Category: Applique Quilt

Isn’t it finished yet??

For all of you who have toiled thru the Monarch challenge quilt process…..THANK YOU!!!

When I left you yesterday, I only had a small piece of fabric and needed to make as many flowers as possible out of it…..

I pulled out my wonder-under and started carefully fusing it to various shaped pieces of fabric…..

When I had crammed as many flowers and buds in as possible, I had 18 new flowers and almost as many buds…..

I carefully cut them out…..

……not wanting to lose ANY of the fabric!!

There wasn’t much left when I was thru…..

I decided that some of the smaller circle buds weren’t needed. Instead, I turned a lot of them into larger ovals!!

I fused them to the flower and started stitching them down. Now I had another supply problem as I was running out of thread…..

Will the problems EVER end??

I sewed down the new flowers and then added the double-sided ones……

I LOVED how it looked…..

OKAY….come back tomorrow and I PROMISE that the Monarch Challenge quilt will be finished!!!

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In this blog, I post stories about creativity, techniques, tools of the trade, and lots more about the wonderful art of quilting. If you are enjoying these posts, please subscribe to be notified of each new blog as it becomes available.

Monarch Continuation

On the weekend I posted about the quilting for the Monarch piece. You can check it out here…..

Now it was time to put the finishing touches so here we go……

The first step was to add the leaves and stems to the piece.

I decided to use all 5 of the leaves that I had made but thought it would look good if one of them ran off of the quilt…..

I pinned them in place…..

….and sewed down the middle of the leaf so that each one floated over the surface of the quilt…..

Next, I added the stem and stitched it in place…..

I had to do a bit more quilting on the background of the milkweed……

At this point, the flower looked okay…..

…..but it needed more flowers to fill it in further. I had already made some double-sided flowers that I was adding at the end, but I realized that I needed MORE!!

But there was a problem….

This was all of the white fabric that I had left…..

….and remember that I can’t use any other fabrics

……and there wasn’t time to order more!!!

WHAT TO DO?

Come back tomorrow…….

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Let’s talk Monarch’s!!

So, yesterday, I had the background finished and now it was time to think about the guest of honor….the butterfly!!

I found a great photo online and enlarged it to the size I wanted.

I started out by drawing the outline on a piece of black fabric and then roughly cutting it out.

Next, I added the wing bits…..

As I was trying to figure out how to add all of the small white areas, my friend Linda said “Why don’t you paint them??” At one point I thought I might do some painting on this quilt so I brought my paint supplies with me!!

It didn’t take long to paint the white spots. I decided to add a bit of grey to the edges to give them a bit more depth.

I also added a bit of green paint to the inner sections to give more depth there too.

Since I am NOT a painter, what I did was minimal but I think that it added a lot to the Monarch!!

Now it was time to tackle the Milkweed.

I brought this photo with me…..

….and used it as my guide.

Once again, I am going for depth so started with some paints on white fabric. I got excited doing this step and kept forgetting to take photos, but you can see it pretty well in this photo….

I started out with a sea sponge, then added brush strokes in green and then some brown as well.

Next, I used the photo and cut out lots and lots of flower shapes. The first set was fused onto the background and heavy embroidery threads were added to the centers. I also used a marker to add some more interest.

The next morning, I added a layer of batting to the back and another set of flowers…..this time sewing them on the machine….

I actually like those better than the hand-sewn ones but I think that the diversity will add to the design.

Once I saw that this idea was going to work okay, I cut out a bunch more flower shapes with fusible on the back and then also fused two fabrics together and cut out flowers that will be loose on the top.

Before I left for the retreat, I found a font that I liked and printed out the words. It was easy work to transfer them to the fusible web and cut them out of fabric. They didn’t show up well on the green background so I added a black fabric strip under them.

I will rough-cut the black before I fuse it down.

When I left the retreat, the quilt was at this stage…..

Lot’s more to come…..I just have to find the time to do it!!!


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Borders for Pooh!!

Yesterday I showed the start of a Pooh baby quilt, leaving it at this stage…..

I had sewn sets of strips together and cut them into two patch blocks……

….and then sewed those into 4-patches that I placed around the blue border…..

I liked how it looked but felt that I needed to bring some more red into the design. I started trying an outside border…..

…..but decided that it would look better with an inside border.

My problem was that the side had to be divisible by 2 and since I hadn’t really planned my borders first, I ended up trimming off 1/8th inch pieces until I got it to the correct size.

I started adding the squares and loved how it was looking…..

I added the two side borders and…..

IT WAS FINISHED!!!!

It should be fun and easy to quilt and then it can be shipped off!!!

Come back on Friday for the quilting!!

Now a question for you….. what type of quilt do you make when you need a quick baby quilt???

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The Birth of Winnie…..

I have another baby quilt to make and this time the theme is “Winnie The Pooh”!!

I started out looking for fabric that I could use and do a simple pieced design, but apparently, Pooh is not in vogue right now, so I had to look for another idea.

I found a photo of Pooh bear and decided to use that as my inspiration……

I started out with the applique and quickly decided that he needed a lot of outlining, so out came the Fabrico markers and Pooh was born……

Now I needed to add some borders to make him larger. I was happy with the first blue one…..

….and now wanted to add some nine patches around the edge.

I had a stack of fabrics that I thought might go with the design….

….and started out by cutting a 2.5-inch strip from each fabric.

I then cut that strip down into as many 8.5-inch units as I could get from one strip.

I randomly (well….mostly randomly) selected sets of strips and sewed them together.

About this time, I decided that 4-patches would be okay, which meant that I didn’t have as much cutting and sewing to do…..always a good thing!!!!

It was bedtime so I left it hanging on the design wall to conquer the next day.

Come back tomorrow and see the finished product….I am really happy with it!!!!

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In this blog, I post stories about creativity, techniques, tools of the trade, and lots more about the wonderful art of quilting. If you are enjoying these posts, please subscribe to be notified of each new blog as it becomes available.