Appliqué

I've been intimidated by and interested in appliqué for a long time. I finally screwed up my courage and machine appliquéed this quilt in 1995. I used a pattern for most of the dogs, but I designed the Doberman myself and made other changes that would reflect the dogs I've known and loved. They are in an Attic Windows setting to give them their own spaces. The dogs are echo quilted by hand, and they have a supply of dog biscuits quilted in the borders. The pattern I used was called "Family Dogs," created by Critter Pattern Works, and the quilt is roughly 45" x 44".

I like tea, so when I saw the pattern for this quilt, I just couldn't resist! This was done using the same technique as for the dogs. That is, the pots were fused and then machine satin stitched. However, instead of hand quilting, I machine quilted this piece. It was only the second time I'd done free-motion quilting on the machine, but the quilt won a blue ribbon in the 1998 county fair. What a lovely surprise! The quilt measures 34" x 32".

And here's a detail of the center teapot:

Celtic Table Runner

This is hand appliquéed and the hand quilting echoes the appliqué motifs both in the "ditch" and 1/4" away. Here's a close-up of the quilting:

It measures 13.25" x 47" (tip to tip) and was finished in June, 2005.

Cabo San Lucas

This is not only appliqué; it's also drappliqué! I took a class from Pam Holland at Quilt Camp in the Pines in July, 2005, and her technique combines machine appliqué with drawing on the fabric with special pens to make the fabric look the way we need it to look. The quilt is entirely machine appliquéed and quilted, measuring 19" x 23". I finished it in September, 2005. I didn't actually do that much quilting, since the appliqué was combined with the quilting in the main part of the piece. The wide border is quilted in a stylized wave pattern.

And here is the photo that inspired the quilt:

Gazebo

And here is the second piece from a Pam Holland class at Quilt Camp in the Pines in 2005. This one is also drappliqué; the gazebo itself is machine appliquéed in place, but all of the plants and pots are drawn onto the fabric with the same special pens as were used in the landscape quilt.  I machine quilted this one, too, with flowers in the blue borders and leaves in the green cornerstones, stippling the muslin background. It measures 23 1/4" x 26 3/4", and I finished it in September, 2005.

Hummingbird Quilt

This isn't exactly appliqué, but it's sort of related. <G> It's called "appli-bond", a technique developed by Joan Shay. I took a class from her at Quilt Camp in the Pines in 2006 and finished the top reasonably soon afterwards. However, I didn't get around to quilting it until August and September, 2007.

Each flower petal and leaf, as well as every feather on the hummingbird, is a separate piece. Each is double-sided, stitched on separately, then curled with a hot iron. These pieces all had to be sewn on by hand, using a leather needle. Here is a detail of the hummingbird and some of the quilting:

I machine quilted leaves and vines to continue the idea of the flowers and leaves. The quilt measures approximately 31 1/2" square, and the piecing and quilting were all machine-done.

Dragonflight

After a machine appliqué class from Sharon Schamber, I used her technique to make this small quilt. It's a gift intended for my eye doctor, who has gone above and beyond for the past few years to get my eyes to work in a more normal fashion. The dragon on the quilt came from a pattern by Carol Bruce, and I added double corded piping between the quilt and the binding. I machine quilted the piece using a variegated thread in shades of lavender and raspberry to do feathers, small pebbles and flowing lines.

Here is a close-up shot of some of the quilting:

Spring Daffodil

This quilt is the result of the class with Sharon Schamber on machine appliqué; I took it in order to be able to make the Dragonflight quilt, above. I didn't have enough fabric to make binding, so I experimented with making a facing instead, and I'm quite happy with the result. I began the quilt in July, 2008, and finished it in March, 2009. It is entirely machine appliquéed and machine quilted on my home machine, and it measures approximately 16" x 29". 

Below are a couple of close-up shots of the quilting. I used lots of feathers and several different styles of stippling to make the feathers show easily.

Lonely Saguaro

In July, 2009, I took a class from Rose Hughes on making landscape quilts. It was a fun class, but it's not a technique I think I'll be using again; it's just not something that appealed to me. Because I wasn't that excited about it, the unfinished quilt sat around until the end of October, 2010, before I finally finished it. It was supposed to have quite a bit of beading and embroidery to embellish it, but that just wasn't going to happen. It's machine appliquéed, using yarn zigzagged around all pieces and extra stuffing under some of the saguaro arms. It's also machine quilted very simply, and I used a facing to finish it, rather than binding. This piece measures approximately 17" x 23".

Coneflower

I fell in love with a pattern in Melinda Bula's Cutting Garden Quilts and knew I had to make it. As luck would have it, she ended up teaching the class for that very pattern in Lake Havasu City in January, 2012, so I signed up. Sadly, I didn't enjoy the class at all for various reasons, but I came home and made the quilt anyway, following the directions -- more or less -- in the book. It's made with fusible appliqué, and then it was supposed to be thread painted to make sure all of the pieces were permanently attached, but my thread painting ability isn't so great, so I simply did lots and lots of echo quilting inside each piece.

After doing the echo quilting, there was a lot of negative space to fill. The directions said to do echo quilting there, but I'd had enough echo quilting by then, so I put in some large, flowing sprays of the machine-quilted feathers I love so much instead. Then I added some piping for added interest before binding the quilt. I didn't think this one needed any borders at all.

      

I finished the quilt in May, 2012, and it measures 26" x 21".

Update! This quilt won second place in its category at our local guild's quilt show in April, 2013.

April Azalea

My quilting buddy bought a kit from Stacy Michell. The kit included two identical images, one positive and one negative, of laser-cut Hawaiian appliqué motifs. She did one of the blocks and gave me the other to finish, and so I did. The motifs arrived with fusible already in place, so all I had to do was to fuse them to the background fabric, layer everything with my own batting and backing, and then do some machine appliqué that also became the quilting. I used blanket stitch, and it was fun to do. I didn't have anything suitable for the binding, so I used a facing instead. The piece ended up 17.5" square (it really is square, but it's hanging on a curved chair back!), and I finished it in December, 2012.

Plumeria

In July, 2012, my husband and I took a cruise around the Hawaiian Islands to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. While there, I found a beautiful batik fabric that is apparently only sold by a specific Hawaiian quilt shop, and I also fell in love with all of the lush flora there. After some experimenting at home, I found a photo online of the plumeria blossom and made it into templates for this quilt. I machine appliquéed the leaves and blossoms and machine quilted the finished piece, adding the piping that I like so much. The quilting has pebbles between the leaves to represent the earth where the plant grows, evolving into swirls further away to represent the water surrounding the islands. The border has a variation of those swirls.

Here is a detail of some of the quilting, and another of the flowers:

                        

The quilt measures approximately 27" square, and I finished it in April, 2013.

Double-Pointed Dresden Plate

Calling this appliqué is probably correct, but it may be stretching the term a bit, too. Still, the plates were appliquéd onto the pieced background, so the term does fit. This was a pattern created by Susan Cleveland, and I really liked the double points on the plates' wedges, made easy to do with Susan's Prairie Pointer tool. The background is made from pieces of linen I'd purchased at a Houston show, and the wedges are bright batiks I had in my stash. I quilted straight lines in the background, dividing the quilt roughly into quarters and doing two of the quarters with horizontal lines and two with vertical lines. I added a few leftover plate wedges to the embroidered label on the back and used the narrow corded piping I like so much next to the binding. I finished the quilt in May, 2015, and it measures 26.5" x 24".

Seasonal Featherweights

There was a nationwide row-by-row challenge in 2015. I wasn't going to get to a lot of shops around the country, but I did see this one from a local shop (The Christmas Goose) in Las Vegas. These little sewing machines were so cute, and they reminded me of the machine given me by my late mother-in-law, so I decided to make this row as a stand-alone quilt to hang above the closet in my sewing room. I prequilted the fabric with a cross-hatch pattern -- unfortunately getting some puckers in the process, but that's life. Once that was done, I used a blanket stitch to machine appliqué all of the major motifs, adding details with decorative machine stitches. I also scanned and printed a Featherweight logo onto fabric for one of the machines and used a "tweaked" version of the original birds given me by my friend Phyl. The quilt measures 35.5" x 8.75" and was finished in August, 2015.

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