BEHIND THE QUILT
HEART IN HAND
“There is a wonderful sense of achievement when you can whip up a quilt on your sewing machine quickly, but there are also those precious moments when you can sit quietly and sew by hand. I think this is why I enjoy appliqué so much. There is a lovely sense of peace to needle-turning pretty fabrics in place. This is my go-to technique – I use a removable pencil, which means a light enough pencil that it will wash out, or a quilting pen that is designed to disappear or wash out. Alert here: always test your chosen marking pen or pencil on your fabrics. I am using the plural here because marking pens, etc, can react differently on different fabrics and who wants to spend time working on a beautiful piece of work for there to be pen lines all over it? Not me!
“This quilt can be made with one piece of background fabric if you choose, but I liked the added texture of piecing quarter square triangles to add some interest and depth before stitching the appliqué on top. If you want to needle-turn you can work as I have done, but not everyone finds hand sewing so easy, so you could draw the shapes onto fusible webbing and iron them onto the background fabric, then use a sewing machine to stitch around the shapes. For this technique you don’t
