Oz Jelly Roll *top* finished

Oh yes, indeedy ... I have finished the Oz Jelly Roll top.  Just the top, mind you; it still needs to be quilted.  But now that this is done, I can return to the ever patient Jane Austen quilt. :-)

At first, I wasn't sure that the appliqued vines were going to work with the center part, but now that I've been working on it for a while, it's grown on me.

Because I had showed DD#2 Eleanor Burn's book "Magic Vine Quilt", she picked out some of those flowers to use on the vine.  I was shown a method for needleturn applique that works for me and now I am actually a *fan* ::gasp!:: of applique.  However, when I have a lot of individual items that need to be scattered all over, I don't like to applique them in place, for fear that where I have placed that item might not be the optimum spot.

To ensure that I can scatter and position stand-alone appliques "properly", I stole an item from my machine embroidery supplies ... water soluble stabilizer!  This particular stabilizer is a fibrous sort (Floriani's Wet-n-Gone) that looks very much like a light weight non-woven interfacing but it absolutely dissolves in water. 

For the first few flowers, I did my needleturn onto the water soluble stabilizer.  When the applique is actually stitching onto the base fabric and the quilt is laundered, the stabilizer will dissolve and all that will be left is my applique ... looking as though I had stitched it there originally. :-)   But when I pinned those flowers onto the Oz Jelly Roll top, the scale was *much too big*.  ::sigh::  These flowers won't be used here but will be repurposed in another project.

In this picture, you can see the water soluble stabilizer behind the flowers and my basting stitches that are holding the turned-under edge in place.  The basting stitches are removed when the flower is appliqued in place.

I needed smaller flowers.  I could have reduced the flower patterns but I wasn't too enthralled with the idea of doing them again on a smaller scale.  Then, I had a Light Bulb Moment™!  I could *cheat*!  Oh happy day!  :-)

In a  Broderie Perse sort of way, I fussy cut flowers from fabrics in my stash.  I could have some fabulous looking flowers with minimal effort! 

It also occurred to me that since many of the fussy cut flowers had regular edges/shapes, I could actually machine sew the right side of the flower to the stabilizer, slit the stabilizer and turn the flower right side out.  This would leave a faced edge for me to applique.  Since the stabilizer would dissolve in the wash, there wouldn't even be any extra bulk at the edge!  This turned out to be a very easy thing to do. 

The picture of the butterfly and pink rose (Mary Englbreit!) are examples of this.  Note: the poor little butterfly had his head cut off, so I'll probably hand embroider it back on. :-)

Other flowers had irregular edges or odd shapes that did not lend themselves nicely to being turned out.  For these flowers, I used my original technique of needleturning the fabric onto the stabilizer

You can see this in the red flower and the vertical orange flower stalk.







The pointy things at the edge of the sides are actually Prairie Points.  The blocks of this pattern have angular corners and I carried the shape into the borders.  

The purple/black point is part of the block itself. 

The gold point is part of the inner border and is pieced.  OMG .. that was pure torture!  To get the lines of the gold triangle to line up (more or less) exactly with the gold segments of the block was HORRIBLE. 

I had originally intended to piece the gray triangle also but the experience with the gold one had me change my mind completely.  I then realized .. duh ... that I could achieve the same effect with Prairie Points!  Geez, I wish I would have had that Brilliant Idea before I pieced the gold triangles!  Gold Prairie Points would have been *so* much easier and would have looked the same. 

The purple floral Prairie Point at the outer (left) edge will actually extend beyond the binding when the quilt is finished, is is shown.  Right now, I have it pinned that way.  :-)

I think I hear the Jane Austen quilt whispering to me ... "come back!  come back!"  :-)