Maybe I should call 2014 my Year of the Pillow. While I procrastinated on a “serious” project I turned out yet another pillow using a tutorial from Crazy Old Ladies on machine appliqueing the orange peel design.
I scaled my block down to 3 inches and designed a peel to fit that size. This method has you sew lightweight fusible interfacing to your fabric right sides together, then make a slit in the interfacing and turn the peel right side out. You need to finger press only at this stage.
Here are my peels turned and ready to arrange on the background fabric. One glitch with this method is that it was hard for me to get the end points sharp without tearing the interfacing. Perhaps a different interfacing might hold up better. Or the problem may have been that I scaled down the peel size too far.
At this point I decided to not bother cutting up the background fabric but just position the peels on a whole piece of fabric. This was a real time saver. Once I had everything positioned I ironed the peels down and machine quilted the edges. Then I added more stitching around the outside of the peels and stitched a grid.
I went with a button closure (finally used those buttons I bought at NQA in 2007) and a machine sewn edge binding. Yes, a corded edge is lovely, but I didn’t have any cording and wasn’t likely to find any at 10:30 at night.
The fabrics used are a mix from a Cloud 9 organic fat quarter bundle, Migratory Lace (one of my targets to use in 2014,) hand dyed solids, and a quarter yard cut no one else in my guild would touch. The yellow fabric I bought online, and was surprised it was so bright.
The Snarky Quilter 
Really really nice pillow!
Thanks. I think it would be terrific if I had your free motion skills to turn it into a work of art.
That’s really cute and reminds me that I still need to make pillows for my guest room!
Using a piece of whole cloth rather than individual blocks really speeds up the process.
Thanks for the link to the crazy old ladies. I bet they aren’t as old as I am! I feel sure this applique method could apply to many shapes and as I am itching to create something inspired by the many “modern” blogs I follow, I shall try it out asap. I’m not a blogger, just a hobby sewer, but, if you wouldn’t think it presumptuous, I’ll let you know how I get on.
You might want to run up samples using different kinds of one-sided fusible and nonfusible interfacing. If you use nonfusible you could hand sew your shapes down or pin them and machine sew around the edges. This technique is great for appliqued circles as you can get the edges really round. Do let me/us know your results.
I like it. I’ve used the method before, as you describe, of sewing lightweight fusible interfacing on and then turning. Yes, I think it works better on rounded edges than on points. But it’s a good tool for the kit, as sometimes it’s probably the exactly right thing to do. And for this type of project where the impact is in the color contrast, I think it worked very well.
Of course you can hand-applique or machine-applique at that point.
Would you use that method again?
I think I’d try out other types/weights of interfacing if/when I use this technique again. At least I’d subject my possible choices to a tearing test. The tearing at the points was really annoying. As I said, it may have been because I downsized the peel from 4.5 inches to 3 inches. I’ve used a similar technique with nonfusible interfacing for hexagons. Again, I positioned my shapes on a whole piece of cloth and machine stitched the pieces down. I seldom hand applique though I have done a small needle turn applique piece as evidence that I’ve at least tried the technique.