Gracin's Angel

I love making these little Guardian Angels from Bird Brain Designs. In the past I have stitched out the designs, most of the time with Turkey Red Perle Cotton.

I wanted to make another one for my grandson, Gracin for his dedication day at church. However, I am having difficulties with my right hand so stitching is out of the question right now. I have turned other stitching designs into applique projects before. You can read the blog posts about them here and here. So I decided to make a machine applique angel for him. 

All of the angels looked like girls to me so I did a little adjusting to the pattern. Here is a picture of the original angel I chose and how I adapted it to look more like a boy. It also shows the fabrics I used. I have been saving jeans for years. I chose a pair of my husband's to use for the overalls. I thought that would give even more special meaning to the piece.

I traced the pattern pieces onto fusible web. I traced the entire shape of the body rather than breaking it down into smaller pieces. I actually ended up tracing a second body piece so I had one for the front of the angel and one for the back. Even though I could have used the circle from the body piece as the head, I decided to trace just the circle portion of it onto the fusible web for the face.

I then fused all of the pieces onto the appropriate fabrics. Here are all of the pieces cut and ready to assemble. The wings are cut from a small scrap of batting.

I positioned the wings where I wanted them on top of the back. I like to use an applique pressing sheet when I do fusible applique. You can see a good example of this in this blog post. I assembled all of the pieces for the front of the angel onto the pressing sheet. Then I put that whole piece on top of the back and batting and fused it together.

I used a blanket stitch to stitch around all of the fabric pieces. This is my favorite setting for this because the bite is relatively small. With tiny pieces I don't like the stitch to come in too far into the shape.

I free hand, free motioned a heart onto one side of the wings. It is really hard to get the batting stabilized enough to do that. I don't love the heart but he won't care.

I wrote a poem I found appropriate for the dedication inside a card. Then I wrote a little message to him on the back of the angel. Here's what he looks like all finished. I think he's pretty cute.

Happy Sewing, Stitching and Creating,

Carol