Needle-turn (or prepared edge) appliqué don’t need to take forever to complete; it depends on the size and complexity of the design.

It is similar to making patchwork. When I think about making a king sized postage stamp quilt, the millions of required pieces intimidates me. But I have no problem actually sewing nine-patch blocks.

Years ago, we make group quilts at my office as baby gifts. We had lots of participants who had neither a sewing machine nor an iron. We did a prepared edge appliqué using a glue stick and freezer paper. Most in our group finished prepping and sewing their block after 2 or 3 lunchtime workshops.

Hi Have just spent a couple of hours reading through these 130 pages, didn't realize this page existed here is my first attempt at applique,( Egyptian Queen by Ananda's Designs for hoops 5x7 to 8x12) which was a disaster to start with and far too complicated to understand how the piece it together and understand the multiable partitions as it was pieced together. I had bitten off more than I could chew at the time The biggest problem with these brought designs they don't explain the procedure concisely..I fell down badly on the first panel (black cat) think I did it 3 times before I worked out what I was doing wrong plus the directions were terrible. I finished up using a program Sewwhat to guide me through partitions as some overlayed each other, the water jug panel had 8 layers, the queen's dress is see-through chenille, hard to work with. Anyway by the time I got to that I was pretty confident with proceeding through the panel. Just a word of advice start simple,I looked on youtube seeing single applique and thought that's a piece of cake and overstepped the line trying too big to start..I have used this applique as the main scene in an ancient Egyptian style quilt if want to see the pictures blog type in a search (queen of egypt) Zoo

Amazingly impressive. I’m so likely, too, to bite off more than I can chew (anyone know that wonderful piece of literary criticism about Henry James - I can’t remember who said it but it’s wonderful even if you love Henry James - “Henry James chews more than he bites off”…), but probably wouldn’t have stuck with it with such tenacity - fantastically well done! I’m much better at doing my own designs because then I know what I’m expecting of myself (more or less), and if it gets too difficult I just do something else; a cop out, I daresay, but it certainly makes for an easier life!! But you don’t ever, when you do your own designs, get quite the sense of having won a battle that you get when you finally crack how to manage someone else’s instructions. It doesn’t help when those instructions are terrible, does it. I think the writers of instructions are often not very good at putting themselves in the shoes of the person trying to do the following of those instructions. It’s a real skill, to have that sort of empathy and then to be good at the explaining.

I love applique work. I usually do the freezer paper method of applique but lately I've been working on my needle turn applique technique skills. I just pulled fabric yesterday from my stash to begin the Baltimore Autumn quilt from P3 Designs by Pearl P. Pereira. I love her patterns and have collected several but never made one before so I thought this would be a good fall/winter project. I'm still finishing up my Lori Holt quilts using freezer paper technique, I'm making the Prim quilt from her quilt along and Grandmother's Flower Garden (although this is sitting on a back burner for now). I get so excited about new projects and start them before I finish my current project so this year I've been making myself finish TWO to WIP completely through the binding/finishing stage before I allow myself to start a new project. LOL, maybe, at this rate I might break even in the next 20 years.

Your next project sounds lovely. I love Baltimore Album Quilts. I think I have almost every book ever written by Elly Sienkiewicz and have taken a class by her. Still have yet to embark on such a challenging project. I hope you’ll post photos of your progress.

pineneedles4, like you I just love Pearl Pereira’s Baltimore Album style quilts. The first one I made of her’s was a free mystery called Tropical Garden. That quilt is my avatar picture. My fall/winter 3P design project will be her Baltimore Christmas. I use a washable fusible, instead of freezer paper, for my appliqué.