Modern Maples throw - top finished

Last weekend I finished the top of my Modern Maples throw. The pattern is by Amanda Woodward-Jennings, and was the first pattern I downloaded when I discovered the Internet was full of quilty stuff! I posted about it earlier here and here.

The next step is to quilt it on my Bernina 440 QE. I have decided to quilt maple leaves in the centres of the white space squares and was wondering how to do this when I read this post from Debby Kratovil.

I drew the shape of the maple leaf block roughly on freezer paper, ironed it onto the first block - bottom right in the photo above - and started to sew around it with a 3mm length stitch and the appliqué foot. Debby was using a long arm machine in the tutorial with a free-motion foot, but I was nervous of ironing the paper onto a quilt that had already been sandwiched; wouldn't the wadding loose its puff?

using the appliqué foot for better sight on the sewing line.

I'm not sewing the paper, just roughly around it, to make a perimeter line of the leaf for when I start free motion quilting the shape of the leaf. A washable pen would function as well, except their lines tend to disappear before you're ready, and sometimes not to wash out completely. These large stitches will come out easily, I hope, once the quilting has been done. This started off fine, but by the time I was half way round it looked like this:

the paper had come loose, and I had to pin it before  I could finish the shape:

the maple leaf outline, a little puckered  but no worries it's soon to be quilted

Debby's method is great if you are making a fairly small project which manoeuvres easily through the sewing machine and are doing FMQ. My adaptation didn't work!
My lesson learnt: next time I should sew the outline onto the 12.5" square before I add it to the top.

My solution to the problem was to cut a pattern from dressmakers' tracing paper, of which I have masses, and which, unlike freezer paper, is readily available here (and cheap!), and to pin that to the squares and sew round them. The freezer paper template I'm keeping for now, to use for another project I have in mind.

I'm linking up to

so hop over there to see what else has been achieved this week.

Happy sewing

Marly