Category — applique

Romantic pinwheels and hand applique

The quilt was made possible with a lot of help from my friends on my Candy Apple Quilts Yahoo group. I asked for everyone to send a 6-inch strip of floral fabric to me so I could have lots of variety. The response was overwhelming! Here are just some of the fabrics that I received:

Lots of florals!

Shades of green for the leaves

I was intrigued with finding a faster way to create all of the half-square triangles that would be needed for the center section, and for the border. Using a Gammill machine with a Statler Stitcher enabled me to do most of the work with the computer! I put a solid white fabric on the machine first. Then, I placed a strip of floral fabric right side down on the white fabric with a pin at each end to hold it in place. Using the computer, I set up all of the sewing for the half square triangles.I then cut the strips apart and ironed the pieces open to create all of the pieces I needed for the pinwheels.

When all of the pinwheels were complete, it didn’t take long to sew them together into the center portion of the quilt.

Each of the fabric strips right sides together

From the various green fabrics, I cut all of the leaves for the appliqued border. All of the applique was done by hand.

Back to the quilting machine with more white fabric, and a pretty lime green. All of the half square triangles were laid out in advance, and sewn row after row, non-stop.

After cutting the rows and blocks apart, I had all of the half square triangles that I needed for the outer border of the quilt!

The only job left was to measure the applique borders and the outer borders, and apply them. I added the binding, sprinkled a few yo-yos on for fun, and it’s done! Click on the images below to see the full-sized pictures.

This pattern is available from McCall’s Magazine.

This pattern was featured in the March/April issue of Quiltmaker Magazine. When I saw it, I knew that it would be the perfect stash-buster! It’s so much fun to use up old fabric, so I can go shopping for more!

This quilt is made by hand-appliqueing a central square that measures 24 inches. Then, seven different borders are added that consist of half-square triangles, piano keys, standard borders, and four rectangular areas with more hand-applique. Having lots of large sections made the quilt top go together very quickly, and it was lots of fun!

To complete the quilt, I used a very small stipple in the areas surrounding the appliques, and patterns from Anne Bright’s Merrily Blooming collection for all of the other areas.

To finish everything and add a little more pizzazz, I made yo-yos from fabric, attched them to the flowers, and then added buttons on top! If you click on these images below, and then click again, you will be able to see the full size pictures.

Jean chose a wonderful design to place in the empty area of her Dresden project! All of the fan blades were done using a curved line instead of traditional stitch-in-the-ditch, creating a much softer feeling:

Looking for a design to combine with the soft feel of the fan blades, Jean choose a design that could have created a problem if it had stitched in the fan blades. Using the Statler Stitcher and Creative Studio software, if was simply a matter of trimming away all parts of the design that we didn’t want. This trimming function created a smooth-stitching design that filled the empty areas perfectly.

I had the rare privilege of working with Connie to complete a quilt that her mother Eunice pieced. It was done in bubble gum pink and apple green, and completely hand-appliqued. Eunice duplicated this beautiful pattern that was originally published in the mid-1800’s, and her applique is so perfectly done! Connie will be keeping this quilt in a special place to honor all of the beautiful hand work that her mother used to finish this beautiful quilt:

I posted pictures of a quilt called A Mother’s Love last November, and have received many compliments on how beautiful it turned out to be…. but the real credit for this amazing quilt goes to a wonderful lady named Leslie Clarke. She spent countless hours piecing it, with applique and crystals in perfect proportion. She even added her own border to the entire edge that included more applique and crystals! This quilt was made with love for Leslie’s daughter Nicole, and it was truly a labor of love. I had named the quilt A Mother’s Love, but the actual name of the pattern is A Garden Party.

This past week, Leslie received word that she had won second place in a quilting contest for this quilt! Congratulations, Leslie! Here is part of the story that Leslie included with her entry:

“This quilt was my first quilting project on my new embroidery machine. When the instructor teaching the class on how to use the machine pattern became ill, I decided to forge ahead and also to really stretch and make the queen-size quilt. My daughter was moving to a new apartment, and — since her favorite color is red — it had to be for her!”

If you’re anything like me, the first thing you think of when you are this happy is the Snoopy Dance theme song — this music has been dancing around in my head ever since Leslie told me she won the prize!

We’re currently adding the embroidery designs back to this site, and we are having a few growing pains. You can access the designs by clicking on the left side of the page where it says Embroidery store, or in the yellow box at the top of the page in the link that says The Embroidery Store is now open. When you arrive at the store, some of the individual designs are marked as Out of Stock. This is one of the growing pains that I mentioned, and our web master will be fixing this just as soon as he can. All of the designs are available for your shopping cart.

Another growing pain is on the Collections page. You can see the name of the collection, but none of the individual designs that are in the collection. I’ve decided to feature two of the collections here, because they have a Christmas theme, and they are on sale right now!

Here are two of the collections — the Christmas Train collection, and it’s adorable stitched on a mantel scarf, and the Christmas Candles are wonderful on towels, table linens — anywhere that you want a touch of applique and glitz:

I just received the cutest picture from Linda! She used the Boo Sign Applique and created an adorable wall-hanging!

What a creative idea, Linda!  Thanks so much for sending along the picture!

Amy sent along a picture of how she used the same design on treat bags. I just love this! Thanks, Amy!

The Boo Sign Applique is available as a single design, or as part of the Autumn Collection that is on sale right now. You will receive 18 designs for one low price!

This pattern goes together very quickly, and gives you lots of open space in the center for adding embroidery and appliqué! There are only 14 blocks to piece, and two outer borders, so it will be on your table quickly.

If you’d like to purchase the beer mug applique pattern that I used in this project, it’s available for instant download in DST, HUS, JEF, PES and SHV formats.

This quilt was one of my favorites to work with! Brought to me by a wonderful woman who embroidered every block, she told me the story of how she was making it for her daughter. It has more work, joy, and talent, and love than any other quilt I have had the honor of doing. Here is a picture of the entire quilt:

Each block demanded different treatment, so we put our heads together, and came up with designs that incorporated hearts — to play on the theme of love and family. My favorite:
We added lots of hearts throughout the quilt, in many surprising places!

Receiving a hug from Leslie when this quilt was done was one of my happiest moments!

Here is another example of using embroidery and appliqué before the quilt is assembled. In this tablecloth, I appliquéd all of the small white squares first on the white tone-on-tone fabric, and then cut them to size and assembled each quilt square. The assembly of the quilt was much faster, because I was able to treat each appliquéd square just like a regular piece of the block. I know that I would have had a hard time trying to appliqué all of the squares if the quilt had already been assembled. I know lots of people who can do it that way, but I’m just not that brave! LOL!