Today, as I promised, I have a surprise…..I am giving you all the applique pattern for my “Christmas Cardinal” wall hanging. I have made a PDF file of my line drawing that you can download here. Remember this is the drawing I worked from and is maybe a little rough with some smudges but the design is sharp. This can be appliqued with your choice of applique method but I fused the shapes to my background then edge stitched them when I quilted the piece. Remember you will have to reverse the design if you fuse your design unless you don’t care if the bird and branch go the other way.
I added the simple borders to my background rectangle before I appliqued the designs. Cut a rectangle you feel fits the size of the applique then add borders. I find it is easier to center the design that way with the applique fused on after the borders are stitched to the center section. The narrow border on my quilt is a finished width of 1/2” and the wider border is finished at 2 1/4”. The borders are simple and easy to do as I didn’t miter but stitched the side pieces on first then the top and bottom borders…do the same for both borders. 
I used some shiny red thread and one of the embroidery stitches on my machine to stitch the decorative stitching on the inside of the narrow red border – something new for me. I like the way it adds another design element. You can see some of the background quilting on this photo too. I did some swirls, some feathers, some bubbles and some echo quilting. I pretty much just quilted what I wanted and it was fun to not have a plan and to just quilt.
I used some shiny red thread and one of the embroidery stitches on my machine to stitch the decorative stitching on the inside of the narrow red border – something new for me. I like the way it adds another design element. You can see some of the background quilting on this photo too. I did some swirls, some feathers, some bubbles and some echo quilting. I pretty much just quilted what I wanted and it was fun to not have a plan and to just quilt.
To add more bling I couched down some heavy gold thread/cord using 39C foot on my Bernina. I started and ended in one corner then buried the tail in the layers. This is something I have not done before either and I would definitely do it again as it was really easy to stitch this thread/cord onto the edge of that border.
Something that did not work so well was how I finished the edge of the quilt. I decided I wanted to couch the gold thread/cord next to the binding too. I stitched the binding to the back first and intended to pull it to the front and couch the thread down with a zig-zag stitch at the same time as I was stitching the binding to the front. (BIG MISTAKE!) I should have put the binding on the way I usually do…stitch it to the front then pull to the back and either hand stitch or stitch in the ditch from the front to secure and then add the cord last after the binding was finished. As you can see from the photo above I had a hard time stitching the cord and binding simultaneously. I had several areas on the binding that I had to go back and stitch down as the first stitching did not catch the binding. When you look at the finished photo at the top or bottom the binding looks wavy and it is because of all the problems I had getting it stitched down and using the striped fabric accentuates the waviness. I want to block the quilt at some point and hope to get it more square but hung it on the wall for now.
It is not perfect but I had fun making it and will enjoy hanging it. The Happy Holidays sign is one of those temporary clear decals that I stuck to the wall beside my Christmas Cardinal.
Something that did not work so well was how I finished the edge of the quilt. I decided I wanted to couch the gold thread/cord next to the binding too. I stitched the binding to the back first and intended to pull it to the front and couch the thread down with a zig-zag stitch at the same time as I was stitching the binding to the front. (BIG MISTAKE!) I should have put the binding on the way I usually do…stitch it to the front then pull to the back and either hand stitch or stitch in the ditch from the front to secure and then add the cord last after the binding was finished. As you can see from the photo above I had a hard time stitching the cord and binding simultaneously. I had several areas on the binding that I had to go back and stitch down as the first stitching did not catch the binding. When you look at the finished photo at the top or bottom the binding looks wavy and it is because of all the problems I had getting it stitched down and using the striped fabric accentuates the waviness. I want to block the quilt at some point and hope to get it more square but hung it on the wall for now.
It is not perfect but I had fun making it and will enjoy hanging it. The Happy Holidays sign is one of those temporary clear decals that I stuck to the wall beside my Christmas Cardinal.This is the first time I have downloaded a PDF file so hope it works. I won’t know until I post this blog entry and try it out so if the post is here then disappears for a while it is because I didn’t get it to work.
I posted, now edited the post to upload the PDF of the pattern from Google Docs but you still have to sign in to be able to print the pattern. I had used Scribd the first time and didn't like doing it that way. Does anyone have a better way to load a file to blogger? I usually compose my blog posts in Windows Live Writer.
Until Later,
Lynn
