Applique

Having fallen in love with the idea of sewing, I wanted to put some of the fabric I'd bought to good use.  I love notebooks and have loads of them lying around, so I decided to cover one with fabric and applique a design on to it.  I used my blue spotty material again, and added some hearts which I embroidered onto.  Here it is:

This is now my craft journal.

I used the same technique to make some birthday cards:

 - You'll have to go to the bottom of the blog to see this picture as no matter what I do, I can't get it to move here!

Then another notebook, for my mother-in-law this time:

And then branched out and tried another shape for cards:

I thought these little attempts were quite successful, so, being the impatient fool I am, I thought I could do anything and this led to my biggest challenge yet!  My goddaughter will be two next month and I wanted to make her an alphabet chart.  I had bought some 6" x 6" squares of fabric and thought they'd be a good base for the squares with the different appliques in.

And so, armed with fabric pieces, bondaweb and embroidery thread, I got going.

"A" was quite easy, I managed to draw a simple apple shape (I really can't draw as you will find out!) and applique it from red fabric and a bit of brown.  It's done in blanket stitch with the stem in satin stitch.

Then for "B" I decided to try a bird.  I got a bit adventurous here and tried out a feather stitch on the wings.

"C" took me a bit more time to draw as I couldn't get the shape right, but once I'd stitched it with running stitch and added button wheels I felt it looked like a fairly respectable car!

For "D" I used the template of a dog from "Applique for Little Ones" by Sylvie Blondeau.  His patch is in felt and his ears are double sided so they would hang.  They don't really but you can lift them up if you want!

I found a template on the internet for the elephant and outlined it with a lovely Pekinese stitch - this is the stitch that fired my interest in embroidery and got me scouting the internet for stitches and ideas.

I thought "F" would be easy, but I'm not that pleased with this little flower.

"G" was a nightmare.  It took me ages to find a word as I wanted it to have a "g" sound as in gate, not as in giraffe.  This girl template came from "100 Applique Motifs" by Deborah Green.  I adapted it a bit to look the way I wanted.

Then came "H".  What have I started??  I tried to make a house, but the more I work it, the less it looks like a house!  I started with 4 windows and cut them out of the house, attempting to fold a seam back to leave a neat edge.   It didn't work.  I think I need to try again with 2 windows.  I'll keep you updated!

Oh, and you may be wondering why there are no letters on this alphabet chart?  I'm going to sew them seperately and add some velcro to the back so she can match the letters to the pictures when she's a bit older.