Morris Magic

I just realised that I have not yet mentioned my Morris Magic quilt!

On one of our quilt group outings 2 years ago I came across a William Morris quilt book and fell in love with the Morris Magic quilt design.

I decided to make this one for our queen sized bed - the only problem being that the pattern only makes up to 56" square. Then I found a wonderful Morris border print, and after much scribbling and working out, came up with a layout that will work.

I decided to hand applique all the pieces using 1 strand of DMC stranded cotton. Obviously, this is going to take me a l-o-o-o-ng time to finish! I used a new (to me) re-positional product to fuse the pieces onto the quilt, Floriani Appli-kay Wonder. You iron it onto your fabric as usual, but when you peel the paper backing off, it is sticky! So you can stick it down and re-position as much as you like until you are happy with the layout... THEN you iron it on to make it permanent.

Perfect thought I!! :) 

I was wrong. :(

While it was a total dream to position my pieces nicely, I found that the edges of the pieces began to fray. Maybe the Morris-type fabrics are a looser weave than usual? I dunno. All I know is that I had a major problem. Also, some of the flowers have 3 levels of applique, and the Appli-kay Wonder is far stiffer than Vliesofix.. Not happy Jan!

Solution? I bought some muslin gauze and sandwiched it on top of the ironed on pieces.  I then stitched it in place with rough cross hatching basting stitches. That majorly limited the fuzzing and fraying of the pieces. So what I do now is cut away the muslin over the piece that I want to applique next and then blanket stitch the piece down.

It's still not as neat and crisp as I would like and is really stiff in places, but there's nothing I can do about that at this stage. I really regret using the Appli-kay Wonder, but have gone too far to re-do it all again. *sigh*

This is not the best pic as I was balancing on a ladder to take it!!  You can see that I still have a long way to go.

Now for some closeups. :)

I work on this one now and then when the mood takes me. I'll often work on it every evening for a week, and then not touch it again for 3 months, I'll get there in the end tho!