Preparing the Fabric
You will need the following items to prepare your fabric:

*Needed if your design calls for small circles
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Prewash your fabrics.Place freezer paper template, shiny side down, on the wrong side of the fabric. If using directional fabric, take care to position template correctly.Iron template onto fabric.Rough cut around template to make trimming easier.If you will be fussy-cutting any pieces, you can use your light box to correctly position your template over the desired design.Leave about 1" between template pieces so you will have plenty of room when trimming.Using sharp scissors, trim the fabric to create a seam allowance. This seam allowance will be turned under. I usually trim mine around 1/4".Clip the curves to make turning edges easier. Small clips should be made almost to the edge of the freezer paper, but not quite up to the edge. Clip to about 1 or 2 threads away from the edge of the freezer paper.My work area consists of a paper plate. The glue may get on your work surface so if you use a table, be sure to cover it. I also keep a wet paper towel on hand to wipe off sticky fingers!Cover a small part of the exposed fabric with the glue. The colored glue stick will help you to see where you've applied it. Work with just a few inches at a time as the glue dries fairly quickly.Fold over the seam allowance and stick it to the freezer paper. Move onto the next section and repeat the process.Here is how the back side of one of my pieces looks.And here is the same piece right side up.You can see how some of the smaller pieces may look. Lots of curves means lots of clipping!And the same piece from the front.Here are my completed pieces ready to be attached to the background fabric.This design has small stems and berries. I will show you the techniques I use to make these as well.To make bias stems, cut a square of fabric on the straight of grain. Fold diagonally and press to mark the 45 degree line.Cut on the 45 degree line to expose the fabric's bias edge.Determine how small you would like your stems (I just eyeball it) and turn under a small area along the bias edge. Press.Turn this edge over again upon itself to create a bias strip. Press.Take the entire piece of fabric to the machine and use a long basting stitch to stitch down the strip. This stitching will be removed later. This can also be done by hand.Use sharp scissors to trim underneath the side of the bias strip, close to the stitching, so that the strip has two finished edges and the raw edge is not visible.For the berries, I use template plastic. This design has 21 berries, so I traced 21 small circles for templates.Cut out each circle template using non-sewing scissors.Cut a circle of fabric for each template leaving a seam allowance around the entire circle. Hand stich a running stitch all the way around the circle of fabric. When you get to the end, pull tight to gather. DO NOT CLIP THE TAILS YET!Spray some spray starch into the cap and get either a paint brush or cotton swab to apply it with. Heat the iron.Paint some spray starch onto the back of the piece -- where you gathered the stitches. Be sure to wet it to the edges.Press the starched side to dry it and make it stiff. Leave the tails out to use to pull off the piece if it happens to stick to the iron.Carefully remove the plastic templates and re-gather the stitches by pulling gently on the tails. Press it again from the front. Cut the tails off.
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