Applique quilts and guitars are two of my favorite things so I’ve created a really
cool pattern, put it all together for you.
I’m going to teach you how to do it.
We’re going to focus on some really cool ironing techniques today.
Let’s get started.
My quilting journey began as an applique artist.
And early on I learned how to manipulate photos in my computer to create really cool applique
patterns.
Check out the quilt behind me here.
What you’re seeing is actually three very famous guitars, two of which were hanging
in my studio when I took the picture.
Well they’re all hanging in the studio.
But the Fender Stratocaster was borrowed.
We’ve got a Martin acoustic.
We’ve got a Les Paul and a Fender.
Three of my very favorite guitars.
And what I did is I took a photograph and then I broke it down into a pattern.
And actually you can purchase the pattern today.
There’s a kit available.
But what I want to focus on in the tutorial today is a lot of the ironing and cutting
techniques for success because after years and years of doing applique quilts I’ve
learned that what we do early can really affect our machine quilting later on.
And so let’s really focus on that today together.
The fabrics are beautiful batiks from Robert Kaufman.
And a lot of us love using batik when we’re doing applique projects.
Batik is a very dense thread count.
So when you’ve been cutting this you don’t see any raw edge or very, very little fraying
along the edge.
And we use that on purpose often in applique quilts because it is raw edge and will keep
our quilt looking sharp and fresh for years and years to come.
So batiks are fantastic.
And I chose a grouping of batiks that were actually all the same style of batiks so no
print in these.
So I could just use it for creating color value throughout the quilt itself, ok?
So you’ll trace all of your pieces you have from the pattern onto a fusible web.
And I prefer a paper backed.
But in this project I’m using Heat N Bond featherlite specifically.
The featherlite has a very nice, you can see the sheen, lightweight but entire the process
of glue across there, right?
And what’s going to happen is I’m going to layer several, three, four or five layers
sometimes in the quilt behind me to build up the shapes.
So the lighter weight the fusible the easier it is to quilt through later on.
That’s one of the things I really want you to hear today, ok?
Now the other thing I want you to notice is I’ve traced all of the shapes, and I’ve
tried to keep like color five together, so that I can go ahead and put on the back side.
Paper up is where we trace.
Paper up on the back side of our fabrics before we begin pressing.
And make sure you follow the manufacturer’s instructions for pressing if you are not using
the featherlite.
If you’re using the featherlite I can tell you it’s three seconds, dry iron and it
works beautifully.
Now I”m going to start to slide this over for just a second so you can see what’s
happened here in the quilt.
What I’ve already done for us is I’ve cut our background fabric.
The background fabric in this project was 35 by 44 inches.
But what I really want you to know is most applique quilts when we build them the size
of the background is really important because like you’ll see on my project here.
My fabrics run all the way to the edges and that helps me get things into position.
So were I to have cut my fabric background too big things wouldn’t lay where they belong.
Like the edges of my wall mount there, ok?
So that’s something we want to always consider.
Then the next thing I’ve done, and if you’ve ever taken my workshops in person, again thank
you for that.
Or if you’ve taken some of my other video workshops you know that when I always strongly
recommended that we never press anything for the final anchoring until all of the design
is done.
But what you’re looking at here today is the big pieces only right now.
We’ve got a lot of small pieces to add the character or the frets and the markers and
all of that into the neck, the hardware up around on the wall.
So what I’ve really done is I’ve used my little shark rotary cutter to cut out all
of the big pieces and start to position.
Now all of this stuff is loose so that I can manipulate it with either a stiletto by coming
underneath and moving things around.
I also like to use tweezers so that I can line things up.
And I will be able to manipulate this as I’m pressing it.
So like I said, normally we don’t press anything until it’s all done.
But for today what I’ve got here is I’ve got a hot, dry iron and I’ll be pressing
and lifting, pressing and lifting, pressing and lifting.
I do not want to slide my iron at all because that could cause some of the applique shapes
to move or bend and we don’t want that to happen.
I’m going to point out something real quick, that I should have mentioned a moment ago.
I am working from the map in the pattern.
And all of these pieces are numbered out as you see here.
So look closely, the hardware that mounts the guitars to the wall themselves are not
in the quilt in front of me right now.
So I haven’t put those into position because I want to get them just right.
But I want to anchor the necks down.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to take this hot iron.
And I’m going to come up here and I’m making sure everything is laying the way I
want and I’m going to press on the head.
And it’s just a few seconds.
And I’m kind of going down the line.
But then now I also know that in this area at the wall here I want to be able to add
in so I’m going to do a quick tap to warm the cream color to the brown.
But I am not anchoring it all the way down so I can slip applique pieces in underneath
if I need.
And now you see that I’m actually pressing the background, that was a piece of wood on
the wall that the mounting hardware is mounted to.
So what I’m doing is I’m anchoring most of the applique so that I can come around
later on and work around it and not move things.
Ok.
And I’m going to finish this out in a second.
But I want to point out if you’re following the actual pattern itself, a couple of the
key elements that will really help you get things into position.
So I mentioned earlier, I’ve got my cord wrapped around here for hanging it on the
wall.
So I mentioned a little earlier that I had left cut out pieces.
So on the wall here there was a notch shape.
I hope you can see that ok.
So I knew right where to position the piece of wood that will hold the mounting hardware.
The pieces that create the shadow for the side wall and the ceiling are laid into place.
This is not a seam.
These are actually applique pieces.
And along here there’s actually a cut out below here for where the first guitar lays
in.
So I started with the acoustic guitar, then I moved to the guitar in the middle, the actual
Stratocaster, ok?
And then I finished over here with the Les Paul style guitar because there were cutouts
to align each of the bodies, ok?
One of the things I really want you to look at is there’s this cool shadow piece that
comes down and the notch here brings together where the neck fits onto the Stratocaster.
So I’ve got a lot of little pieces that are in the pattern that will give you ideas
of where to position everything.
And then as you’re working down the neck you want to make sure that everything is lining
up as needed.
So now that’s why I’ve double checked and I’m not just pressing and lifting, not
sliding.
Pressing and lifting.
So let me spend a few more minutes and get all of this anchored down and show you how
to get those last small pieces in.
I’ll be right back.
Welcome back, all of the big pieces have now been tacked down to the background and we’re
ready to start handling the small pieces.
And there’s one of two ways to really address this.
You can work by color family.
Cut out all your small pieces as you go.
And I did leave them all connected so they’d be easier to keep track of until I was ready
for them.
Look I’ve got all these teeny small little pieces like right up here as well.
So they’re all still connected, the pieces I need.
So we can, a couple of things.
Come in here and one of the easiest ways to cut this is using the shark applicutter because
I can start right in the middle.
And this is meant to be held like a pen.
And I can come up and I can rotate.
But I’ve also learned that if I rotate the fabric actually while I cut life can be much
easier.
Make sure you don’t have any of your extra pieces below you while you’re cutting.
You don’t want to accidentally cut into something.
So then what you do is you take the piece here, this is piece number nine, one.
And then I’ll find it around in here.
I happen to know that it goes up in the top of the Les Paul style guitar.
You need to peel the paper off the back.
And if that ever doesn’t peel for you real easily, you could take a straight pin and
score it and that helps.
This came off real nice for me.
So then what I do is I’m going to come in an position this where this is going to go.
And then I want to show you a couple of other quick cutting techniques.
And then I’ll show you how to press these down with a mini iron.
These frets look a little bit daunting but I want you to try to use your shark cutter
for this as well because you get such a nice clean line.
So the way I do this is I kind of come in with this curved angle and run the straight
line and then come back out with a curve this way.
But I’m not trying to go all the way around the curve.
I’m going to come now from the other side, curve, follow that line and then curve back
around.
And then it pops out and you can see it’s a very nice little cut.
Now most all of the frets and all the little markers are numbered sequentially in order
as you go along the body.
So that was piece number 26.
If you look close there’s like 25 down through 13 over to five here.
So piece 26 is going to be on one end of the fret board because it’s all sequential,
right?
So again I’m going to peel off the paper off the back of number 26.
And I just need to know if it’s going to go at the top or the bottom of the neck.
So I look down in here and I see that my piece 26 is down at the bottom of the neck on this
one.
So I’m going to position it over here on the guitar.
I am not going to press it down.
The distance between the frets is key to the way the guitars truly look authentically.
So we need to space them correctly.
So I want you to position the frets on the neck where you think they’re going to go
but we’re going to space them all before we hit them with our clover mini iron, right?
I also want to show you, I created a bunch of circles in this quilt.
And I really found it was fun and easy to also cut those with the shark.
But this is just a fun all over technique.
Now watch this.
I’m kind of moving my shark in a straight line.
And as I start to bring it in I’m now actually as I’m moving the shark forward I’m also
rolling the fabric with my left hand.
And I’m just kind of eyeballing to make sure I stay along that line.
Oh I might run out of cutting mat space here.
That’s ok, we can also finish the arc this way.
But now when I’m done, what a beautiful circle, right?
Didn’t that turn out cool?
So anyway you can use your shark applicutter for anything that you can use your shark applicutter
for.
But I guarantee you this ladies and gentlemen I was not able to cut those little pieces
with my shark.
So I love having these small little scissors handy too.
And just like anything I’m cutting from the back of the blade and I’m working my
way around the scissor as I go around these little circle pieces.
And I also found that those are pretty easy to cut squares first and then nibble them
down as little circles.
I do not want to cut these out because I want to put them in the guitar quilt as I work
and we’re going to talk about frets.
So let’s get back to that, right?
Now as we’re talking frets I have already positioned the frets here along the acoustic
guitar.
And what I was trying to point out earlier is the frets on guitars are wider up near
the top or the headstock of the guitar and narrower down near the body or the mouth of
the guitars, regardless of what kind of guitar it is.
So you’ll notice that my frets are further apart and narrower in different locations.
And they’re nice and symmetrical.
And because the guitars are hanging at a slight angle on the wall you’ll notice that they’re
also running at an angle that fits within the angles of everything else within the photograph.
I checked my pattern map to make sure everything was right where I wanted it, right?
And then I went back through here with this clover mini iron on high temperature.
And I’m going to individually set each one.
Still about that three seconds time.
And the reason I’m doing it this way is the clover mini iron directly puts heat in
the one location so I’m not overheating the rest of the applique.
One of the things that can make applique frustrating is if you overheat it, the pieces will start
to lift up later on before you get them machine quilted.
And if that happens it can be frustrating because then the pieces won’t stick.
If that happens to any of you what you can do to fix it however is use your lapel stick
right as you’re getting ready to machine quilt.
And just take that lapel stick, put it a little bit on the back of your piece that is not
behaving itself and you can stick it down.
Let it dry for a few minutes and then you can machine quilt right through it.
Now speaking of machine quilting, I also promised you a lot of information on that today.
And when I’m looking at a guitar quilt, excuse me I should say I’m looking at an
applique quilt like this what I really want to think about first is the rules of quilting.
And you know I’m not much of a rules guy but one of the rules I do really like in quilting,
I like to start in the middle of my quilt with my free motion machine quilting.
So what I did is, you come back to the quilt here on the wall with me.
I did start on the Stratocaster style guitar.
And in a lot of places I just used a cream color thread or a gray color thread that matched
most of this stuff here.
And you can see that I was working in the same location.
I was going around the little silver pieces in the pick ups and onto the screws that hold
down the pick up guards and all of these things.
All of this was really done in one structure and one strategy, right?
Now there’s a couple of other fun spots like along the neck of that acoustic, I had
a brown thread.
And I ran the brown thread up and then I very sneakily snuck along the mount on the wall.
So all of this area here was done with brown thread.
But I do think it’s important to not run lines that are not appropriate throughout
the project.
So I individually jumped onto the tuning pegs and I put the machine free motion quilting
on each tuning peg individually so that you didn’t see a bunch of lines that wouldn’t
be normally occurring in your artwork or on these guitars.
So I hope that makes a little bit of sense.
So you can quilt wherever you can hide the threads or you can cut thread and move, cut
thread and move.
Whatever works best for you.
And of course I’m using a sharps style needle.
It’s my favorite for quilting through these appliques because it’s got such an aggressive
tip.
And the sharps or also microtex is the other name you’ll find them under.
I like the size 80.
And for something like this polyester thread.
The polyester thread is much stronger, will help you if you’re having any issues where
you have a lot of fusible web that builds up.
And is fighting against you and as I say build up that’s my brain started to say, hey Rob
don’t forget to mention, if you do get a little bit of glue that builds up on the back
of your needle while you’re doing your free motion machine quilting, you can rub that
off with your fingers or a little bit of rubbing alcohol on a qtip will help.
But really the key is is that Heat N Bond featherlite.
That really is a fabulous fusible web when you’re doing lots and lots of layers.
So hopefully you learned a little bit about guitars.
Hopefully you learned a lot about ways to manage your applique, whether you’re following
our pattern or any other pattern that’s out there, these tips and tricks work all
the time.
And I hope you learned something new today.
I love creating these kinds of quilts and I tell you what, I need a little bit of inspiration
from all of you as I love it.
I want to hear the next art quilt that some of you are interested in seeing.
And I just might do it, next time here at Man Sewing.
Thanks for being a Man Sewing fan.
It’s great to have you out there encouraging me to create fantastic new content.
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