Introducing raw edge applique with the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 machine

If you’ve been following my QUILTsocial blog posts for the past few months, you’ll know I’ve been using my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 sewing and quilting machine to make projects that use up some of my scraps and leftovers from other projects.

I’ll be continuing that theme this week as well as exploring a new technique – raw edge applique!

I was introduced to this technique after I joined a Facebook group called Going Round in Circles. This group was started by Herma de Ruiter from the Netherlands and as Herma explained it, “Going Round in Circles didn’t start as a project. It was a way of staying sane in an insane world, of getting at least a small piece of stitching done every day.”

I made several of these hand-stitched blocks, using up lots of scraps along the way, and finally made this wall quilt.

I also made this little, hand-stitched house quilt.

I soon realized I could use this same piecing technique on my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 machine and my never-ending supply of scraps to create some new projects. I had lots of strips, squares and half-square triangles leftover from my African Safari quilt. These would be perfect to make some little house quilts!

I gathered up my squares and half-square triangles, along with some pieced strips leftover from another project.

Here are the steps I followed to make this little quilt:

1. Give the pieces a quick spritz with Mary Ellen’s Best Press and then iron them. This product gives added body to the fabric and makes it so much easier to handle for this technique.

2. Sew strips of pieced squares together to make the background for the house.

3. This was a good opportunity to use the ¼” Piecing Foot with guide on my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 so my seam would stay straight. There’s also a ¼” Foot with no guide if you prefer.

4. Using a removable fabric marker, draw the outer finished edge of the block. Mine is 8″.

5. Trim extra background fabric if necessary, but make sure to leave 1″ extra along each side.

6. Layer backing, batting and pieced background.

7. Arrange the house shapes on the pieced background.

8. Pin or baste the layers together.

The Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 machine will do a great job of quilting this piece, because of the MuVit digital dual feed walking foot. There are five different presser feet for the dual feed foot. I used the open toe foot for this project so I could see exactly where to stitch. Have a look at this MuVit foot video if you haven’t seen the MuVit foot in action yet.

9. With the MuVit digital dual feed foot is attached, I’m ready to start stitching. I wasn’t trying to cover the edges of the house fabrics with stitching, so I chose one of my favorite straight stitches – the hand-look quilting stitch (Q-04) on the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 There are many other stitches that would work well too. If you choose a stitch that isn’t compatible with the walking foot, that stitch will be greyed out on the LED screen.

10. Once the applique shape was stitched in place, I did some simple, straight-line quilting in the background. I used a regular straight stitch and lengthened it slightly.

11. Square up the little quilt, using an Olfa square ruler with a non-slip finish. Leave about ¾” – 1″ beyond the line you drew to mark the edges of the quilt.

12.Using your drawn line as a guide, fold the excess fabric to the back, making a double fold. This is kind of a faux binding!

13. Stitch the faux binding down by hand on the back of the quilt.

14. For an attractive finish on the front, top stitch all around the edge, about ½” from the finished edge. Again, I used the hand-look quilting stitch (Q-04) on my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050

And here’s my little house quilt all finished!

Please join me again tomorrow on QUILTsocial when I’ll use my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 sewing and quilting machine to make a larger raw edge appliqued house quilt.

This is part 1 of 5 in this series

Go to part 2: Easy quilting using the MuVit Open-Toe Dual-Feed Foot