Appliqué quilting and sewing ideas

So I recently fell in love with the idea of appliqué quilting on Pinterest, because I felt the traditional method does not allow for a lot of originality, requires all this math and all these things I’m generally not prepared to spend that much time on, because I’m trying to keep up with the ideas in my head, so you can see the appeal in this method for me. I was going to give it a go.

Source: Pinterest

I thought I’d start with something small and realistic. So I thought I might make some pillow cases for all the pillows on my couch. I’ve been thinking of brightening it up for a while anyway so I went about sketching some simple and what I thought would be doable ideas.

Ideas for the couch pillows

However, just as I was about to start, my very first friend in the Czech republic, Jovana, came to visit. She is expecting her first child and it just hit me she could be giving birth any day now and I haven’t completed the things I wanted to make before the baby arrives. Another friend, Emil, was also visiting from Copenhagen and had just added to my tiny collection of Tilda fabrics and I figured that is what I will use.

Since I was only trying this for the first time, I wasn’t about to start cutting into my pretty fabrics just yet but I wasn’t going to over-think it either. I especially wanted to try and personalise the blanket with the baby’s name. So, on a piece of muslin, I just roughly sketched a bunch of small basic house shapes and a name.

Using a fabric market to get some basic shapes.

I was intimidated at first, by all the curves and tiny circles I had committed to but overall I was confident that this was doable.

Success

I’m not so sure about the squiggly lines at the end, I think they distract from the “a” at the end of the name Mila. That is something I intend to change with the final version. I didn’t try too hard to stay exactly on the sketch lines and I still think it turned out pretty well. Satisfied with that bit, I was eager to now start sewing the little houses on.

Houses

Using fabrics from my scrap basket, I cut out two little houses and went to work attaching them to the muslin. I really like the pencil-like effect of the dark thread running around the “appliqués”, so I figured I could also throw in a tree or two and see how that looks.

There is abit of puckering on this one, I was not going for perfection so there was no pinning, etc. etc. ..

Enter a caption

I went a bit slower on the second one, trying a slightly different technique and I think it works.

I believe Im ready to move on to the actual version, this was a really fun method to try out. The possibilities of expression with this kind of sewing are endless! I cant wait to show off the final version.

Apologies for the bad quality photos, still trying to get my camera fixed.

Until next time, hope you are well. FYI I just saw the new Star Wars movie and the urge to end this with you know…”May the force be with you” and laughed at myself as soon as the thought formed in my mind because I know not every one is into that sort of thing but I thought you should know that is how I was planning to end this 😛