I took a class at Road to California with Rosa Rojas. The woman who developed the apliquick method.
She developed a very interesting method of designing a large Hawaiian block. Each of us designed our own. That was all well and good. My problem here is the problem I have with every single competition show. It’s all about being done in a short period of time. That does not allow for real creativity. But it was a one day class, so I didn’t complain, I did my best.
Here is my design. I did change things in the border. I may change more. We shall see. Where you see the white fusible – that will be the appliqué everything else will be cut away.
At the marketplace I bought another background fabric. Initially I had bought a much lighter purple, but that wouldn’t have the contrast with the appliqué fabric. No worries, that one won’t go to waste.
Section by section, I trimmed, clipped, turned and glued. One thing I love about quilting and especially appliqué is to let things grow slowly. With this method, it is one large stage after another.
Here you can see how much better this bottom fabric works.
Not quite halfway done and I’m getting bored! I want to start sewing. But I can’t, Rosa is correct in her reasoning about how one does this. So I’m following her orders.
Almost there! One section left!
Next stage was to hand baste the appliqué to the background. I love my large cutting table. Made the process so much easier. I have already appliquéd one section down, the top section with the bee needle minder.
Right here. See how nice it looks! No its’ not perfect, but this is handwork, I am not an industrial machine. When completed and quilted, it will look amazing. You may notice at the bottom of the photo, one of the tabs got loose. That’s ok, I’ll simply push it back under and sew it down. Rosa has an excellent glue. I didn’t buy it, I’d need so much for this project and her materials are very expensive. I did buy more of her paper, because it is much better than anything else on the market, and there isn’t a lot. But I manage with Fons and Porter glue. It dried much quicker, but I’ve learned to work with it. I also use Superior silk thread instead of Rosa’s thread. It’s a third of the cost and I don’t see a difference. I understand, Rosa makes a lot of her money selling product, but it is very expensive.
Ahh, I love my macro lens. Look how close, you can count the thread count on the fabrics. You also cannot see the silk appliqué. I really enjoy the hand sewing of the appliqué. Finally I’m at that stage!
Leah