I was sick last weekend, but not sick enough to keep me from working on my quilt. I have now appliqued all the shapes to the background fabric. The quilt now shows all 3 stages of my embroidery process, 1. Applique with no embroidery, 2. Beginning embroidery ideas, and 3. Final embroidered look.
1.) No embroidery (besides the deer), just appliqued shapes.
1. How do you size your quilts?
It’s all visual with me. It just has to look right. My quilts are not made to be used on a bed or anything else. They are wall hangings.
2. Do you hand applique?
Yes. I love doing as much by hand as possible. I don’t feel comfortable with machines and I don’t care for fusable applique. This is just personal taste. I don’t feel everyone should be like me. Plus, I like things to look hand made.
3. Do you embroider to cover the edges of the applique?
Yes and no. I often embroider the edge of my applique, but I don’t need to. I finally have gotten enough skill that my applique looks pretty sweet.
4. How do you do the finish layout of the appliqued shapes onto the background fabric?
First, using pins, I make a pin line that is square on the background fabric. Then I place and move around the applique pieces until it visually looks good to me.
If you have any more questions just let me know.
I spent about 3 hours last night creating various applique shapes and I am still not done. I find this work very meditative and relaxing. I have started pinning the shapes to the background fabric. They are only loosely placed. I just want to get a idea of how it’s looking. I am liking the colors so far, but I am not sure of the heart shapes that I have made red (with print).
Since I have the white deer applique basically in place I have started putting together the other applique shapes. I had to buy new fabric, because the fabrics I have where to bright and I wanted the colors for this quilt to be subdued. I really want the deer to pop! I feel kind of naked showing everyone these images of the unfinished quilt. The images look so plain. I can hardly wait to get them in place so I can start embroidering . Basically I will get all the applique shapes made, and layed out, then I will Hidden Stitch them on to the background fabric. I will be laying out the shapes by hand with minimal reference since I don’t like to make things perfect. I like it to look hand made.
Make sure to click on the images. This gives you a much better detail.
Here is another new work for my show in Texas. I call it Frosting because it’s all about what is on the outside.
After my last post I have spent between 2 and 3 hours to get to the next step. I have appliqued the white deer to the background material and have begun the embroidery.
I have used the Stem, Seed and Chain embroidery stitches so far. The pink of the ears, eyes and nose are appliqued onto the white. Make sure to click on the images below to get the close up views, especially the tutorials.
I finished creating paintings for my show in Texas. All that is left is the shipping. So, I now have time at night to start a new quilt. Here is the beginning sketch and some possible color fabric choices. The dark gold flower pattern will be the background and the light white floral print will be the deer. I will be using tons of different fabrics, but these are my newest purchases just for this quilt. I will try to blog about each new step in making this quilt.
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