Preparing your Wool Background

Hey everyone, it's Lisa from Primitive Gatherings, and today I am in the beginning stages of designing a brand new wool mat. I would really love to share with you how I prepare my wool backgrounds. So let's get started. Now this project has a scalloped edge, and to get that we need to trace that onto fusible web. Now I would take my fusible web and my template. So this is a really rough draft of a template. Your pattern will not look this messy. Like I said, we're in the beginning stages of a brand new design. And we give you a quarter of the design. Now this mat is big. It's probably 22 inches, so we would need an extra wide fusible web. Now let me talk about fusible webs for just one minute. Okay, in my opinion, there is not one perfect fusible web. So therefore, I use a couple different ones to achieve different results that I'm looking for. So set those aside. For the background piece, a lot of fusibles don't come this wide. So the fusible web that I typically use for the to adhere the backing onto my mat is the Steam Seam 2 Lite. It comes 24 inches wide. And then I really like to use another different fusible for the applique shapes, and that is Heat N Bond Feather Lite. This fusible web is very lightweight, and it doesn't have the tackiness that the Steam Seam 2 Lite has. So basically, I use this one for appliques, this one for background, and for stems and vines. So those are the two of my favorite fusible webs. So now it's time to prepare your template. In your pattern, when you get it, you will either have to trace it or cut it out. Like I said earlier, we usually provide you with a quarter of the template. So if you can kind of see, I have put this red line in. That's the quarter. So when my graphic designer gets this, she's going to put that quarter markings in there for you to trace. Now what I did is I found the center of my fusible web, and this one has very faint yellow grid lines on it. And that is so you can use those lines to help you when you're tracing. So I would put the quarter of this right on that hash mark. So you can see it's right in the center here, and I've traced ahead so you don't have to watch me trace. So I trace with a marking pen the quarter, and then I'm going to move this quarter to the middle of that and trace again. So then there I trace here, and then you keep moving it four times around to get your perfect template shape. Then the next step you will trim the excess fusible web away. Now I really love to use this tiny OFA cutter. Better move my mat out of the way. All right, so you want to get nice and close, about an eighth inch away. And I typically do not go in and do all of this, but if you want to, you go right ahead. But I typically will just trim kind of straight. Now you see I'm not cutting out exactly. You always rough cut fusible web. And you could scissor cut this as well, but I think the rotary cutter is very fast and efficient. All right, so here we have everything trimmed up. Now the one thing I want to also do is do a little marking by, I call it like a registration mark. So all I did is put an A here because I am going to trim out this center because we do not need the fusible web throughout the whole project. We only need it on the outer edge like this. So to continue, I'm just going to put a B here and a B here. And you'll see this will all make sense later on when I show you that in a later step. Now I'm going to take my rotary cutter and I'm going to cut out about half to three quarters away from that drawn line. Alrighty, once you've gone all the way around, you might have to check a couple spots that are still attached. That's pretty normal. All right, now we're ready for the next step. Now that our fusible web is all cut, it's time to get your piece of wool. The first thing I always do is I always steam my wool nice and flat. And if you're looking for a great iron for wool applique, it's this Rowenta Steam Station. It's amazing. My favorite. I couldn't live without it. So I'm going to take this insert and lay it inside my wool piece here. And make sure it's centered so it's not too far to one end because this is going to go around the outer perimeter. The most important thing with the Steam Steam to light is to remove this backing paper off before you put it on. And I know a lot of people like to put it on and make sure it's right before they take it off, but it's really like a waste of time because you pretty much can move it. So make sure when you pull this off that the fusible web is on the side that the drawing is on. So the sticky side is here. This is just the waste paper. And pull this off nice and slow. Don't just pull it off very quickly because you could transfer some of that fusible web to this side. Make sure it's definitely on the side that has your drawn pattern on it. And in the years of using this, it has become quite sticky. I wish they would back that down just a little bit so hopefully they'll hear us and listen. All right, now here's my B. That's my registration mark. So I know that that came off of this side. And I'm just going to gently move it all the way around. The twists out. And the best thing about the Steam Steam to light is that it has that pre-stick. So it's not going to move now. So I then take the center out. Now this piece can be used for other... I'll use this for cutting stems for future projects. Like I said, I don't really use it for the appliques anymore because it's just a little hard to stitch through the tackiness of that fusible web. But on the edge here, by the time we get to stitch this edge, it's going to have lost some of that tackiness and it'll be much easier to stitch with. Stitch through, it'll be no problem. So now that I have this down, now it's time to hit it with the iron. But I do not use steam. Just when we're ironing on the paper, we do not use steam. And always keep the iron moving. Never hold it in one spot. And you will never scorch your wools. And I also believe that on the wool, you can't overheat the fusible webs that I use. So it doesn't matter if you hold it on for 30 seconds or a minute. As long as you keep that iron moving, everything is good. So don't read the directions on your fusible web because it's not there for wool applique. All right, so now I have this adhered nicely onto the wool. Okay, it's time to cut out the edge of our design. I would really love to share my favorite scissors, and that is the Dovo scissors. It's five inches. I really like it because it's nice and light, and I do a lot of cutting. So therefore, it's lightweight. The blades are super sharp and nice, fine to get into all the little wool applique that I cut out. Like all this little cutout work, it handles it no problem. So now you want to cut out on the line or cut out most of the line away. You want to always cut the line away and not outside the line because wool has a thickness, and it'll thicken up when you cut it out. It'll be just a little bit bigger. So I'm just going to continue to trim this on the line, and one of the things I would like to point out is while I'm cutting, I don't cut little choppy... I do nice, nice long strokes when I cut. All right, now do you see why we did not cut this on the line when we cut it on the fusible web? We needed a nice clean edge to cut away. Otherwise you'd be trying to cut wool without any paper on, and it's much easier to cut the paper than it is the wool. So now we are ready for our wool appliques, and we do not take this paper off the back because that stays on so we don't iron it to our ironing board while we're putting the appliques on. So our next step will be the appliques. So the steps I just showed you for preparing your scalloped edge will work for any of the Primitive Gatherings mats that I have, like all the designs, like the pumpkins and all the other different designs that we have. This is the same method you will use on each one of those mats. However, there are a lot of different ways to finish the edge of a mat, but the reason why I choose this method is, one, because I get this nice scalloped shape to then put the appliques on. It's already there for me. I'm not cutting it later on after the appliques are on. And this holds the homespun on, and it also gives a nice clean crisp edge to the homespun. We are going to fray check that homespun because it will be a raw edge, and then the thread going over the two edges, the wool and the homespun, will cover that, and it just makes a nice finish on the mats. So that's why I do this method, and it has worked for me for a long time, and everybody really loves this method.