Applique misadventures

I am working on two major applique quilts: The Quilt Show 2011 block of month Beloved Beauties by Sue Garman and  Basket Medallion by Kim McLean.

I've been working on them, and had appliqued the basket and stems on the Basket Medallion, and part of the stem on Beloved Beauties.

After my Appliquettes Bee meeting the other day, I was inspired and motivated..  I borrowed my friend Linda's light box and got to work.   I drew the rest of the center applique block on the Beloved Beauties center block. Then, as I was basting the fabric around it, I noticed a 1 1/2 inch flaw in the fabric--and of course it wasn't where a leaf  or flower would be to cover it.  Just right there in plain sight.  So, I ironed off the design (I used the Frixion pen) and redrew it. This time I have  a leaf covering the flaw and will probably put some fray check on it too.  Now it's ready to applique.

The same day I drew the rest of the center applique design on the Basket Medallion quilt center, this time on the front and with the blue water soluble marker.   I had planned to use the plastic overlay method,and so had already appliqued on the basket and stems.  But it was too bulky, so changing gears and drawing the design on.

As careful as I was,after looking at it I decided it was off center on the bottom, and decided to redraw the entire design. I sprayed it with water --soaked it, in fact--I wanted all the blue off.  The next morning, the blue was all gone. Hooray. 

However, the pink/orange dot fabric that was the basket handles & woven strips had faded all over the background!  I had even prewashed it, and didn't see any color bleed then.  Aargh.  So, I have now removed the basket and all the stems, down to a blank piece of pink stained background fabric. I put it in the wash this morning to see if the pink will come out.  And I'm going to soak the pink/orange dot for 24 hours like my friend Niki said to do.  Hopefully, it will stop bleeding, will not ruin the basket that I worked on for some time. And maybe add some synthropol.

If the pink doesn't come out of the background, I will try to switch it out with some of the fabric I have cut for other parts of the quilt that I can work around.  The fabric is  probably still available, but when I checked a while back Honeybee didn't have it anymore. 

So  I will keep on going.  I'm finishing up my Sue Spargo 2011 BOM, Imperial Dreams.  I just keep adding more and more embellishments.