Making It Up As I Go Along: The FrankenWhiggish Rose Saga Continues

After finally finishing all 32 of the stacked petals for my FrankenWhiggish Rose needle turned applique project, I thought to myself, "Now I just need to piece eight more block backgrounds, make 32 stems, glue baste them in place, and then I can get back to hand stitching again."  The hand stitching is the fun part.  :-)

Finishing the Last Petal!

As usual, what I thought I could quickly knock out in an hour or so has stretched out over an entire week.  I didn't have enough of some of my background fabrics (surprise, surprise!) so I had to scour the Internet to find and order more yardage.  Then when it arrived I had to prewash, iron, and cut my 9 1/2" squares before I could sew blocks together.  I love the green handwriting print so much and definitely want it in all the blocks, and the green dots balances it out perfectly, so that's the one I ordered more of.  I had enough of that brownish larger floral spray fabric and enough of the handwriting print, but the smaller scale brownish fabric square in my initial block came from one of last year (or the year before)'s Moda French General layer cakes and I only had two squares of that particular fabric including the one I already used in my first block. 

Only enough of this fabric for two blocks

I decided to mix in some of the other small-scale brownish prints from the layer cake as well as a typographical print in roughly the same color, slightly darker value from my stash.  I think this will look fine as long as I mix the blocks up in the final layout.

All 9 Blocks on the Wall

It did occur to me that it might look weird to have three of the same fabrics in every block, and different fabrics only in the fourth quadrant.  Seeing it on the wall, though, I like it.  It's just random enough to be interesting, but not enough variation to be distracting or to make it too difficult to get a nice layout for the finished blocks.  I didn't want my background fabrics to upstage the applique, after all.  (Just ignore that other quilt top on the right, partially covered by my pieced applique block backgrounds.  I'm ignoring it for now...)

Once I had pieced together all of the block backgrounds, it was time to turn my attention to the stems.



Stem Factory with the Clover 1/4" Bias Tape Maker


I made all 32 of my stems with that little Clover tool a few days ago, cutting half inch strips of fabric on the straight of grain and then feeding them through the big end of the little green gizmo with the iron riding along next to the skinny end to press the stems flat as the folded fabric came out.  The long strips of fabric came out nice and flat and smooth, like magic, and I cut them into 6" stems for my blocks.  I put all of my stems into a Ziplock baggy in case humidity in the air might soften the creases overnight, but in the morning I found that they had all started opening up anyway and needed to be pressed again before I could use them.  Grrr!  I wonder if starching the fabric ahead of time would have helped with that, or if you just really need to use the stems immediately after making them?  I don't recall having this issue when I made the stems for my first block, but that was a year ago and I was only making the four little stems at that time, not a whole batch of them.  I probably took them straight from the ironing board and glued them to the block immediately.   Having to fiddle with the turned edges and press each stem again before using it is really slowing me down. 

So anyway, I made myself a bunch of little stems, and now I'm trying to glue baste them to the blocks with my handy dandy vinyl placement overlay as per the Piece O'Cake method.  Except that once I have my stems positioned just right, I have to lift the overlay and lift the stems themselves in order to glue them in place and they keep MOVING!  This is SO not working.  There has to be an easier way.  I considered using my my light box with the vinyl drawing UNDER my block, but my light box is too small to fit the entire block and I can't see through the brown fabrics well enough, anyway.  I did press diagonal crease lines in my blocks but they aren't helping much because I can't see the creases under the bright light at my work table and I can't feel the creases through the vinyl overlay.  So I'm just plodding along this way, getting the stems glued down as accurately as I can, and hoping for the best!

There MUST be an Easier Way...

So far I have only TWO of these blocks with all four stems glue basted in place, and that's it.

-- Ooh, I just this minute had an epiphany!  Maybe it would be easier and better in the long run if I waited to add the stems until AFTER I had stitched my stacked petals to the block backgrounds?  Then the stems won't be in the way when I'm needle turning the petal edges adjacent to them, and I can use the edges of the petals and the diagonal crease lines to position the stems instead of trying to fiddle around with the overlay?  See, that's why I blog about this stuff even if no one else is reading it.  Sometimes I can stare at a problem and think about it all day long, and the answer doesn't come to me until I wrestle with it in writing.

New plan!  I'm going to stitch the stems down on the two blocks that I have already glue basted.  Then I'm going to starch the rest of the stems, press them super flat, and store them in a Ziplock bag with all of the air squeezed out of it so that hopefully they stay flat.  And then I'm going to:

1. Pin and needle turn all of my stacked petals to all of my blocks
2. Glue baste and stitch all of my stems to all of my blocks
3. Make all of my stacked circle centers off block (starch and press prepared applique with circle templates)
4. Glue baste and stitch all of my centers to all of my blocks
5. Make the reverse appliqued tulips off block
6. Needle turn all of the tulips to all of my blocks
7. Needle turn all of my leaves to all of my blocks
8. Make all of my broderie perse rose buds off block using glue stick and Jeanne Sullivan's Patch Back product (thank you, Jeanne!)
9. Glue baste and stitch all of my rose buds to all of my blocks
10. Make all of my fussy-cut stuffed berries off block using circle templates
11. Glue baste and stitch all of my stuffed berries to all of my blocks

Now in reality there will probably be a Step 8 1/2, where I realize that I don't have enough of the Vervain drapery fabric left over to cut out enough rose buds for all of my blocks and I have to cannibalize one of my kitchen drapery panels or something (no one can see the bottom of the drapery panel behind the chair anyway, right?).  But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Gene Kelly in Singin' In the Rain (1952)

Meanwhile, we're headed to the Charlotte Symphony with the kids tomorrow night to see Singin' In the Rain on the big screen with live orchestral accompaniment.  I can't wait!  Then Saturday is my oldest son's confirmation, and on Sunday afternoon we have a big area Reformation service at church involving multiple Lutheran congregations from the Carolinas.  It is shaping up to be a busy September. 

I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, WIPs on Wednesday at Esther's Blog, and Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation.  Happy Thursday, happy stitching, and have a great weekend, everyone!