Applique pieces

I've been working on an applique quilt this week. Below was my starting palette:

The fabric were my final choices, including the pale creamy pink batik for the background. The white and the basket-weave both came from my scraps box and the red was from my stash, but the greens and background were bought for this quilt. I have loads of greens, but most in relatively small quantities. Of the threads shown, I'll end up using 12 - plus another three I'd forgotten to get out to start with.

These strips are all straight pieces, cut on the bias. I started with a large rectangle cut at a 45-degree angle, fused it to Lite Steam-a-seam2, trimmed the edges, then cut the narrow strips with the rotary cutter and ruler. I pulled them into shape as I placed them on the background fabric. This works well for gentle curves - it's economical on the amount of fabric used (though you may need a little more to start with) and a lot faster and easier to cut than lots of odd curved pieces, and it allows you to adjust the curvature as you go. I fused these in several batches; they held reasonably with finger-pressing, but being under tension from the curves as well means they don't hold as well as usual before being permanently fused with the iron. So I positioned and finger-pressed as I went until I noticed any starting to loosen, then used the tip/edge of the iron to hold them more permanently until I steam-pressed the whole lot as usual.