Design wall Monday

Rather a disaster this week!  I’ve got the blue and brown star quilt on the longarm, and have it partially quilted… I haven’t been much in the mood to quilt lately though.  But I liked this small quilt well enough I wanted to make a second one for myself, and I also wanted to cement the “Y” seam construction firmly in my brain, so I whipped up another one.

All well and good!  But then I decided instead of using the AccuQuilt dies to cut the applique and sew them on by machine, I’d use the new Rose of Sharon embroidered applique designs I’d purchased.  I converted half of the applique pieces in the Bernina Cutwork software, and used the cutwork tool to cut them out, and did the other half by hand.

Kudos to the Bernina tool, because no matter how careful I was, I couldn’t cut with the same precision as the it could.  However, the cuts weren’t overly smooth, even though I starched my fabric and had fused it to Shades Softfuse stablizer.  They would have been fine with a satin stitch on the edges, but didn’t look so great with a blanket stitch applique.

And, with either the Cutwork cut pieces or the ones I cut by hand, I couldn’t get them to fit perfectly into the stitched placement lines, which means the applique stitch went down looking quite sloppy.  Very disappointing! And to top it off, I noticed my tension was way off on the flower stems, but not until they’d already stitched out.

I’m probably going to attempt stitching back over all the blanket stitching with a heavier thread by machine (not in the hoop) and see if I can save this project. I’ll proabably go ahead and put the borders on regardless, it can be a wallhanging where the flaws won’t be so noticable.  I had intended it for a table runner, but unless I manage to secure those appliques better than the embroidery did, it won’t hold up in the wash.

Head over to Judy’s on this Design Wall Monday and see what everyone else is up to, hopefully they’re all having better luck with their projects!