Lesson Four: Reverse Appliqué

1. Creating A Line- You will need to iron your freezer paper heart to the top of your BACKGROUND fabric. Next use a pencil if your fabric is light, or chalk if it is dark to draw a line around your heart. NOTE: you may want to reverse your background fabric and focus fabric at this point to give your block a fun look.

2. Cutting Away your top fabric- Insert your trusty sharp scissors and clip away until you have a ¼ inch seam. Clip curves and V’s. Layering Your Fabrics- Layer your background fabric first and your focus fabric (uncut) under. Pin in place or baste with large stitches.

3. Reverse Appliqué

Start on the right hand side of the heart. You will be pushing the seam allowance away from you-under the top layer of your block. We will be using the same stitch from Lesson Three.

We will be doing the exact same thing to handle the bottom and the top of the heart as we did in Lesson Three, only it will be reversed. The top of the heart will be like the point, and the bottom like the “V.”

The Top of the Heart- Fold straight and treat as a point like you did in Lesson Three.

Folding fabric-

The Bottom of the Heart- In my opinion this is the trickier part of the reverse appliqué heart. It is like the “V” on the heart from Lesson Three.

Stop a few stitches short of the V. Make sure you have clipped far enough into the V or you will not get a nice point.

Now take the same stitch you made just before the point. Continue stitching and tie off at back.

4. Clip excess fabric on back.

5. Press and square up your block to 6.5 x 6.5 inches.

6. Snowball Directions: Draw a diagonal line on your squares. Pin to each corner. Sew on the diagonal line. Trim seam to ¼ inch. Press.

7. Sew all four heart blocks together. Place one reverse heart appliqué block opposite each other so each row has one appliqué block and one reverse appliqué block!

8. Enjoy your new skill! Don’t be afraid to try new patterns now! Remember there are many, many methods of appliqué. Keep trying until you find the one you are most comfortable with. Don’t forget to post pictures of your block.

Here is my finished block. I chose to only snowball half of the corners: (Hope the birthday gal isn’t looking!)

Here is a link on reverse appliqué:

http://www.quilterscache.com/StartQuiltingPages/startquiltingfour.html

Homework:

1. Make two reverse appliqué heart blocks from above method.

2. Press and square up blocks.

3. Assemble your four blocks.