Another Stitching Turned Applique Project

I've been changing up the Harvest Tea Towels pattern. Since I like to do different things, I decided that instead of stitching the designs on tea towels, I'm going to make it into a small wall hanging. I have one block left to finish stitching before I get to that project.

I recently finished the acorn block. While I was working on it I thought that it would make a nice applique block. 

I played around with this concept in another Blog Post with the Snowman from the Winter Partners Pillows Pattern.

I decided to use a Brown Striped Tea Towel. I found these pretty fall batiks and hand dyes to work with. I like them for fusible applique because they have a high thread count. A tea towel will be washed so I wanted fabrics that aren't likely to fray much.

I traced the REVERSE image of the design onto fusible web. Since the fusible goes on the wrong side of the fabric, if you don't reverse the design when you fuse it onto the background fabric (tea towel in this case) the image will be the mirror image of the drawing. This time I added a little extra to the pieces that will go underneath others, like the basic acorn shape and the stem. When I did the snowman I didn't do this and it made it a little harder to put the pieces in place. I decided not to add the bird. I kind of have a problem with the scale. Either the bird is super tiny or the acorn is HUGE. I roughly cut around the pieces and fused them to the wrong side of my fabrics.

I cut out each individual piece. I used an Applique Pressing Sheet (See previous Blog Post) to make the fusing process much easier.

I put each piece in place on top of the Pressing Sheet using the pattern as my guide. Once I had it exactly how I wanted it I fused the entire design onto the Pressing Sheet. 

Now the whole thing is one piece which makes it so much easier to put onto the towel. I just peeled it off and placed it where I wanted it on the brown tea towel. Then I fused the design onto the towel. 

I put a tear away stabilizer behind the design. You could also use a wash away such as Sticky Fabri-Solvy. Since the towel will be washed the Sticky Fabri-Solvy will dissolve in the washer. You want the stabilier behind so that when you stitch around the design it doesn't pucker.

Most of the time I use a short blanket stitch on  my machine to stitch around the fused pieces. I have also used a satin stitch and a free motion zig zag. In this case all I wanted to do was stitch it in place. I wasn't worried about adding texture to the design so the blanket stitch worked just fine. This is the setting I used.

This was a fast and easy project. It took me about an hour from the time I decided to do it until I was done stitching around the design. It will be a nice addition to my home this fall. It would also make a nice gift.

Happy Quilting,

Carol