New Fat Quarter Shop Tutorials, Featuring Jillily Studios

In March, Jill Finley of Jillily Studio dropped by for a few days of filming with Kimberly. We were so happy she could come, because she tackled one of our biggest quilting fears: "appliqué". *dun dun DUUUUUNNNN!*

During this appliqué crash course, we filmed a total of 12 videos with her and she held our hand through the whole ordeal. Appliqué is no longer the "A" word for us! Jill did a wonderful job of breaking the process down for us.

First, you'll need to know how to use your pattern to create appliqué templates.

Once the appliqué templates are ready, she dove into getting the fabric appliqué pieces cut, placed and ready to baste.

Then she went over the two ways you can attach appliqué --

By machine (our preference!) using Aurifil monofilament thread...





And (for gutsier quilters with more patience than we have) how to finish appliqué by hand!

Of course, we had her present her Jillilly Studio Appli-Glue and why it's so perfect for appliqué. It is really a fabulous product because it's archival quality, so you don't have to worry about it harming your fabrics over time, you can apply it as precisely as you need, and it washes right out!

We also asked her to pretty please show us her Aurifil Everyday Colors Thread Boxes, and she just dropped a delicious bomb of thread information on us. If you ever wondered what the thread weight on a package means, or what the benefits of 2-ply thread are, watch!

 

Plus, she had a plethora of other helpful tips to share. Some of my favorites were how to protect your ironing board, how to use her cute Poke-A-Dots sticky thimbles, and how to sew ric rac. But this one was like a magic trick -- how to make amazing shapes with bias tape for appliqué!

Let us know what you think of our videos with Jill Finley -- do you find them helpful? Anything we could have covered more? And how cute is Jill from a scale of cute to REALLY cute?