Basic Fusing II

Putting it all together.
Once I have all my design elements cut out and ready to assemble I will begin to fuse things in place.
Remember we put our background fabric that had fusible all over it on the back of the fabric back on a piece of release paper? Now since it is sitting on the paper I can fuse things to the front of it.
The first thing I do is to put three of the border strips on the edge. I use the pencil line that I first drew as my mark to line up the strips of fused fabric. I only want to add in the two sides and top because I will cover all the stems with the bottom strip when I am done arranging them.

Before I begin to put the design elements in place I can create nice curves on top of a piece of release paper right over my pattern. This way the curves have a memory to them so when I put them on the fabric and fuse them down it is very easy to do.

TIP- As I add in design elements I want to make sure I keep the bottom of my iron clean.
Before I fuse anything in place, I make sure that I like the arrangement and that I have room for everything. So I will place all of the green leaves down and fuse them before I fuse the rest of the vines on the sides.

I will then fuse everything EXCEPT the little details in the center of the big Star Lilies. I will machine quilt everything first and then add those in at the end so that I can very easily quilt around the shape of the Star Lily.
I like to stitch in the ditch right next to not on top of most of my designs like the stems and flowers. I like to do this in 30# rayon thread.
Once I have quilted all the design elements then I quilt the background. In the case of Star Lilies I stippled this with silk thread matching the background color.
After I have done all the back ground then I will do the border.

I did the border with the 30# rayon thread with a straight stitch just wiggling it as I stitched it.
Finally I squared up my quilt and added a sleeve to it and a fused binding.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on basic fusing. Please share it with a friend and think about having me come to your group to teach you even more fun fusing tips.