal use only. Do not photocopy, distribute or use for group projects without the designers permission. © Sarah Fielke 2016

Down the Rabbit Hole

March Month 3 Hi everyone! And welcome to month 3 of the Down the Rabbit Hole BOM. I’m so happy to see you all again.

Before we start - some housekeeping. I would ask that you PLEASE READ THIS SECTION each month - it will have information you may be wondering about and

reminders of things that are important. The answers to many of the questions you all have are here already. *PATTERN ACCESS - As you have no doubt realised by now, nothing will be emailed to you every month except a hello and a heads up that the pattern is ready. Everything is stored on the private website, all year, so that if you are behind or need to check something, it’s all there waiting for you. Last year we answered a lot of emails about lost patterns, so this is for our sanity as much as for your ease in locating things! Please make sure and bookmark the website page on your computer or tablet, and keep your password handy. A reminder that the website is for subscribers only - we can actually see if more than one URL is sharing the same subscription. * FACEBOOK - if you have signed up under a different name, or surname, than what is on your Paypal account, I don’t know who you are and I can’t give you access to the group. If this is the case, it’s easily remedied by sending me the name and email address you are registered with. I get a lot of requests to join - some are spam, some are people not signed up, and some are legitimate peeps. So you can see I have to ask who everyone is, or we will have a group filled with people who aren’t making the quilt, and spammers! To join the group, you need to type “Sarah Fielke BOM 2017” into the Facebook search bar. You can then send me a request to join. We currently have about 900 members from 28 countries, so it’s worth joining Facebook to come and see what everyone is up to. The page is private for good reasons - partly because you have all paid for private access and interaction, and partly because there are lots of people who have joined Facebook just for this and they don’t want to be public. It also keeps the spammers and trolls away. There is NO PATTERN INFORMATION on Facebook, everything to do with the patterns and videos is at the website. You do not HAVE to join the Facebook page, it’s just a nice social option.

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Lets get down to it! * Your gardens are really growing now. Once you have all your flowers finished and the stems stitched down, you can start to add your leaves. Each month I will give you a portion of the quilt to work on. Sometimes we will spend more than one month on one border, and other times a border will just be a month’s work. Some of the months have more work than others, and some are easier to allow you to catch up. We will spend THREE MONTHS on the centre of the quilt, and we are now in our last month. * Next month we will move on to houses. The ROOFS for the houses are foundation paper pieced, that means they are pieced by printing the pattern onto papers, which are then stitched through by machine. For this you will need foundation paper to print your roofs on to before stitching - you can find the paper under BOM 2017 Notions at my website. * All the templates and notions are still available, and will remain available all year. If you see me demonstrate something and decide you need to have it after all, no problem - just go to my website and look under “BOM 2017 Notions”. Sometimes when you order something it will be out of stock - I do my best to keep things in but distributors don’t always have things when I need them. If something in your order is out of stock I will let you know when you place your order. * Please make sure and check on your Paypal account from time to time if you are paying month by month. Paypal only tries once to process your monthly payment. If they try a second time and have no luck, they cut the account off immediately. I have no control over that and I can't reinstate the account, it has to be set up again from a new invoice from scratch. If I don't have your monthly payment, I can't send you your pattern! So if you have an email from Paypal please read it, as it may be about a missed payment for your BOM. * A small reminder that the website, pattern, templates and videos for this Block of the Month are my copyright, and are for your own personal use only. Subscriptions and materials are NOT to be shared amongst friends or groups, posted online, copied and distributed, attached to your blog or website, or used as teaching tools or class materials under any circumstance unless you have my express permission. * Here’s my monthly reminder - it’s an important one. The printable templates come with a 1” marker line, on every single sheet. You need to set your printer on PRINT TO SCALE, not on fit to page. When you have printed the page, take a ruler or a tape measure and check that the scale on your pages is exactly 1”. If it is not 1”, your templates are not the right size and you need to adjust your printer. This has NOTHING to do with the size of the file I’ve sent you, the size of the paper you are using or anything else - all these pages are fit to print for legal, letter or A4 paper. Your printer may be set to something automatic and I have NO CONTROL over that. PLEASE CHECK YOUR TEMPLATE SCALES!! It’s a lot of unpicking and sadness if you realise after several months that all your templates are too large or to small, because your borders will not fit each other. * All ¼” seams are not created equal. Imagine you draw a line with a biro. The biro line has a width of it’s own. A “scant” ¼” seam is just inside that line, and a generous one is just

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outside of it. We are aiming for right on the line. If you don’t have a ¼” foot for your sewing machine, you can use a ruler or a tape measure and lower your needle on the sewing machine down to it, and then mark the ¼” with tape onto your sewing machine bed. If you don’t know if you sew an accurate seam, I would recommend doing a bit of practise before starting - the little extra time spent is better than the frustration of unpicking borders that don’t fit! * All “strips” that are cut and referred to in this pattern are cut from selvedge to selvedge across the fabric, as standard with every patchwork pattern. So if I say, cut a strip, 1 ½”, I mean a strip from selvedge to selvedge, across the fabric, that is 1 ½” wide. I cannot guarantee that you will have enough fabric if you choose to cut your shapes in a different manner. * All fabric requirements are based on standard patchwork weight, 44” wide material. All total fabric amounts are stated in the Introductory PDF. If you choose to use fabric that is wider or thinner than this I cannot guarantee your fabric requirement measurements. Have fun everyone, and I hope you have fun adding the leaves to your garden.

March Pattern Before we begin! There are a lot of little leaves to applique this month. I know that some of you will whizz through them and relish the hand work, but I also know that some if you will find the sheer number challenging. It is completely fine if you decide not to use as many leaves as I have, but I will put a small warning here that I think the ring of green (or whatever colour you choose for your leaves) in amongst the stems is an important feature of the design, and will help to pull the colours in from the leaves in the larger outer borders when we come to sewing those. Leaving them off all together is your choice, but there is a reason for having them there! When I design these BOM quilts I do it carefully in a certain order, for a very good reason. Each month you are learning a new skill that will help you in a later part of the quilt. For example, checking your quarter inch seams in order to get the wedges to lay flat will be important for stitching your borders on as we move through the medallion in stages - you will have a very ripply medallion if you don’t check the measurements of each border, sew a nice accurate seam and cut everything as I recommend as we go. Also, your applique is moving through stages of difficulty - we sewed straight, already turned under strips in Month 1, we learned outside curves in Month 2, and now this month we will learn how to properly needleturn the leaves, and to turn nice sharp points. It’s important to get these things under your belt and I introduce them slowly so that you have practise on each one. Then when we get to the more difficult applique and small

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piecing, you will think - right, we did that already!

Requirements for this month: Quilt centre block, with centre wedge glued on and stems and flowers appliquéd down Fabric for leaves, and for Border 2 One leaf template, made from template plastic or laminate Liquid applique glue Milliners needles Small sharp scissors 100% cotton threads to match your applique fabrics NOT your background For clarification, close ups or expansion on any of the below, please watch this month’s video tutorial.

Make the Leaves: Using the plastic template you cut out, trace around the outside of the template using your silver gel pen, onto the RIGHT SIDE of the fabric. Position all the leaves loosely on your background first. Don’t worry too much about their exact position, more just pop them on the stems and decide where on your wheel you might like leaves, and where not. If you find that your stems are too close together, it is fine for the leaves to overlap onto the next stem over if you like. I have 51 leaves on my circle. Some stems have one leaf, some have two, and one or two of the long ones have three. Whatever you decide is up to you. When you have cut all your leaves out, placed them and are ready to glue, pick one leaf up from the stem it’s next to and put a pin through the point at the end of the leaf. Stand the pin up with the leaft threaded on it, and pit the point of the pin up against the stem. Slide the leaf down the pin and remove the pin. Put your finger on the leaf end and peel the leaf back without moving it’s potition so you can put a small dot of glue in the centre of the leaf. Repeat with all your leaves.

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When the glue is dry, finger press all around the outside of one leaf, including the point. Finger pressing is NOT pressing and trying to make the fabric stay under. It’s just a crease along the line, like a memory for the fabric so that when you sew it, it already knows what you want it to do. Do not be tempted to use an iron for this. A finger pressed line is easy to manipulate, whereas an ironed line is difficult to change if you iron a point into a crease or a line in the wrong spot. On these tiny leaves, you will also be very likely to burn your fingers! Although you have pressed the whole edge, don’t be tempted to try to turn the whole edge under before you sew it; just turn under the small section you are working on. This makes it easier to keep track of the gel pen line and make sure that you turn it all under, which ensures smooth curves. Always begin on the straightest edge possible, never start at a point, or at an inside curve or point (when we get to those!) Sew all around the finger pressed edge using the same stitch as for the bias tape and the

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flowers, but pushing each part of the edge outside the gel pen line under as you get to it. Your stitches should just catch the edge of the fabric and be quite small and close together, which will make the applique strong and avoid it’s being torn or looking puckered. You do not have to pull the stitches tightly, they should just sit nicely on the fabric. The curves on these leaves are quite small and tight. As you sew, take care to just turn the little bit of fabric you are working under, stitch it, and then turn the next part. If you try to turn the whole curve at once you will have trouble getting a smooth curve. There is close up video of lots of the techniques this month but I particularly recommend you watch this and turning the point if you haven’t done this kind of applique before. The best way to get a sharp point is to sew all the way up to the very point on one side, then turn the fabric in your hand. Put your needle on the seam allowance outside the point, and sweep the fabric around in an arc and underneath the main part of the point. Your needle should end up all the way around at the other seam allowance. Don’t worry if you go too far and the whole point disappears. Give the thread a nice firm tug, and the point will pop back out. Then turn the seam allowance under the side of the leaf and continue sewing down the other side of the point. Continue until you have sewn all around the outside of the shape and tie the thread off at the back with a small knot. Stitch all the leaves to the background fabric.

Border 2: There have been many (MANY) questions about mitreing the corners for the borders. (A mitred corner is one with a diagonal seam at the point where the borders meet). I have chosen to mitre mine, however you DO NOT need to mitre if you don’t want to. Instructions are included to mitre the corners and there is enough fabric in the material requirements to do either. Before beginning, PLEASE check that your centre square is trimmed to 24 ½”. If you square is too small, you may have to adjust the side of your border strips to make it larger. After Border 2 is added, your quilt top will measure 26 ½” square. It is very important to check the measurement of each step of the quilt before you add the next border. Medallion quilts can quickly and easily become warped and wrinkled, and adding the borders incorrectly is what does it. To measure your quilt top for each step, please measure the quilt top through the CENTRE of the quilt in both directions. If you measure the edges of the quilt, any errors that are in the measurements are in the edges and you will not have the true measurement. In other words (if this was your quilt top) you would want to measure like this:

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Not like this:

To sew a straight border: From your Border 2 fabric, cut four strips 1 ½” x width of fabric. From these strips cut two pieces 24 ½” long and two pieces 26 ½” long. Find the centre of the quilt top (the centre square) and the centre of one of the 24 ½” border strips and pin with right sides together. Pin the ends, then pin in between, easing as you go if needed. Press. This is how we will attach EVERY BORDER to this whole quilt to avoid puckering and ripples as much as possible. Repeat with the opposite side of the quilt top, and then with the two other borders and the 26 ½” strips.

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To mitre the borders: Cut four strips 1 ½” x width of fabric, and trim them each to 28 ½” long. Find the centre of one edge of the quilt top, then the centre of the length of one strip. Pin the middle, then pin along the length of the strip to ¼” from each end of the quilt top. There will be excess fabric hanging over the edge. Stitch the border to the quilt top, and do a stay stitch or back stitch at each end ¼” from the end of the quilt top. Press the seams toward the quilt top.

Diagram 1 Lay the quilt top right side up on the ironing board, and fold each border end flat back onto itself, right sides together. This will form a 45 degree angle at the quilt’s corner. Press carefully to form sharp creases.

Diagram 2

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Fold the quilt top on the diagonal, with right sides together. Align the border strip raw edges, match the seams at the ¼” backstitched point and the creases, and pin. Stitch along the crease and backstitch at the ¼” border seam.

Diagram 3 Press the diagonal seam open carefully, remembering that it is a bias edge. With the quilt right side up, check the angle with the 45 degree line on your patchwork ruler. If the corner is flat and square you can trim any excess. Repeat with the other three corners of the quilt. Your quilt top, or quilt centre, should now measure 26 ½” square. It’s important that it does, or the next border won’t fit! So please do make sure to take the time and measure through the centre, taking the extra time will save you a lot of unpicking down the road.

Cutting Excess Fabric Away Cutting the fabric away from behind your applique is a personal choice. I always cut larger pieces away because it takes the bulk out of the quilt, reducing weight and making it easier to quilt. It also makes your applique lie flat and smooth when the quilt is sandwiched. Cut the backs out from behind the applique shapes as you go. It's much easier to cut the pieces away from a piece you are working on in your hand, rather than manhandling the whole quilt top at the end to try and cut small circles out from the centre medallion. The method of doing this is described in Month 2. However with the wedge circle in the centre as mentioned last month, it's a very large piece of fabric you're cutting away, and this can stretch the centre out when you press if you haven't stabilised it first. I finished my centre medallion, sewed the small border on as above, and then cut my wedge circle away. If you are concerned about cutting this away you can leave the wedge circle until the very last thing in the quilt if you want to. However I do recommend cutting it out, because in some places (for example, under the very centre

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circle) there will be four layers of fabric to quilt through which makes for bumps and lumps in the final process. To cut the circle away, stitch the bias tape around the edge of the wedge circle FIRST. Press the whole quilt centre carefully, use some starch if you think it needs it. Add the small border as described above. Pull the fabric out from behind the wedge circle, and pop the dots of glue away from the background. Leave a generous ¼" seam allowance inside the seam on the bias strip, and cut the whole circle of background away from behind the wedges. Now turn to the front and add the centre circle to cover the hole in the wedges, just as you made the circles for the flower. Stitch, then turn to the back and cut any excess wedge fabric away ¼" from your applique stitches. PLEASE NOTE. Some of your wedge circles have turned out with centre holes much larger than they should be - this is due to seams that aren't ¼" and/or adding of extra wedges to the circle. You might find that the hole in your wedge circle is too large to be covered by the circle template provided. If this is the case you will need to make yourself a new template - a mug or a small bowl is always a good thing to trace around! Thanks everyone, I hope you have an enjoyable month , and I hope the Easter Bunny comes hopping to your place with some chocolate eggs - even if you don’t celebrate Easter, there’s always a reason for chocolate :) I will see you on April 30 - time for houses, and another little bonus project too. Yay!!

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BORDER 1

copyright Sarah Fielke 2017

LeafADD seam allowance

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