Hey Everyone, welcome back to Stitch Along Sunday.
Last week if you missed it we added stitching to the piece. You can see mine here at September Week 3.
This weeks rules can be found on Ruth’s blog at September Week4 – Rules. And if you missed out on what Ruth and others did last week check out the Stitch Along Sunday Gallery to see their work.
Week’s 4 rule was to add a plant or flower of some sort. It could be in any medium. I chose to add a row of flowers to the bottom of my piece.
To start I had to pick the fabrics – my first choice of fabrics were two purples and a yellow.
Purple and yellow fabrics for flowers
I made up little flower heads and felt they were too dull on the piece and just blended into the background.
Purple and yellow flowers being auditioned on the piece
My second choice was some brights in purple, red, yellow. I used all the same type of batik as I had the range of this fabric line. I bought them a long time ago for a specific project but of course never made it – the fabric isn’t going to waste as I have used bits and pieces of it in many other projects.
The brights being auditioned
I went with the brights to make my appliquéd flowers. I also decided I needed to add in some orange for a bit more variety. I used Steam-a-Seam Lite as my fusible web. Not sure how to appliqué? Check out my blog post on how to use fusible web for appliqué.
So here are all my little tulip heads placed on the piece in a row along the bottom. Michael thought they looked like guitar picks. I thought they looked at bit like Hershey Kisses – chocolate is always good. What do you think they look like?
Bright coloured tulip heads in place
I stitched them down with a straight stitch around the edge using the free motion foot in a matching King Tut variegated thread from Superior. This has never been my favourite method of stitching as I don’t usually like the raw edge showing as does with this method but because I already had so much zigzag on the piece I felt this would be better. I also didn’t want to do blanket stitch and I felt it would look out of place on this piece.
Stitching around each flower head
The tulip heads stitched down and now what to do for the stems. I didn’t want to make all kinds of little appliqué stems so decided on a wide free motion zigzag to create the stems. The green variegated thread I chose was much different looking than I had expected it to be but it shows up very well on the background and compliments the flower fabrics nicely.
Close up of stems and leaves
One week left – what will the rules be?
Happy Quilting!
