With 'secret' projects temporarily on the side burner, I'm switching gears back to the purple pinwheel quilt project that was resurrected from my stash weeks ago.
This has been my in-between project. I work on it in between the stuff that has to get done to keep my business moving forward.
This week, I'm adding stems to the purple quilt top. I laid out the quilt top on the work room floor - it's the biggest flat space I have for a project like this.
Then I made some free hand, random curvy lines with a white marking pencil. Sue Pelland recommended Roxanne's Glue Baste-It for this step. You may recall that I'll be using her Leaves Galore templates for some of the applique pieces. I'm saving the templates for the next step - the leaves and flowers.


With the Glue Baste-It, I made a line of dots following my marked stem line.


Then I added the bias stem I made on top of the dots. It takes a few minutes for the glue dots to dry.

Once the first stem was glued all the way around the border, I let it set overnight. . .
. . . and then secured the continuous stem with machine buttonhole stitching along each side.
I considered waiting to stitch the applique in place after sandwiching the quilt, but decided against that plan. This is somewhat new territory for me, so I'm playing it by ear a bit.


With the first stem in place and secured, I am ready to glue-baste a second stem to the borders.
And so the saga continues. . .
nIn other news, I am continuing to make pins to wear and to give away that show support for the Ukrainian people. I am mixing it up a bit with sunflower pins as well as a simpler version that is mostly pieced. Two 2" strips, one azure blue and one bright yellow are strip pieced. I pressed the seam open, the trace the heart template on the wrong side of the fabric strips so I know where to place the stiff interfacing.
I follow the exact same steps as shown in my tutorial HERE for the final assembly. I use the strips for the front and back of each pin. The edge stitching is done in two colors to match the fabrics.



To make sure the seams are aligned front to back, I drew itty-bitty horizontal lines on my well-used card stock template, then aligned the marks with the strip seam before tracing the shape.
And in other, other news, I'm finally making forward progress on the Tropical Birds Crossover project.
I am also getting Stitchery Crossover projects back on track after they got sidelined as a result of an overflowing to-do-or-else list.
Crossover people, are you ready for more? Stay tuned! It's coming, I promise, it's coming!

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