I made a rough measurement of the block to determine how large a flower I wanted, and came up with 11 1/2". I cut a piece of pattern cardboard (posterboard... if you don't keep it in your sewing room, you should) about that size.

 

I drew an "amorphous blob" pattern on the posterboard and cut it out.

 

I then got my red fabric and put my blob on it to trace. A little evidence of poor planning here... I barely, and I mean barely, got my blob out of the width of my red fabric. I traced it with white chalk pencil and cut it out.

I then repeated this process to make the salmon colored section of the flower.

 

 

Here I have laid the red on the top and the salmon on the red. I kind of moved them around till I liked the appearance.

 

Here both pieces have been laid on thin fusible interfacing. This is available at fabric and quilt shops in numerous thicknesses and types. You want a thin one, with fusible glue on only one side. the fusible glue is usually little hard beads, and can be felt quilt easily, so you can tell the fusible side from the non-fusible side. Here the fabic is laid on the fusible side... this is important. If you were using a print, you would have the print side toward the fusible side.

 

 

While I use a 1/4" piecing foot for piecing, for applique, I like the standard narrow Singer foot. That inside finger is 1/8" and makes a usable seam guide for this typle of appllique. Actually, I sometimes use a bit wider seam, so that the final stitchdown gets a better "bite", but I leave that up to you. I've done enough of this that I can reliably stitch very close to the edge. If you're nervous about that, give yourself a little wider seam.

 

 

Once you have stitched the fusible and the fabric together, trim the excess fusible off, then go around the piece and snip the edges all the way around. You are going to be turning this piece inside out, and you need these snips to relieve the pressure on the fabric so you can get flat seams. Otherwise, the curves will not work. The more curved the area you are snipping, the more snips you need. DO NOT SNIP THE SEAM! Snip only as close to the seam as you are comfortable. Go slowly and take your time.

 

Once you are snipped all the way around, cut a slit in the fusible and turn the piece inside out through that slit.

 

This is an important and higly technical tool... a piece of thin dowel rod with one end rounded with sand paper and the other sanded into a flattened chisel point. Use this to GENTLY smooth the material inside the turned piece.

 

 

Here is what you should end up with... a nice red piece and a nice salmon piece. Lay them flat and smooth them out as much as you can.

 

 

The principle of fusbile fabric is that heat from your iron melts the glue beads so that it adheres to whatever you iron it on to. You want to use a piece of "sacrificial cloth" between the fusible and the iron so that you do not get fusible glue on the bottom of your iron. Here I have put a piece of muslin over the red, after setting into the position I want it to be in on the block.

 

Here is the red part of the flower, fused into position.

 

Next you take the whole top over to the sewing machine and very, very carefully and slowly stitch down the fused piece. My "seam allowance" is usually 1/2 of the width of the 1/8" foot on the machine. I can treadle most of this, but when I get near a curve, I control the handwheel with my hand... one stitch at a time. Hand cranks are fantastic for this type of applique work. As you approach curves, relieve the pressure on the material. You don't usually need to actually raise the foot, but just bumping the foot raising lever with the back of your finger while you turn the material lets it turn smoothly.

 

The red has been fused and then stitched, and now the salmon has been fused to the red.

 

OK... You can mess up! Make really, really sure you know where the corners of the top are... and the sides! I got careless and had layers of fabric crawl under the work as I sewed. Obviously, I had to rip this out and do it over.c

 

After that error, I had to relieve some tension, so I went downstairs and shot some arrows... I'm doing better...

 

Okay... tension relieved and error recovered from... Here the two pieces are stitched down, but we still need a center.

 

The center is going to be another amorphous blob, but because it has to be smaller, and "tighter", I'm doing it as a double layer applique.

Here, I have cut a scrap of violet and laid it on a scrap of fusible. I will stitch the arc at the top, but not the sides, and then do the seam trim and snip thing and turn the piece inside out.

 

 

Okay... that piece is now laid onto a scrap of black and will be stitched down at the curved edge.

 

Here is a back view of the seam attaching the violet to the black.

 

Boy, real exacting science here... I scribbled a line with the chalk pencil to make a black amorphous blob, then stitched that.

 

Center "blob" sewn and trimmed, ready to be snipped and turned inside out. Note that the curved seam on the inside of the blob is actually the curved seam of the violet piece we just made. That seam does NOT go through to the other side of the black!

 

Okay, the final step is to snip a slit in the fusible on the back of this piece, turn it inside out, smooth it down, then position it on the flower, fuse it and stitch it.