Little House Playmat Sew Along - Week Two

WEEK TWO – PERPARATION OF APPLIQUE DECORATION OF FRONT AND INSIDE DOOR PANELS

You will need:

• Fusible web “Bondaweb” or “WonderUnder” – approximately 1 metre.
• Medium iron-on interfacing – approximately 1 metre.
• Scraps of fabric for door, curtains, boxes in the roof  and other decorative appliqués in a variety of colours. The largest size piece will be for the appliqué door which is 17cm x 25cm.
• 3 x grey fabric pieces 20cm x 16cm
• 12mm bias binding in white for the sash windows – approximately 5 metres
• 25mm bias binding white for the sash windows – approximately 6 metres
• 12mm bias binding for the door appliqué in a colour of your choice – approximately 2 metres
• 12mm bias binding in brown for the beams in roof – approximately 1 metre
• 25mm bias binding in brown for the inside door – approximately 1 metre
• 25mm bias binding in beige for the boxes in the roof – approximately 2 metres
• (You will also need the fabric scraps that you saved from cutting your house panel pieces last week)
• And a removable (either wash or fade away) fabric marker would also be very useful if you have one.

This week we begin the appliqué decoration of  your playmat – eventually you will be appliquéing onto both the inside and outside door panels separately and the roof part of the house panel.

Inside Window Pocket Appliques

You will need your two edges of sky print that you cut from your house panel in week one.

Cut both of these sky pieces into thirds as shown in Picture one below, making 6 sky pieces in total. (Each piece should have a long length of approx 20cm)

Picture One

Now take one of these 20cm pieces and cut the 20cm length into two pieces of 10cm. Then trim  the width of these pieces to 8cm – making two pieces of 10cm x 8cm.  As you are trimming to 8cm wide try and avoid any bits of print with chimneys or selvedge in your cut pieces and remember your birds should be flying the right way up! (Four of these 8cm x 10cm pieces are shown in Picture two).

Picture Two

Keep cutting until you have 12 sky pieces of 8cm x 10cm in total. These will make your inside window pockets. You may want to lay these out in set of four as shown in Picture two to get some idea of how your windows will look.

To begin making your window pockets use 12mm white bias binding to join two pieces down the 10cm length. As shown in picture three.  Place the two sky pieces next to each other on your cutting surface so that the 10cm edges butt up against each other. The bias binding is then placed ontop to cover the raw edges and top stitched on to join the two pieces of sky fabric. When top stitching, stitch approximately 2mm from the folded edge of the bias, firstly on one edge of the bias and then on the other. (Also see Diagram One below)  You will now have the two sky pieces joined by a bias strip as shown in Picture three.  Repeat this process with all of your sky pieces making six joined sky pieces.

Picture Three

Of your six joined sky pieces three will form tops of your window pockets and three will form the bottoms of your window pockets.

Top of the window pockets

Take one of your joined sky pieces and using 25mm white bias bind the top and bottom edge of this joined sky piece. This time you will be folding the bias over the raw edges and stitching on it on working again approximately 2mm from the edge – this time only stitch the edge of the bias closest to the centre of the window piece - see picture four below.

Picture Four

Then trim the edges of the bias to be flush with the edges of your fabric and bind the 8cm edges  of your sky fabric in the same way – this time remembering to fold over the raw edge of your bias binding at each end to create a neat finish. Again only sew the edge closest to the centre of your work - See Picture Five.

Picture Five

Repeat these processes to make a total of three top window pocket pieces.

Bottom Window pockets

The process for the bottom of the window pocket piece is very similar to the top window pocket piece but has a lining.

Take one of the joined sky pieces put aside for the bottom window pockets and use this as a guide to cut three pieces of pocket lining from the fabric you saved when cutting out the inside door panels in week one - See Picture Six.

Picture Six

Lay the joined sky piece on top of the lining piece with the wrong sides facing and bind the top edge with 25mm bias binding as you did for the top window pocket pieces as before . See Pictures seven and eight.

Picture Seven

Picture Eight

Now bind the bottom edge and the two side edges in exactly the same manner as you did for the top of your window pockets. Repeat these processes to create three “bottoms of window pockets". These will be sewn to the inside of your door panels next week.

Outside window appliques

Cut 3 pieces of grey fabric 20cm x 16cm.

Choose fabric from your scraps to make your curtains. An easy way to do this is to firstly cut another 20cm x 16cm piece from your scraps and iron on bondaweb to the reverse side leaving the paper on for the moment.  Then fold this piece into four and cut a curved line as shown in diagram two – this will give you two mirror image curtain pieces.

Now remove the bondaweb’s paper backing from both curtain pieces and iron onto the grey fabric as shown in picture nine, below.

Next sew on two pieces of 12mm white bias binding in a criss cross fashion across the centre of your window to create a window pane effect. (Stitch 2mm from each edge of the bias binding when doing this.) Again see Picture Nine. Repeat these process to create three  outside windows.

Picture Nine

Now all your outside and inside window components are complete. Well done!

NEXT WEEK – We will be stitching some more appliqué decorations and attaching them to your inside and outside of your door panels. The materials list at the beginning of this entry still stand for week 3, keep hold of all the bits you have and haven't used and we'll see you next week for part three!

♥