BOMs Away - "Down the Rabbit Hole" in earnest, and an easy applique prepping tip

Welcome to the link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Where we share what we're doing on a BOM-type project 

so they don't stall out in UFO-land!

(Linky at the bottom.)

I made good headway on the catch-up work of this project.

First I finished all the leaves, got that first stop-border sewn on, trimmed out all the large areas of backgound behind the applique, and got my middle rabbit circle appliqued down:

That finishes all the Part 3 work.  :D

And then I got a huge chunk of Part 4 squared away:

All the rows of houses are sewn together, and I made the windows and rabbit applique that I wanted. They're all ready to be stitched down.

(Yes, if you're familiar with Sarah Fielke's project, I've done these with a different technique than her plan calls for. I pieced whole blocks for each house into a long line, pressed under the roof lines, and then appliqued the roofs onto the background fabric. I cut away the background behind the houses and pinned the rows onto fresh strips of blank newsprint paper for stabilizer when I stitch the windows down.)

Those windows are 1/2" squares. I had anticipated that they'd give me trouble and get all wiggly since they're a little bit small. But they were a SNAP!

Applique Prepping Tip for small squares:

The big secret for easy handling and nice, straight and even edges is a hefty dose of starch.

All I did was cut out 1" strips from some scraps of cloud sky fabric, then I starched and pressed those twice, so that they had a feel that was almost like a stiff paper. 

At that point, it was super easy to fold over 1/4" along each long edge and iron those down. There was no difficulty with wriggling thin strips or wavy edges as I pressed.

See how nice and straight it works up?  After that, I cut these strips into 1" segments. 

To turn those into the squares, I did not actually need my handy applique-pointer pressing tool, because the stiffness of the fabric let me finger-press the sides under to make the final square. I just gave those a last press with my little craft iron, and they were ready for a dot of glue and a push into place.

I'm a little tired of houses at the moment, so we'll just let this glue dry overnight and I'll start stitching windows down this week as I get free time.

~*~*~

But what about you?! Did you get some BOM work done recently?

Kate over at Katie Mae Quilts has joined me in hosting this meet-up,

and linking up from either end puts you on the party at both sides.