Tag Archives: applique design

Sweethearts Quilt Tutorial

Candy Hearts make such adorable projects. Here’s the Sweethearts Quilt that I’ve been making. While I used the candy hearts embroidery set, you can also make this using a novelty fabric or you can cut the hearts on your Accuquilt GO! and fuse them and use an applique stitch on your regular machine to stitch them. You can also use a stencil or fabric markers to write the candy heart sentiments.

Here’s the quilt:

Sweethearts Quilt

And here’s the finished block:

Candy Hearts Block

You will also need to cut an equal number of plain squares that are 7.5″ which is the finished size of the heart blocks.

Here’s the block showing the size of each piece in the block. The finished block size is 7.5″

 

And here’s the Fat Quarter cutting chart. I am making my quilt using fat quarters. Each fat quarter makes 4-5 hearts and there’s a small 4-5″ scrap left on the end of the fat quarter. Those scraps can be used to add some pieced blocks to the border or cut into strips for other scrappy blocks.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Candy Hearts for Valentine’s Day

The weather is freezing here – I can’t seem to get my fingers and toes and nose warm today even with layers of clothes. Maybe it’s the dampness outside. I’m finishing up the candy hearts digitizing and they’re on the website and for sale already. All that’s left is to stitch enough of these hearts for a quilt. I sent some of the test hearts to Barb over at Bejeweledquilts by Barb, and she had them stitched into a quilt as quick as a wink.

Here are pictures of some of them (there are 52 files in all):





And later this week, we’ll work on the embroidery for the red and white project for the “GO Ahead and Show Some Love” blog hop. Here’s a peek at some of my finished basket blocks and my heart blocks.

 

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

A few photos of what’s coming next week

For more red and white into a basket quilt

And what would Valentine’s Day be without Candy Hearts?

And a little mug rug to spread the love!

 
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Fall Table Runner – more Options

I promised more versions of the table runner and here they are. The first is the table runner with maple leaves in the center. This would be a six inch block and could be made using the 2 1/2 inch half square triangle die and the 2 1/2 inch strip die to make the squares. It could also be made using the Value Die.

Table Runner with Maple Leaves

 

Here’s a bigger version of the leaf block. The stem is optional, but I do think it makes the block a little prettier.

 

And last, but not least, the same table runner with plain blocks for you to showcase some beautiful free motion quilting.

Table Runner with Plain Blocks

 
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Have A Pumpkin Good Day Embroidery Set

My friend, Judy Danz, has the most wonderful eye for design. She has taken the pumpkin die from Accuquilt and created a beautiful embroidery set. If you’re thinking about doing a Fall Project – anything from pot holders to table runners to a quilt – consider using her Embroidery to do it. She made a lovely Trio Stand. I love the way she added the vines to the pumpkins.

Have A Pumpkin Good Day

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Ta Da! Sunbonnet Sue Makes an Appearance

August was busy around here with visitors and a couple of day trips of our own. And, in the meantime, my embroidery machine and I were working on my new Sunbonnet Sue designs. I haven’t finished all of the thread charts and other documentation, but have posted them in my store as “coming soon” and hope to have them ready for sale by the weekend.

Here are some preview pictures of three of the designs. The set also includes Sunbonnets with applique stitch, raw edge applique with a zigzag stitch, and others. I have also designed a nice little quilt with these Sunbonnets and will have instructions for it included with the set.  I’ll tell you more about the quilt tomorrow.

SBS #1

 

SBS #2

 

SBS #3

 
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Dressing a Christmas Table Runner with Machine Embroidery and Die Cuts

You know that I’m not into ornate things – but I do like elegant – and sometimes that means very simple. I have been working on some machine embroidery to be used for embellishments on things like table runners and tree skirts and any other things that may need embellishing at Christmas time. What’s really nice about these is that there is no top or bottom, so they work on things like table toppers which are seen from all directions. I took  the large circle die and checked all my other dies to see what shapes fit inside it.  Here are some photos of what I’ve done. I hope to have all of these and more available as an embroidery set by Saturday.  These circles are about 5 1/2 inches or 130 mm finished.

Christmas Table Runner

 

 

 

 

 
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Tutorial for Machine Embroidery for Die Cuts

 Today, I am going to do a pic-tutorial showing you show I create machine embroidery applique quilt blocks. I will take you through this step by step.

Hoop the stabilizer in a large hoop.

This block will be set on point, so the fabric will be attached to the stabilizer “on point.”

Draw a big square onto the stabilizer with the Elmer’s glue stick.

 

Adding Elmer's School glue to stabilizer

 

Take a square piece of fabric about an inch or two larger than you would like your finished quilt block and fold the fabric so that it lines up with the center marks on the embroidery hoop.

Work quickly as the glue dries very fast. If the glue gets dry before you get things lined up, just add more glue.

Centering the background fabric on the embroidery hoop

Then lay the fabric flat and make sure it is nice and smooth with no wrinkles.

 

Background fabric attached to the embroidery hoop

The next step is to attach the hoop to your embroidery machine and stitch the first die line.

This is a Round Flower stem and the embroidery has been modified to be shorter so that it will fit an 8 inch finished quilt block.

Stitch die line for the leaves.

 

Press the stem and leaves inside the die line. It is important to keep the fabric just inside the die line or on the die line. You can see in this photo that the fabric is just inside the die line.

If the fabric is over the die line, you will see fabric outside the embroidery and frayed fabric peeking from underneath the edge of the embroidery stitches.

This is the beauty of die cuts – you don’t have to have frayed fabric sticking out from under the applique stitches.

Can you see that I cut the stem off a little shorter so that the block will be smaller?

Fabric Placement on the Die Line

 

The next step is to put the hoop back onto the machine and stitch the stem and leaves.

Stitch the stem and leaves

 

The next step is to change the thread color and stitch the die line for the flower.

Stitch the die line for the flower.

 

Remove the hoop from the machine and fuse the flower to the background fabric using your mini-iron.

Fuse flower to background fabric using mini-iron

 

 Re-attach the hoop to the machine and stitch around the flower, then change the thread color and stitch the die line for the center.

Stitch the round flower

 

Remove the hoop and fuse the center to the round flower.

 

Stitch the middle center with an applique stitch, then change thread colors and stitch the round center, and the embroidery is complete.

Completed Round Flower for 8 inch quilt block

 

 You can now gently lift the background fabric away from the stabilizer – the glue releases very easily – and trim away the stabilizer. Square up your quilt block to 8 1/2 inches and it is ready to use in a quilt.

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Marking Accuquilt Applique Die Shapes

One of my long-term projects is to create embroidery files for all of the Accuquilt applique die shapes. Thus, I have been slowly but surely purchasing every applique die. Sometimes I find it very hard to see exactly where the die blade is and I want to know how the shapes look. Yesterday I had a small epiphany for finding the applique shapes. Look at these photos and you’ll see what I saw. It really helps tremendously. And all of the tape is easily removed after the die shapes have been marked.

 

 

 

 

 

  
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie

 

Quilts of Valor (QOV) Quilt Block Challenge Deadline Extended to June 25

Just wanted to let everyone know that this challenge has been extended. Whew!! I have been working as hard as I could to finish 30 blocks to send. They are done – but now with the deadline extension, I can put them together into a quilt top. Here’s the original post regarding the Challenge and the prizes to be awarded.

As a part of the challenge, I digitized the Accuquilt Star die so that I could make applique stars on each block. I also added the stars to mymachine embroidery store so that others can enjoy them too.  Here are some pictures of the embroidery. I love the blocks – I used an ivory Kona cotton which is almost a light tan and the navy blue and red look great on that background. It doesn’t show up in the pictures, but trust me, it’s really pretty. Maybe when I get the top together and take a photo, you can see it better. Here’s a preview:

 
 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Come again soon.

Marjorie