Making a Circle

Gathered Circle - Back View

Breaking out of squares and straight lines can be difficult but rewarding. Any unusual shape in quilting is usually applied with some form of applique, whether the stitching is decorative or hidden. In this instance I wanted a circle so that I could crop away all the unwanted background on my custom printed fabric.

1. Create a template using quilters template plastic. It is only a couple of dollars and I've made several projects now with the single sheet I bought to help me create a perfect shape. It is also transparant so that before you cut your material you can ensure that your shape is large enough to show the desired area.
   
2. Iron on interfacing cut to the size of the finished shape, then sew about 1/4-1/2" outside of your template with the longest stitch to gather. One this instance I made two gathering lines at 1/4" and 1/2"
   
3. Position your template plastic on the back of your fabric and carefully pull one of your threads to gather the fabric.
   
4. Carefully iron the edge of your shape, being carefull not to melt the plastic, then remove the plastic. The shape should hold while you ease out your template... give it another iron. I placed a tea towl over the front for final ironing so I could get some good heat through without worrying about damaging the fabric.

One more thing you may want to consider is whether you need interfacing. In this case I did use interfacing cut the size of my final shape. Sometimes it is not needed.

The fabric used here is the custom printed fat quarter as seen in this post.