Goat Cay, Goop Craft

Greetings from the Berry Islands! We are anchored near a tiny island called Goat Cay (pronounced "key") and waiting for the wind to die down before we move again. Our next passage will be across very deep water, where high winds make big waves, so waiting is prudent. It's also too windy to sew out on deck, alas.

Sitting at anchor with no place to go ashore (the islands around us are all private) means plenty of time for relaxing and sewing. I've been working on a couple of scrappy projects, including my RSC2018 (Rainbow Scrap Challenge) blocks. March's color is bright green.



I've made four green string blocks,



and two green spiral blocks.



In addition, I've added to my clowder of rainbow crafted applique cats. These blocks are 12"x15" and use the RSC color as the background. Last month, I used 3.5" purple squares for the background, and this month I used 3.5" green strips. The cats are the opposite color on the color wheel and I am deliberately choosing the loudest, wildest fabrics I have in my stash. So flowered and fiesta-ed yellow cats on the purple.



And groovy pink and paisley red cats on the spring green. The colors are brighter than these photos show. I really like the swirly red fabric up close, but the hot pink floral looks better from a distance, I think.

A couple people asked me about my experience with the crafted applique, so here's a little bit of the process. I have a simple paper template of the cats that I just lay on the backside of the fabric. This big, easy shape is held in place with my hand, no pins or sticky stuff. If the shape was smaller, I'd probably use freezer paper ironed in place.

 

I lightly trace around the cat with a pencil.

Then I daub the magic Modge Podge goop* roughly on the pencil line using a foam brush. I would estimate that this is about a teaspoon of goop, total, spread over the perimeter of the cat. The book recommends putting plastic on your work space, but I just did it right on my cutting mat since the goop isn't very close to the edges of the fabric. It doesn't soak through to the front, either. It's also water soluble before it dries, so theoretically I could sponge off any spills.

*There are several formulas in the Crafted Applique book and I don't want to steal the author's intellectual property, so I'll use the term "goop." You should buy the book if you want to use this method. She does not show step by step photos of the gooping process, though, so I think I'm in the clear sharing this tutorial.

Then I spread the goop out thinner using the brush so that there were no thick spots that would dry as lumps. It's pretty easy to see the pencil through the goop. It doesn't need to cover the entire cat shape since its purpose is to seal the cut edges and hold them in place for applique. But it does need to cover the entire pencil line and about an inch inside, so I just roughly aimed for that. (The seam down the middle is just because I didn't have a big enough piece of the paisley fabric. Turns out that I should have moved the cat outline a bit left or right so the seam didn't end up right along the edge of the ear, but it worked out OK.)

After the goop dries in about 45 minutes, it is very clear and shiny. The pencil line is easy for me to see (although hard to photograph), and I cut right along it with my good scissors. It feels a bit tacky/rubbery but didn't leave any residue on the scissors. Now the edges of the cat are ready to be ironed onto the background, where they adhere quite nicely. I used a pressing cloth to protect the iron from any extra goop on the cut edges, although nothing stuck to the pressing cloth, so it probably wasn't necessary.

As the final step, I used my machine to straight stitch just inside the cat outline, a simple edge stitch next to the raw edge. Sorry no close up photo of this part! There was no shifting of the applique and the needle didn't get gummy or feel any different than going through 2-3 layers of fabric as normal. The goop is supposed to seal the edges so they don't fray. I won't know if that is true until I make enough cats to sew up a quilt. Stay tuned.