Wool work Wednesday.....

......and Thursday and Friday and any other day that I can possibly get wool work fitted in!

By now you know I have quite the obsession with saltbox houses. It was only after I looked at my previous post, I realised that all the finished pieces, had houses on them, so to show just how predictable I am........we have more houses!

I just couldn't resist starting this one, after getting Jan Pateks new book I showed in a previous post and considering I have been on the lookout for something large to go on my stair wall, well, I just had to start it!

Here are the first two blocks. My daughter is holding them up, just to let you see the size of each block. I think they are 40x40 inches-finished quilt size will be 104x104 inches, so yes, I know, I am well and truly mad:)

Oh yes, I forgot to say, I used wool for the applique instead of cotton, but didn't I say I was predictable???






Here is a pic from the back of the book of the finished quilt



Whoops, I am seeing a little mistake-does anyone spy it?

In Jans quilt, she has birds on the top of each chimney and prim dogs/cats?? in the grass-I'm not too sure I want to include these; do you think it looks bare without?

I thought I would share how I do my wool applique. I was going to say tips, but maybe there are better ideas out there, but for now, this is what works for me, but I sure would love to hear what methods others use.

I use good old freezer paper for my templates and iron it to the wool. Then I use fabric spray adhesive (sprayed lightly on the wool) and that secures it for stitching. For small pieces of wool, such as flower stems etc that tend to fray easier or for wool that hasn't felted properly, I go around the edges with fray check, prior to stitching. This stuff works a treat.

Before this method, I used the fusible bondaweb stuff, but, more often than not, I singed my wool in an attempt to get it to stick or had to use the stronger fusible, which made the applique hard and I like mine to feel natural.

Stitching wise, I used to do blanket stitch quite a bit, but more recently I have been doing the primitive whip stitch. I suppose depends on what the piece dictates.

Well, that's what happens here-I would so love to hear of other methods out there,

Hope you get time to do what you enjoy best, this week,

Blessings,

Shazy x