Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Flower in a Pot #2 - Part 1

Wow!  We have almost 100 people in the Machine Applique Adventures Facebook group!  I'm really enjoying seeing all the projects people are working on or have completed.  If you haven't checked us out yet, please join us soon!

Here is the pattern for the Flower in a Pot #2.  I plan to have this series of patterns available as soon as I have a chance to write up the directions!


One thing I knew I wanted to play around with in this series of little quilts was using different sized blanket stitches in the same block.  I used a really long width for these stitches so they came really far into the block.  I like how it adds more texture.  You have to be really careful when coming to the tip of one of these leaves to make sure the stitches do not stretch out far into the background fabric.  I found I had to angle the stitches a little more than usual to accomplish this.


Here is the top of the flower.  It was nice that I was able to layer all of these pieces and then sew them in one layer.  I used really small stitches for the purple and dark blue dots and a larger stitch size for the outer dark blue.


Here are all the pieces I added in layer one.  You can see there is stabilizer behind the block to help make sure the stitches lay nice and flat.  I try to fuse on as many pieces on as I can in each layer.  Then I stitch around them all and then fuse on the next layer.  I use a light box to help position my pieces.


Here is the back side of the block so far.  You can see the different size stitches I used.


Here is the block after I added two more layers.  The stem and large purple piece were layer two and the stem was part of layer three.


Here is a close look at the back of my block.  You can see I start with small running straight stitches to hold my threads and then I switch to blanket stitch.  I do this to lock the thread in place when I know I'm going to place a piece on top.  When it's a  piece that I know won't have others on top, I use a slightly different method I will talk about next time!


Happy Appliqueing!
Suzy

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