Love At First Sight | Simple Bird Applique

I have been excitedly stitching my “Bed of Roses” together in the basement where it is nice and cool.

I am loving this quilt more with every row I add. Speaking of adding rows, the pink cornerstones add a lovely touch, don’t you think. They finish at just 1/2″ square. Dainty!

In my usual fashion, I stopped working on Bed of Roses for a day or two to start a new quilt. I guess as I see the end in sight for one quilt, I have the need to start something new. I honestly think it is fear of having absolutely nothing to do! The new quilt is called “Love At First Sight” and it is from Edyta Sitar’s book Handfuls of Scraps. I am making it out of my “real scraps” not layer cakes or jelly rolls. No no! The fabrics I am using are scraps left over from finished projects. So it takes a bit longer to do the cutting, but I am actually using up some leftover bits of fabric that have been kicking around for years! I am sure you know the feeling. Notice that I am keeping the blocks from Bed of Roses in my sight line just so I remember there really is a quilt to finish!

In an earlier post, I showed you how to do the scallops on the borders of Bed of Roses according to the directions in the pattern. It really is a slick way to do those scallops. You can see that post here.

But I was laying awake one night and came up with an alternate method to do the borders. There is always more than one way to skin a cat. Speaking of cats….have you ever tried to sew with a cat on your lap? It is not easy.

Anyway, here is an alternate way to do the borders.

First, cut a plastic template of the scallop provided in the pattern. Then cut yourself some freezer paper templates. I cut 6. When you trace the template on the freezer paper, make sure you butt them up against each other. Now, take a pencil and draw a line through both freezer paper templates at the exact point where they touch. You can cut the templates out now.

Ok, now you can take the plastic template and trace 15 scallops on the border fabric with a water soluble marker. I drew the 1/4″ seam allowance along the edge because there is no seam allowance included in the template. There is an odd number of scallops, so I found the centre point of the border and drew the first one in the middle, and then 7 scallops on each side of that one.

So now I started to prep the scallops. Here is the key…On 8 of the scallops, you will prep the entire piece (except the bottom seam allowance). So far, so good!

On the remaining 7 scallops, put a clip about 1/8″ below the pencil line you drew.

Next you can prep the top section of the template. I think this just might work!

Once all the pieces were prepped, I took the plastic template and placed it on the top of the fabric and drew the remaing seam allowances. You will be glad you did this!

Now comes the moment of truth! So glue the partially prepped pieces on the background on every other scallop, referring to the pattern for colour placement.