Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Stitching Down the Buildings

The continuing saga of "A Slice of the OC"... When last we met, our project had a background, many buildings, shading and trims. But they were all just laying there, ready to fly away with the wind. Well, we better get them stitched down before that happens.

I like to use my stitching down of the buildings as my quilting stitching as often as I can. It saves so much time! To prevent my buildings from shifting in location,  I used pins, small bits of fusible and fabric glue to keep the buildings in their proper place during this process.  I created my sandwich of my top, batting and backing, and then pinned the three layers in place. Once I had my sandwich I went to the machine.

I used a straight stitch on most of the buildings and just stitched about 1/16" from the edge of the fabric around the buildings. This is raw edge applique, so I didn't want to get closer than that to minimize fraying. On the yellow buildings I couched blue yarn around the edge using a zig zag stitch. For the Ferris wheel I stitched rick rack around the perimeter and used that stitching to secure the wheel. I also stitched the building edge lines using a straight stitch. 

And here are the stitched down buildings!


2 comments:

  1. Your OC piece is taking on great depth. Love the rickrack around the Ferris wheel and how you have used commercial fabrics to represent the buildings. Thanks for the tip about stitching 1/16 of an inch from the edge for raw edge applique. I have always been hesitant to raw edge applique because of the risk of fraying.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Linda! A little fray check helps too!

    ReplyDelete