One in a Melon

 

I love appliqued quilts, when other people make them. Applique is really the only method that results in gracefully curved shapes like circles, ovals and flowing vines. In theory. But whenever I try my hand at applique, I’m disappointed. I expect the same kind of precision and perfection I strive for in my piecing, but my applique work usually produces sad, amorphous blobs. When the kit and pattern for this wall quilt arrived in the mail, I briefly considered making red and green log cabin blocks to suggest ripe watermelon slices, and skipping the flowers, vines and leaves altogether. I may still do that for a table topper sometime next month. I ended up following the original wall hanging pattern, almost. My vine has one loop instead of two, and two leaves instead of four. Instead of appliqueing eight impossibly small black watermelon seeds, I’ll stitch on little black watermelon seed buttons after this is quilted.