Tackling Some Applique

So, someone in my sit-and-stitch group offered up some books from her collection to anyone who wanted them. I found a book from Fons and Porter called Quilts from the Henry Ford. I love looking at historical quilts for inspiration, so it went home with me. The book had an entire section on Susan McCord's quilts, which were based on traditional patterns and techniques, but with her own unique spin. My favorite was the McCord Vine quilt (circa 1850). It is one of several McCord quilts in the Henry Ford museum collection. The quilt is covered with vines and tiny string-pieced leaves.



I wanted to adapt the McCord quilt, but on a reasonable scale (the original quilt has 13 vines and several thousand leaves).



I decided to keep with my goal of not starting any more new projects in 2018 by finding a way to work the vines into an existing unfinished project. I had an unfinished quilt based on a traditional pattern called ‘Tree Everlasting’ under the sewing table. I started it in 2015, sewed some, unsewed most of it, got frustrated with it and put it away. The tree everlasting pattern is sewn in vertical columns, so I knew it would go well with the columns of leafy vines in the McCord quilt. I decided to pull it out and add three columns of vines with string-pieced leaves to the quilt.

I spent a Saturday at an open-sew session sponsored by my local quilt guild, sewing tree everlasting pieces into columns. One of the ladies at the open-sew did a tutorial on how to make bias binding at the open sew, and I knew I could use that technique to make bias stems for the vines. I got advice from another woman who has done a lot of applique. She was very encouraging, and offered some tips but looked at me like I was crazy when she saw the pattern. This was a clue. Those string-pieced leaves are tiny. Very, very tiny.



When I tried to trace templates for the very tiny leaves, I realized why I was getting ‘you are crazy' looks. I was not planning on using fusible applique but instead turning the edges under and sewing the leaves down either by hand or by sewing machine. Turning under raw edges on very tiny pieces is not easy. After basting the main vines in place and pinning up a small vine as in the original pattern, I decided to eliminate the little vines that came off the main vines; doing that allowed me to increase the size of the leaves. However, I had already made several bias applique strips for the little vines. I decided to use these for curly spirals that come off the main vine but don’t have any leaves on them.



Rather than string-piecing individual leaves, I cut very narrow strips of fabric and sewed them together into panels.



I cut my own leaf templates freehand from paper in several sizes, glued them to an old file folder, cut them out, and traced them onto freezer paper (I used 2 layers of freezer paper for more stability). I pressed the freezer paper leaf shapes to the fabric panels, and cut the leaves out. I turned the seam allowances under by painting them with starch and pressing them under with a small iron. Then I pulled the freezer paper off and basted the leaves to the vines. I will hand-applique the leafy vines down over the next few weeks. Or possibly months...