Dear Jane B-7 World Series - progress photo

This is my favorite Dear Jane block so far.  I just love the red batik and I was very pleased with my diamonds and melons.  (I can see that I still need to rub on the muslin to get rid of the pinholes.)  I used typical prepared applique for the diamonds.  This time I drew the pattern on the back of the diamonds so I could check to see if I had ironed the crease in exactly the right spot.  I think that helped with accuracy.  

For the melons I sewed two pieces of muslin together on the pattern line, slashed one melon, then turned them inside out, smoothed them, then sewed them down.  I'll have to remember that this procedure makes the melons a bit large and shrink the pattern piece accordingly.

I get the best placement results by far when I baste down the pattern with the applique pieces cut out.  It's hard to go wrong with applique placement when you do this.  I then baste the folds down on the muslin so they don't get distorted (diamonds only), and then baste the diamonds and the melons to the batik with the paper in place.  All I have to do then is take off the paper and sew the muslin to the batik.  It's a little extra trouble to do all that basting, but it makes all the rest of the work so much easier.

This is definitely my favorite red batik, though I have several that I really like.  Some of them are really wild; they run the gamut from hot pink to red orange.  This will not be a dull Dear Jane.