Applique Lessons with Madeleine

Yesterday was an awesome day. I got to learn to applique from my cousin's quilting mentor. As I've mentioned before, any time I quilt with Marsh, I inevitably hear the name Madeleine mentioned at least twice. Well yesterday I finally got to work with Madeleine herself, who had driven out from Colorado.
We began with freezer paper applique, and did the blind stitching with clear thread to give it a hand quilted appearance. It had a lot of steps, but the results were beautiful. I'm going back over today so I'll bring photos.After we finished our freezer paper design, we ran off to A Time to Sew quilt shop in Laguna Hills/Mission Viejo. We picked up a few fabrics (of course) and supplies for my sewing kit, including fusible web materials for our second kind of applique.We made aspen leaves using the fusible web technique, then did silk stitching around the edges. Beautiful!! I loved the way they turned out, my first few silk stitched leaves were pretty shaky, but then we grabbed some stabilizing paper that tore away when finished, and boy did that help!We did some free-hand quilting on the aspen leaves to give them stems and secure them to the old piece of polyester batting lying around in Marsh's spare stash. That was exciting, and sure not as easy as it looked when she did it.Last we set my walking foot up and attempted to stitch in the ditch on my terrible first block from the no longer clueless quilting class I took at Material Possessions. Working with that block made me realize how far I've come in a month, I guess I should keep it for posterity.I gave Madeleine her rite of passage to California, an In N Out burger, then dropped her off at my Aunt's home in Orange where she's staying during her visit. In a few moments I'll be going back over to the quilting studio to practice both methods again so I don't forget the processes!