Rin Along ++ Folding Tips

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the Rin Along co-hosted by Cindy and myself for the modern applique pattern Rin by Carolyn Friedlander.

Most Wednesdays during the quilt along, Cindy and I will be alternating between showing progress and giving some tips.  Today, I will be sharing some tips and you can hop over Cindy's blog to see how she is progressing in her blocks.

My tips for today focus mostly on the folding of the folding the applique and background fabrics.

1. Practice folding with paper first - The blocks are quite large and use a good amount of fabric so I suggest that you test out your folding technique first using paper.  I used a square of wrapping paper and was glad I did so because the first 2 times I tried to fold the paper, I wound up with 2 halves of a ring because I did not fold correctly.

2.  Step 3 - The step of folding that I got wrong (and from talking with some of the quilt along participants, it has stumped a number of you too) was Step 3.  When folding in step 3, make sure that the corner you are folding has a fold in it (versus the other corner which has two loose pieces).

3.  Placing the Rin Template - Make sure that once your fabric is folded you place the Rin template on the folded fabric such that the edges of the template are right on the edges of the folded fabric.  This will make for smoother curves in the applique piece.

4.  "Fixing" the applique pieces - As hard as I tried to get each fold correct and pressed well, when you are cutting through so many layers, things might shift a little.  In my case, some of the scallops on one of the rings were not as deep as others.  I simply did a little trimming on those scallops to make all of the scallops a little more uniform.

5.  Carolyn's Creativebug Class - For those that are new to needle turn applique like me, I am going to pass on a great tip that Cindy gave me.

Carolyn Friedlander has a number of video classes on Creativebug that go very detailed into the entire needle turned applique process.  It really helped me to see in a video how Carolyn pinned the applique and how she handled appliqueing curves and points. Creativebug has a free 2 week trial so you can view the class and test out Creativebug. (Disclosure - I am in no way affiliated with Creativebug and receive absolutely no compensation whatsoever from this mention.  I just found the video class helpful so I wanted to share.)

I am enjoying seeing all of the Rin progress on Instagram #RinAlong, make sure to share yours 😃