Easy “Broken Leg” Applique
I consider myself a “piecing quilter “, not an applique quilter. But when you are desperate for a project and can’t get out of bed…You acquire new skills. I must say this is not the first time I have broken a leg and the last time I did , my good friend Amy, who is an amazing appliquer,told me that now that I couldn’t get away from her, she was going to teach me. So now I will teach you! There are amazing tools and helps out there, but not having them ,shouldn’t stop you from doing what you need to survive! and to survive I need to SEW!
Start with an easy picture..A coloring book works nicely. Make the lines darker so that you can see through it to trace. This is because we don’t have light boxes in our beds!
Also lightly trace it on to your background square as this will help with the placement.
Then trace each individual part on to scrap paper.
Then you have your children, grandchildren, or husband gather up scraps of fabric and put them in a bag by your bed.
Then you want to choose the fabric you want and using your paper pattern you trace around it.
I do have an applique board that my husband made for me that makes the tracing so much easier. To make the applique board, You take a piece of fine grit sandpaper and glue it to a piece of wood. This becomes your drawing table and holds the fabric in place making it easy to trace.
You trace your entire piece and cut out about 1/4 inch on the outside of the trace line.
Now comes the fun part…since I don’t keep freezer paper in my bed, I don’t use it and I also don’t have an iron so we finger press.
Take your cut piece of fabric and fold it on the traced line and press down with your thumb nails. Do this all around the fabric. Having this edge finger pressed down will help with the sewing.
Lay your fabric pattern down on the background fabric and loosely pin in place.
Choose thread that matches your applique fabric and bring up your thread out through the fold.
Use your needle to fold under the 1/4 edge. Bring you needle up thru the fold of the fabric and STRAIGHT down to anchor the stitch and continue sewing. So you fold, bring needle thru the fold, straight down and anchor and come back up thru the fold . You stitches should be about 1/8 of an inch apart.
