Orange peels in summer

I´ve finished my big hexagon quilt (180x200cm) a couple of months ago but still had no idea how to quilt it. After I finished the autumn leaves quilt I sent both quilts to Jana at Bellus in Prague to get them longarm-quilted. Which means I am sooooo curious and anxious of how they will turn out....

But the big question was: what am I going to do now, meaning hand-sewing-wise? Again hexagons? No, I wanted to try something else. And after surfing around in the quilter-blogs-universe I got lucky and found something that I call myself again addicted to: appliquéing orange peels !!

There´s a new book (For Keeps by Amy Gibson) which a lot of bloggers refer to and which I have ordered but still have not gotten it yet, so I took my newest accquisition (a GO BABY accuquilt die cutter) and started with what I had from tutorials and made my own.

I am sooooo happy to have this cute little "device", it saves so much time cutting the peels and squares and, in my case, also fabric. 

 

 

You put the fabric on the die then the plastic plate over it and roll it through the cutter. So within a few minutes I had lots of peels and squares to go on.

This is what I prepared for my "to go box": 

- several threads, matching the orange peel fabrics

- basting thread

- a basting needle long, sharp no. 10

- a gold eye quilting needle between, no. 10 (very small) for appliquéing

- three pins

- freezer paper for the paper peels (scaled down to 77%)

 

 

 

I cut one paper peel with the Go Baby and scaled it on the copier down to 77%. This one I transfered with pencil on to the big freezer paper sheet (which I had loads of, gotten some years ago without knowing what to do with it). On one sheet I had almost 30 peels, cut them out (a leisurely thing to do when watching TV).

Then I ironed the freezer paper peels on to the fabric peels (watch ouf of the glossy side down on the wrong side of the fabric, otherwise your iron will not be happy about it).

 

Now basting, again a fun work (at least for me) which can be done anytime and anywhere.

Iron the fabric squares in half (into triangles) and arrange the peels along the crease so that the peel tips are exaclty on the crease line.

 

Start with appliquéing stitches 1cm away from one tip and do the first half of the peel.

After the first half before the first tip remove the basting thread and take out the freezer paper.

Tuck under the protruding fabric at the tip and continue.

 

Cut off if the protruding fabric is to big to tuck under - but only a little bit !

Sometimes the tips end up not exactly on the line of the crease but that doesn´t bother me at all!

 

 

 

  To be continued......