The first one is the hardest ...

Last weekend, I worked all afternoon on stitching and stabilizing the applique flowers for the Morningstar Quilt.  From picking appropriate thread colors, to choosing a path around the objects, to 

The week before, I fused all the flower applique pieces to some black interfacing, and then cut around all the edges.  This helped to stabilize the pieces before I stitched the edges down.  Prior to that, they were glued (with a common school glue glue stick, like kids use) and fragile.

After some trial and error, I discovered that the tangarine / orange thread looked the nicest on the reds and purples  golds and oranges in the flowers.

I also learned that I needed to sew off the ends of the flower points.   If I tried to stop and pivot at those points, the point pulled up through the foot, and got crumbled up.  If I sewed off the edge, it stayed flat.  I was using the free-motion foot, but perhaps I could have chosen the foot with only a hole for the needle to pass through?

The non-stick oven sheet was very helpful for allowing the piece to slide around under the needle, and not get hung up in the uneven sewing table,

I also got one of the triangle pieces worked up, with all the vines and flowers glued / fused in place.   I cut some steam-a-seam into strips and pieced it around all those curves for the vines.     I still need to stitch it down.  Still thinking about what to use for stabilizer?  I want this to puff up a little like Trapunto, so maybe a piece of batting?  Or perhaps I should save that for the quilting stage?  Only 3 more triangles and 4 larger square corner pieces to go ...

There are so many things you need to know to make a quilt like this -- things that are not explained in the pattern.  Good thing I've been quilting for the last 15 years, and learned a lot of techniques through the years.  It all helps!

All that work -- and somewhere along the way, one of the smaller flowers got lost.  Can't find it anywhere --  Do I make a new one, and backtrack to do the threadwork again, or do I just wait it out, and see if it re-appears?

All that work today, and it feel like I didn't really get anything done.  I was sewing all afternoon, but don't feel like I have anything to show for it.  That's how I've felt the whole time working on these applique pieces.  This is the bottleneck stage of the project.  The putsy stuff.