Apliquick, the new easy way to applique. www.kathymcneilquilts.com

okay guys here's the latest and greatest I've been doing applique for 17 years I do a lot of pieces that are very very tiny complex pieces along with a lot of really nice Big Easy shapes for landscapes and things but for those little precision pieces boy oh boy do these new tools really help so you start with this foundation paper and it's a very lightweight basically woven interfacing and it has one side of it that has been impregnated with glue just a very lightweight glue so you can fuse it or iron it right on to your fabric so you take this paper and you can see the shiny side and then this the plain side and what's wonderful about it it's not like fusible web that is so easy to tear and you have to do everything on the mirror image this you can do right side up - right side up because it's very stable it's like interfacing so you would just go ahead and trace over you the shape that you need so we'll just trace around this little feather shape here and then you would simply just cut that shape right out right on the line so and these new scissors I'm in love with - so you have a finger here a finger here and then right here is this lovely place that's just made for you to hold the scissors they have a nice serrated edge so that they can cut and hold little tiny pieces without giving away and they're very ergonomically shaped um for your thumb - and your hand so then you would just go ahead and cut that right on the line like that and then you can just fuse that to the wrong side of your fabric so that's the next step and I have that so we can just move on here so here's a feather shape little circle and then part of a tree and you can see that this tree you know is a little bit more complex shape of a tree so I've turned this one side for you and we'll turn this one too but if you want to have either these smaller shapes or more precision like a tree then this is a great way to do that so you start with putting on some glue so this is just a glue stick and it's in yellow so I'm going to use it so you can see it more and I'm just going to turn this feather on both sides and around that little tip down there just makes it tricky and we're just going to put a little smear of glue all along here so that we can go ahead and turn that edge and then I think instead of this tree I think I'm actually going to do this little circle for you you can see it's really tiny little circle so let's do that instead I'll show you so we just need to get a little bit of glue around there all righty and then we're going to move this off of this surface that's got glue on it because I don't want to get glue on the sides of here so I'll get this out of our way okay and then we're going to use these tools it's new applicant tools you can see that there's one that has sort of a fork in shape and this one has a bevel shape a really nice bevel so that it can sweep across flat right across your surface and then on the opposite ends we have some really sharp nice little points which I'll show you how that works great to smooth out any little pleats that you might have so we're going to start with this feather here and the fork in is to hold it firmly down so that you can move it around and position it and then this bevel end is what helps you start turning your edges over so you can see we can just sweep those right over so it's just like holding a pencil but you just gradually just brush those over there and I didn't put the glue all the way down there so we'll just go to here but you can see I can really smooth these out here and now I'm going to flip over and I'm going to just use my points now so they can get really in here close to hold this down but I can get this started and then I can get this little point just worked right over to so get you there we go and now with this any little pleats are in there and I can just smooth those right out so they're nice and smooth and pull get them nice and flat like we'd like to see them and then I'm going to go back to being able to just use my nice bevel side here so let's get our fort to hold us in position here just sweep against that get that nice bubble shape to just hold everybody flat there we go this made my life lots lots easier I could use to do this with my fingers my big old clunky fingers but boy oh boy being able to practically do surgery on these pieces is really super nice and after watching surgeons work for so many years I feel like I can get all the precision that I need so and you can smooth it down a little bit from that side so you can see here you know sometimes you have these little shapes and here's a little beak of it for a bird or this lovely little leaf that actually has some pretty significant little points and and tight curves to it um if you use the foundation paper and glue you can really turn those nicely so I'm going to go ahead and turn this little tiny circle that is smaller than a dime I'm going to go back to my points because it's such a small little piece and I'm going to get started just pulling these over and I just want to get the pleats sort of evenly distributed here you know you could certainly needle turn something like this but the problem always with needle turn for me is as I'm rarely working on a background piece of fabric that you know is only at the most 16 by 16 my landscape quilts are you know 70 inches across or something so I have to be able to do everything in little units that can then be sewn you know on top of some collage leaf section or rock section or even with the audubon pattern you know the Cardinal block the one in the center is 25 by 25 and that's a lot to pick up in and hold in your hand and try to needle turn even something as Tiny as these little circles so then there's also a wonderful little tweezers and this tweezers have some nice scooping beveled scooped a pointed ends and I love this big flat area here where I don't have a lot of pressure in my thumb's anymore because of arthritis and I can just easily go and pick up these little shapes and you can see that you know that one is smaller than a little diamond I can get a really nice little circle shape to it and then be able to just pick these up and move them right into position so yes I do still am using predominantly for shapes you know this is a pretty simple shape I could actually turn that with you know with some sizing and a little bit of careful clipping and notching as you can see here I can just turn that over you know and I just basically don't need the exact outline of this little tree or bush I just need it to be you know approximately like that and so for all of these shapes I would still do it that way but if I needed to make a shape you know like this tree you know that had you know I wanted it to be more precise and I really did want it to come out this way you know then I would go ahead and use the foundation paper which I have used just for that one piece so that I have more control there but that is the newest things out there on the market and I they're from Spain so they're not carried very many places we had to get a wholesale account to carry them but I'm very excited about them and they are now in my web store for you guys too

Channel: Kathy McNeil

Views: 571,893

Rating: 4.7771916 out of 5

Keywords: sewing, tools, quilts, quilting, kathy, mcneil, hand applique, Apliquick Turning rods, Apliquick tools.

Id: 1B4kh1L_dbg

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 01 2014