Applique Lit Up!

A quick high'light' on applique and how to create a textile lamp!

There are so many ways to applique a quilt block and just as many products to help you achieve this! Here we highlight one way to applique with some of our favorite products. Our simple FLOS lighting pattern is a great beginner pattern for everyone.

We love applique pins! These 3/4" extra sharp pins from Foxglove Cottage are perfectly tiny for any applique project. They are inexpensive and available for order online.

As we are now in France, the brand of spray starch I use has changed but they are mostly all the same. One of the best applique secrets is using freezer paper for the pattern template. This is also known as wax paper and is available at your local grocery or online in France. Making this lighting block is a great time to choose some really fun fabrics - for the lamp shade and base as well as the background - so dig out those cool textiles!!

Take your pattern and trace it onto freezer paper, cut it out, and iron the pieces onto the back of your fabrics wax side down. Your pattern pieces will stay attached to your fabric while you trim 1/4" around them, snip the edges and turn them under. To help keep your edge allowances to stay turned under we suggest to spray lightly with spray starch around the edges and then iron all the edges over the freezer paper.

You can then easily peel the wax paper template off - but save them they are reusable!! After you have all your applique pieces ready to go, secure them with applique pins to your background fabric! Using 100% cotton sewing thread use a blind stitch to applique your pieces.