I love applique. Okay, lets tell the truth. I've loved applique for about a year and a half now. I've always loved the way that it looks but.....lets face it. I'm a busy mom who works full time and I don't have the time to applique anything by hand these days.
A few years back maybe about 8 years ago, before children when life was a little bit slower I made this quilt. I didn't have my own machine so I pieced it on my moms' industrial machine and then did all of the applique and embroidery by hand. eeeekkkkk..... I spent about a years worth of Monday night football games working on this thing. I am happy with how it turned out but realistically, a year on a single quilt?
After that I did this quilt with quite a bit of applique.
I did as I was taught and used fusible then by hand I used embroidery floss I blanket stitched everything on. By time I got to the inner circle of the flowers I couldn't push my needle through the applique. I tried everything I could thing of and it just wasn't happening. There were just too many layers of fusible and material. So I gave in and did a small zig-zag stitch by machine, all the way around the center circles. It looks fine but I'm not totally happy with it.
At this point I decided I was never going to applique again. I hated that I couldn't get the look I wanted and it was so time consuming.
A year and a half ago I bought a new Bernina machine, which I love. One of the selling points for me on this machine was the nice blanket stitch and the fact that it can go up to 9mm wide! WAHOO. I spent a large part of the year last year taking classes and learning about applique. I love the look of turned under applique but I'm not doing that by hand! So through all of these classes I, along with my mom devised a new plan on how to applique with just starch. YES, that lovely $1.00 starch that you get at Wal-mart. I now am in LOVE with applique. I find that every quilt that I make or design I look at it and think, hmm.... what applique could I do on this quilt.
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~Natalia