Having recently purchased a Jenny Beyer pattern I decided to go through a couple of books of hers that I’d gotten from a used bookstores. The “Color Confidence for Quilters” book was useful in picking fabric for the pattern I’d purchased (Leonardo), since I opted for purples rather than reds. The other book however had always been a mystery. “Soft-Edge Piecing” she calls it and when first browsing through it I kind of understood but not really.

Yesterday, after purchasing purples at Joanne’s I stopped in at Walmart. They will be doing away with their fabrics as they remodel the stores (the one I was at is slated for January). Anyway, low and behold they had a couple of border fabrics, the type needed for Border piecing and Soft- Edge work. I’m not talking about the border of the quilt here; I’m talking about fabric that repeats the print as if it were a border in somewhat a linear manner. Here is a link to her (Jenny’s) site that shows the type of fabric I mean:

http://www.jinnybeyer.com/fabrics/collection_viewer.cfm?collection_name=All%20Border s&style_numbers=borders


The price was right and I just couldn’t help myself. Yes, you all warned me this would happen so I don’t want to hear any “I told you so” from you.

So here I sit with a two projects in motion and another planned and I’m playing with the notion of trying at least the Border piecing, which she explains in the book as well, if not trying my hand at Soft-Edge.

What scares me is, though I’ve done some appliqué with the Hawaiian pillow quilt that I did, the Soft- Edge work requires a lot of it, and with small pieces. She’s calling for an eighth inch turn allowance, but I just can’t see myself (or trust that I can) do it consistently.

My question is this: How can you insure a consistently small turn without fraying of the bias? I’m thinking I bit off a bit more than I can chew this time, but still want to give it a shot. Anyone familiar with the techniques or could give me advice on this?
:roll:

Steve,

Whenever I'm doing applique that will require me to snip the turn-under allowance closer that 3/16" I trim as I go. I only trim about an inch at a time and once I've got that nearly turned, I trim another inch, and so on. You can trim to your normal ¼" to begin with, or even larger, and then trim to the tinier allowance later, as you work it.

I saw her soft edge applique on Simply Quilts many years ago. She's really come up with some incredible ideas in her quilting career.

Steve, I was curious about this soft edge technique and found one of her patterns. This pattern shows leaving 1/8 - 1/4 inch around the applique to allow for the edges to be turned. Here is the link that I referred to:

http://www.jinnybeyer.com/ax_commerce/shp_detail.cfm?productID=0008906D-5654-1269-A60300017F005857&category=00011E82-4E9D-1269-A60300017F005857

This is a very interesting applique design, thanks for sharing! :D

Man o man, you bite off the biggest 'chunks' I've ever seen anyone do. BUT I love that you are, everything else you do will "seam" easy!

Keep it up, Steve, I so enjoy your work!!

Happy Quilting,
Sharon

The only trouble with her soft edge patterns comes in attaining the fabrics. I can't imagine having to order up special fabrics to complete on of them. Hopefully I'll be able to apply some of the techniques from the book in order to create my own block.

I really need to look at the pattern in detail and see if it is possible to do approximate work with other border fabric. Sew much to learn! :D

ok ......border fabric is stripes........is she running it straight or chopping it up ? I have some but haven't used it. I put some in a flying geese quilt...it was purple with the striped fabric in vertical rows between each vertical row of geese.I saw a "weave quilt where it is chopped and squares are up and down and the next side ways ="="=" something like that :roll: is it for borders then? :wink:

Ruth, check out the link in my post above yours, it is one of her patterns :D