Applique: Why I love to hate it

In June I'll be taking a class with the last vestiges of my list of great quilters. Back when I started to quilt there were big names galore and I followed and took classes with them all. Jeana Kimball, Jane Hall, Fons and Porter, Alex Anderson, Karen Stone, Carol Doak, Ami Simms... yup I was a quilt teacher groupie. I was lucky that I could knock many names off of 'the list' every time I went to Vermont for the quilt festival. I would head up to the festival every year for 3 days full of classes. I even traveled to Houston from New Hampshire and took a few classes there as well. One teacher just kept escaping my grasp... Hariett Hargrave.

She was known to me as the queen of machine quilting and then I realized she also was the bomb at machine applique, both things I desperately wanted to learn. Unfortunately I never had a chance to coincide with a venue that she was teaching and so many years past and I gave up learning from her, teaching myself in a rough shot manner.

Well, the first weekend in June I'm headed for a quilt retreat with my quilty daughter to take a machine quilting class with Ms Hargrave. Yup. I wore her down!

Here is the thing... among the supply list is a 12" - 14" applique block. hmm.. that was a class I wanted to take with HER!

I love applique. Have a mentioned it? No? Well I do. I hate making it though. It's not so much the work in preparing the pieces (although I hate that too) but it's that I don't want to do it by hand. I want it to look like I made it by hand, but I want to make it on the machine. Do you do this? Can you give me some tips? Can you share the secret? Is there a secret?

I have resorted to fusible raw edge applique and have done the zig zag thing when push comes to shove, but I want to know how to do Mock Hand Applique!!

Anyway, here is what I have done up to now...

This is using some stitch that looks like what the books say to use.

I have used freezer paper to cut and mold the pieces. Used washable glue to get the edges to turn over and stay put. My dilemma usually pops up when I have to remove the paper. How do you do that without messing up the seams? I hear you cut a slit in the back and give it a good yank... the fabric is glued to this paper and the stitches have gone through the paper... how are you suppose to yank without pulling the stitches?

This is what the piece is suppose to look like: (do you see the half square triangles on the left from my two piece puzzle quilt that has been put on hold until I get this done?)

It's the center of a quilt I dream to make sometime when all these other wonderful quilts stop getting in the way!

That is my rant for the day.