landscape quilting Archives - Princess YellowBelly Designs

How to Applique Fabric Art Quilts with Confidence

May 28, 2019May 28, 2019 by admin

If you have read any of my blogs at all, you will know that I love and use appliques, A LOT! I think they are the #1 friend of a fabric artist because they are the storytellers, which is what fabric art is all about.

Things Weren’t Always this Good, Kids

I used to avoid appliques like the plague when I first started because they seemed to be too difficult and time consuming. And they really can be if you follow all the ‘rules’ about how they should be cut and applied.

Learn how to applique to create magnificent statement & landscape quilts

I had a friend who once made a quilt that had a swath of flower appliques across one bottom corner.

Sound simple? Think again. That “simple” took her almost 2 years to stitch on (by hand) with stitches so tiny that her husband finally bought her a large, stand-up magnifying glass that she could use to see her own stitching. The whole process gave her major headaches, and I was absolutely horrified by it all and swore off appliqueing for life.

When I started creating my own fabric art, however, I realized several things:

I hate matching corners, so I had to find a different quilting style
Landscape is an amazing alternate style, but you can’t do it if you can’t applique

So, with gritted teeth, I bought some how-to books and started learning. Being me, it didn’t take long to come up with a faster and easier way to do this, which I want to share with you here.

In the case of this panel, first the dark green background shamrock was appliqued down. Then the broken hearts were appliqued down. Then the golden rope was sewn down. Learning how to applique makes creating unique and beautiful projects like this one a fun and easy adventure.

Break the Mold – Bend the Rules

First of all I asked myself; “Who’s ever going to look that closely at my friend’s painstaking appliqueing job on that quilt?”

Answer, probably no one, and if they do, they’re likely Quilt Nazis and who cares what they think anyway?

Certainly not me!

My mom – who was an extremely accomplished clothing seamstress used to say if someone was going to look that closely, then they had problems she didn’t want to even think about. I guess that’s where my attitude comes from.

Running wild black stallion on the beach at sunset, black, orange, gold, red fabric art interior wall art

So, keeping that in mind, I came up with my quicker, faster, easier version of appliqueing.

Principle #1 – Any Shape Known to Mankind Can Be Made Into an Applique

It’s not just about flowers, hearts, and stars. Literally anything you can conceive of can be made into an applique.

When I first started, I followed the appliqueing protocols and made my appliques out of tiny little different colored pieces of fabric that I laboriously cut out, laid down and stitched to make it look like a rose or whatever.

This quilt was one of the first places I used applique for an art project.
It seems incredible, but these appliques covered holes that were developing in these vintage squares.

As a quick aside, if you get into any quilting style you’ll likely figure out an easier way to do it sooner or later. But remember, emulate before you innovate. Doing it the “right way” the first time helps you understand the principles behind these techniques.

With that being said, it only took this one project to make me go seeking a better way.

Principle #2 – Keep it Simple

It’s very hard to translate an elaborate shape with lots of little pieces, etc. into a fabric applique. So look for the simplest outline you can find.

I prefer to use big appliques in single blocks. For instance, it’s much easier to get a custom rose applique if you fussy-cut an image out of a printed fabric swatch and use our easy process to turn any piece of fabric into a custom applique instead.

For other custom appliques I make a habit of envisioning the end result in my mind, and then figuring out the easiest way to translate that to fabric.

I can see what I want in my mind, but translating that into fabric is something else so I went looking for help. My favorite resource for this is coloring book shapes on Google. If you type ‘Treasure Chest Coloring Book Shapes’ into your search engine, you will get pages of outlines of treasure chest shapes to choose from! Or:

Absolutely anything. It’s marvelous! Here is how to applique using these types of shapes:

Mermaid shapes
Rockets
Dragons

Print Out 2 Copies of the Shape You Want

One the size you’re going to use, and a small one as a guideline, because once you cut the big shape into pieces, it’s often hard to figure out how it all goes back together.

Plan a 3-Dimensional Outcome

Some appliques can be cut out of just one piece of fabric – silhouettes – for example; but if you want the others to look more realistic, you’ll have to use more than one fabric.

My treasure chest applique on my Ocean Maidens quilt was made using a few simple layering steps:

The top and front pieces were a dark brown fabric
The end (or side of the chest) piece was black. This makes the chest look 3-D in shading terms
The “steel” strapping was gray fabric
The lines in the boards were made with thin black yarn

You can also add hardware in the form of buttons to make a clasp or lock, or use hot-fix studs to effect the metal work on a treasure chest. With these simple principles you can make any shape you want into a beautiful, 3-D layered applique.

Another panel, another style of treasure chest and a mermaid!

Fussy Cutting Magic

This is simply cutting an image you want out of a larger piece of fabric. The cardinals in my ‘Autumn Daze’ panel and my ‘Christmas Carolers’ were made this way, as well as all the fairies I put in anywhere I can.

You can add paperbacked soft-fuse to these images, and then use judicious stitching to pop out the 3-D effect.

Birds cut from one panel to stand out in another
The peacock and butterfly were both fussy cut from different panels

This is one of my very favorite time-saving techniques when we’re talking about how to applique, but as it’s a longer, more involved technique we’ll do an article all about this later. But the most important tip for fussy cutting is to always use a small pair of scissors with very sharp points, to get into those very small areas in every shape.

Apply Paperbacked Soft-Fuse to Every Piece Before You Cut the Applique Out

This helps to stabilize your fabric making it easier to cut out. The soft-fuse also nips fraying in the bud for long periods of time, and it enables you to iron your applique down right where you want it – you can even re-position your piece once or twice if you didn’t get it right the first time.

Believe it or not…
The red feathers on our Freedom Flight panel are all appliqued down

There’s another article about this product, and you can read it anytime.

Principle #3 – How to Applique – The Actual Sewing-it-Down-Right Part

Whew, we’re finally to the actual applique part of this project. And here you have to make two important choices; thread and stitch type.

Thread Choice

Do you want your applique or the thread itself to be the real pop-out star of the show?

If it’s your applique, then choose a matching or an invisible thread that mostly disappears unless you look very carefully. This allows the applique to shine forth.

If you want the thread to pop – which is something I usually go for when doing flowers or mermaid tails – then choose thread that is a couple of shades darker or lighter than your applique so that it will show up well. Variegated threads and metallic threads work very well for this.

Without metallic threads these mermaids would fade into the background – plus mermaids are magical, and should sparkle!

How to Applique Using the Right Stitch Type

I use three different types of stitches depending on the effect I’m going for.

Straight Stitch

This is when you stitch just along the inside edge of your applique. When you apply any type of soft-fuse product you control the fraying somewhat, but you can’t stop it completely. This is known as raw-edge applique, because when you stitch a straight line around an applique you will have a small amount of fraying and the outer edge will look a little ragged.

I’m not a big fan of this look unless I’m making something that should look fuzzy and fray-ish, like grass, etc. However, appliqueing with a straight stitch uses a lot less thread and is by far the fastest way to sew an applique down.

Black stallion running wild against red, orange, and gold sunset backdrop fabric magic quilt

Straight stitch also works best for appliques that won’t fray, such as embroidery appliques that you buy at the store.

And, sometimes, when you’re doing detail work – like on a mermaid’s face, for example, you just have to do it and put it as close to the edge as possible.

Blanket Stitch

A blanket stitch is a straight stitch that throws in one zig-zag stitch every 3^rd or 4^th stitch. It’s a great combination of a straight stitch’s neatness, and a zig-zag stitch’s security.

How to applique with a blanket stitch is also a relatively easy concept – as you don’t have to go as slowly or be so extremely accurate going around the outside of an applique. The one zig-zag will catch your applique if you miss the straight stitch part.

I use this stitch a lot on my fabric appliques like leaves, flowers, etch. They don’t fray hardly at all, and the blanket stitch mostly disappears on them, so it looks as if they’re just lying there by magic.

These types of silk leaf and flower appliques are sewn down using either straight or blanket stitches, while the tree roots behind them are appliqued down with a satin stitch.

If your sewing machine will allow it, you can also reverse the direction of a blanket stitch to accommodate your natural right-or-left-hand sewing direction.

Zig-Zag Satin Stitch

This is my favorite appliqueing stitch because it finishes up your edges so beautifully and stops all those little frays in their tracks.

I’m NOT a fan of fraying – as you might have guessed. Actually, I loathe fraying, and I often feel as though I’m in a war against those picky little threads. As I sew each section of a quilt together and the frays are incorporated into the seams, I perform a little victory dance in my head.

With a tight zig-zag satin stitch you can conquer your frays.

I also prefer the satin stitch – which is just a very tight zig-zag – because it’s more dramatic, covers everything and just looks cool. Variegated thread makes a stunning impact in this instance, as in my ‘Summer Lily Table Topper.’

I used a matching metallic thread to satin stitch around the tails of my mermaids in my Ocean Maidens quilt and that really made them pop. The neat thing about a satin stitch is that you can make it as narrow or wide as you like to achieve the look you’re going for.

This is a typical use of a satin stitch as an applique technique – it finishes the raw edges neatly with no possibility of fraying
For sharper highlights, one alternative to a satin stitch is using embroidery thread strands
Or a satin stitch can be used to create delicate details, like the thinnest rays of this Star of Bethlehem in addition to appliqueing the fabric down

How to Applique – That’s All Folks!

And that’s it. That’s all appliqueing is – finding the shape you want, cutting it out, applying soft-fuse, and sewing it down.

Don’t let it frighten you. It’s actually a lot easier than it looks, and like everything else practice makes perfect, or as perfect as anything man-made can be. Plus appliqueing is fun, endlessly creative, and saves a lot of time on matching pesky points!

To your increased Quiltivity, see you next time…

Backgrounds Come First in Landscape Quilt Designs

April 3, 2019 by admin

Cowboy riding at sunset - brilliant background in a landscape quilt design

Some quilters, like me, want to make beautiful quilts without matching points. One of the easiest and best ways to achieve this is by sewing beautiful landscape quilt designs. Landscape quilts are bold, eye-catching, individually unique, and in my opinion a lot easier to sew and quilt than most traditional patterns.

But with these quilts you can’t start in the front – with your snow-capped mountains or your fairies on flowers.

You have to start with the background elements.

A background, by its very definition, is in the back. For most of us this translates as “not as important” or “the very least important part of your quilt.” After all, it’s the main pattern that you want people to notice. That’s where your talent shines.

Believe it or not – there’s a series of traditional pinwheel squares behind these colorful fish.

And this is true as far as it goes, but we need to recall that old saying, “Behind every successful businessman is his wife.”

In other words, in any endeavor it’s the hidden, nearly invisible, foundation that has to be built correctly in order for the structure to be of any use. So let’s take a look at how that translates into fabric art.

Backgrounds Matter in Every Quilt – Not Just Landscape Quilt Designs

Although backgrounds are vital to the success of any landscape quilts, and landscape backgrounds can also be a lot of fun, other quilts have background elements that need to be treated with respect in order to work.

Backgrounds are the biggest areas in quilts and are therefore important.
If you don’t pick the right background color or pattern, you’ll waste all your time, money and talent because the “front pattern” will not pop out like it should.

I once spent 3 weeks selecting and cutting pieces for a double wedding ring quilt.

My choice was a dark blue that matched the blue in the flower patterned fabric that made the wedding rings – the “front pattern.” After all that, when I sewed the first part together it was awful! Everything vanished and the pattern was totally obscured. So it was back to the drawing board for me.

Understand Quilt Backgrounds

We used a zipper back background on this autumnal wall hanging. The tree trunk cover much of the long-short stripping, but the effect is still to create an abstract, believably blurred out background.

To avoid this kind of waste, here are a few tips that will help you skip past the “learning from your own mistakes” section, straight to the “WOW” section.

Take the time to just think about what you want your project to be and do.

Whether it’s a small wall hanging or a king quilt, everything you make should have a purpose which can vary from keeping you warm, to beautifying your home, to impress, to show love, to tickle your funny bone, etc.

Backgrounds provide one of three functions:

To fade into the background. In this instance, your background is simply providing the foundation for the real pattern or foreground to live on.
To focus most of the attention on a single entity in the pattern such as a mermaid, dragon, house, etc. Here the background does not fade out but enhances the foreground.
To carry the same importance as the foreground. This occurs when your background (as in our Running Wild panel) is the equal to the foreground.

Choosing the Right Fadeout Color

If you want the background in your landscape quilt designs to fade in the overall field of vision a pale, muted color is best – beige comes to mind. Maybe I should call it cream, since it sounds so much more sophisticated!

Seriously, though, look at the fabrics that will make up your main pattern, and you might be able to choose one of the colors in that to use as a background.

Although it looks like a plain cream background, if you look closely at this example of a landscape quilt design, you’ll notice that there are 4 different cream colors in each “leaf.”

This was the case on my famous/infamous ‘Home Pastures’ quilt. There was a certain shade of blue in each of our three main printed fabric panels. We took those panels to the quilt store, and searched through the entire selection of blue until we found a fabric that picked that shade up – and we used it as the sashing – which can be a type of background in itself.

If the choice doesn’t just jump up and smack you in the face, try this:

lay out all the fabrics you think might work
Then lay one piece of your main design on top and see which ones look yucky, okay, good, great, and fantastic. Of course, you want to use the one that looks fantastic.
If you can’t decide, get another opinion. Michael and Suzanna are both great at this.

Even though your background is the largest part of your quilt, if you pick the right color for it, your eye will see it but your brain won’t. This is also true for strongly contrasting backgrounds – if it’s right, it vanishes under the weight of the overall effect.

Choosing the Right Focusing Color

When the purpose of your background is to focus all of a viewer’s attention on a single entity, you need to think and plan very carefully. Achieving this effect is more a result of purposeful strategy than simply choosing the right color.

This principle is often used in nature photography.

A background, even a very strong background like a mountain, is blurred out in order to focus all the attention on the bird or flower or whatnot.

The Milky Way Baby Quilt is at least 93% background, and a layered background at that. But the entire effect is to focus your eye on one tiny applique at the top – the cow jumping over the bucket and the moon.

If you look at a Thomas Kinkaid painting, you’ll notice that everything points to one place – usually a house. He achieved that effect with all the background details and his unique use of light.

You can do the same with your fabric art.

Pick out one or two things that you want to focus viewers’ attention on, and then pick images (flora, fauna, water, wildlife, etc.) to enhance that.

Most of the time these types of backgrounds are very busy, like my coral reef panel. In some landscape quilts designs, however, the more austere your background, the better your main image pops.

So it all depends. There are no hard and fast rules here.

Choosing the Right “Backwards Coming Forwards” Color

As crazy as this sounds, sometimes your background needs to be your foreground. This mostly occurs in very strikingly austere quilts such as silhouettes.

When you make a silhouette, your foreground is one solid color – usually black. In order to make that pop, you need a very striking background. We use this design element in projects such as ‘Running Wild’ & ‘The Cowboy and His Lady.’

The sunset colors in the background are the focal point.

In my Camel Panel, I used a darker constellation fabric for my background, and even though the black silhouetted camels are in the foreground, it’s the night sky that you see first.

Once again, lay out your fabrics, and try different combinations until you’re happy with the look.

A nice side-effect of this type of project is that it’s hard to go wrong. If you have an idea of what effect you want to achieve, and your silhouette is easily recognizable (like a horse) then your background will become stunning pretty easily.

Use the Background to Create Movement in Landscape Quilt Designs

One of the major differences between traditional quilting and fabric art is that quilting creates a pattern, and fabric art creates a picture.

Since we’re interested in the unique and creative, obviously we want our fabric art to do more than just lay there looking impressive with all our point matching exactly.

One of the ways fabric art mirrors reality is by creating movement.

This particular project is still under construction – eventually though these wide borders will be a “tidal pool and silver net” background for the central mermaid panel.

And I’d say that approximately 59% of the movement in a quilt should come from the background elements.

Since we’re talking fabric art here, movement is achieved with fabric and the patterns you put it into. Many quilting patterns naturally mimic movement, and the limit to making them take flight is only your imagination.

Landscape Quilt Designs that Create Movement

A few of my favorite patterns for creating movement in landscape quilting designs are:

The pinwheel
Bargello
Zipper back
Strip piecing
And patchwork patterns.

These patterns mimic movement in and of themselves, but when you purposefully design the colors to create one effect, level to level, from the beginning, it really enhances the effect.

My best example of this is my Coral Reef panel.

If you look closely at the background, you will see I used a pinwheel pattern. I constructed 3 levels of these, starting with the darkest down against the sand, then a medium level and lastly a very light level, to convey the impression of moving upwards.

Next, I used one or two of the same fabric in each level (note the lime green) to help draw the eye back and forth.

And even though your eyes may not consciously notice the background here because of all of the stuff happening in the foreground of this panel, your brain notes it and says “water”.

This same technique works just as well for any project and any pattern. Bargello is all about using the same colors in different layers, to draw the eye and create movement.

Pay attention to the fabrics you use in your designs. There are so many different ones out there with circles, swirls, dots, zigzags, starbursts, leaves, bubbles, etc. If you use these in your background patterns they will automatically create movement all by themselves and enhance your illusions exponentially!

As with all fabric art, the creating is the glory, so let your inner genie loose on your backgrounds first!

POPPING WITH FOAM – A Professional Review of Quilting Foam

February 2, 2019January 29, 2019 by admin

Tropical fish on a coral reef quilt. The quilt bursts and pops with 3-dimensional effect thanks to quilting foam

Quilting Foam is the most amazing invention to come along in ages! With this one amazing product in your back pocket you can learn how to make your quilts burst and pop with 3-Dimensional effects and deep texture you can’t find in ordinary quilts.

It can be used:

As a stabilizer in bags
To create the same effect as trapunto quilting
Or simply as a super stabilizer instead of interfacing

I have used 2 different brands, but found no real difference between them. The first is Bosal In-R-Form and the second is ByAnnie’s Soft and Stable.

Quilting Foam Makes Your Quilts Burst and Pop with Effect

The only real difference is personal preference because both are the same thickness and perform the same way.

I mostly use the Bosal-N-R Foam because one side has a slightly adhesive surface that will adhere to your fabric when you iron your fabric onto the foam. It only holds for a little while, though, so I always pin the two together if I’m not going to be sewing it within 24 hours.

The second reason I use this brand of foam is because Suzanna can find it on Amazon for a significantly reduced price.

Having experimented with foam in several different projects, I will now give you my vast store of wisdom on this subject.

Trapunto Quilting Replacement

Trapunto is an Italian word that means: “popping up certain parts of a quilting design, to make it stand out from the rest of the pattern.” (It’s shorter in Italian…)

I am really attracted to this look in a quilt.

It’s done by placing a double layer of batting behind your project, quilting it all, and then cutting away the second layer of batting from everything but the designs you want to emphasize.

To me, this is a great waste of batting and worse, incredibly tedious.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m not the most patient person in the world, and I have absolutely none for needless busy work.

actual trapunto effect instead of quilting foam on a quilted panel with orange lilies and autumn grasses

We tried the trapunto technique on our “Fairies in my Garden” panel because we wanted to see if it was worth it. I did the quilting and Suzanna did the trimming – actually I made her. She has a vastly greater tolerance for busy work than I do, but even she concluded that the result wasn’t worth the time, and this was only a panel, NOT an entire quilt top!

So we looked around for other ways to achieve the same effect without the busy work.

Experimental Alternatives to Foam

First we would put batting just behind the designs we wanted to pop out, trim them, and then quilt a 2^nd layer of batting behind the entire design.

This worked well as long as we didn’t quilt the background design too lightly. We found that the heavier we quilted the background, and the more lightly we quilted our pop ups, the more obvious the difference between the 2 and therefore more visually appealing.

But it still wasn’t a big enough difference to suit me.

After that, I tried quilting the entire panel, and then adding elements that I wanted to emphasize after. Basically I would cut out a piece of batting with the applique, then put them on together.

I did this on our Winter Wonderland Panel, when I added the trees after I had added batting to each “tree” separately, and then quilting the trees to the panel. This was pleasing, but a lot of extra work, so I looked around for another idea.

That’s when I found foam. What a revelation!

How to Make Sewing With Foam Easier

Foam is approximately 1/8” thick and loves to be sewn. It pretty much stays where you put it, and has a marvelous popup affect.

Don’t use it for very small designs

It’s a waste of foam because the popup effect is lost in the quilting process. I found this out with my “Cowboy and His Lady panel”. I put foam behind the cowboy, his lady, his dog, and the windmill. It worked just fine on the first 3 figures, but because the windmill blades were much smaller, and the satin stitching around the edges almost touched in the middle of each blade, the popup effect was entirely lost. So, don’t waste time or foam putting it behind very small designs.

Cut Your Fabric ¼ inch wider than your foam shapes

When I first began using foam, I would cut the shapes right out of the foam, place the matching fabrics on top, and then satin stitch around the edges. This is how my “Lily Pad Table Topper” was constructed. As you can see, it works great for larger designs, but I’ve figured out a trick to this too.

When you satin stitch around these foam/fabric pieces, you have to use a very wide satin stitch in order to cover the edges because the foam is so thick. To get around this, I’ve started cutting my fabric ¼” wider than the foam. This way, when you layer the foam and fabric, the fabric lays down over and covers the edge of the foam and then it only takes a narrow satin stitch to finish the edge.

This is the technique I used around the edge of the moon in my “Night Guardian” panel.

Know when to make your own templates

Quilting foam cut-out of mermaid shape, this effect will make the mermaid burst and pop out of her quilted panel when finished

When I’m putting foam only behind certain design elements in an already printed panel, there is no way to sew it on the top as in my moon, or camels, etc. Instead, I trace out the designs I want to pop (I make my own template), and then I use this template to cut out the foam. Then I layer the foam behind the design feature, and quilt – not too heavily. When I have it the way I like it, I trim away the excess slivers from the foam.

This is how I did the mermaid and the large starfish in my still-under-construction-mermaid quilt. This works great for panels, and other images that are already printed.

Foam is also a great stabilizer for any sort of bag you want to sew

Diaper bags
Media bags
And makeup travel bags.

Quilting foam helps the bag to hold its shape, and gives your project a lot of added strength. I have found that in this application, the heavier you quilt here, the more your bag will hold its shape and stand upright.

A word of caution about foaming a bag

I found that out because the foam is so thick it quickly makes seams too thick to sew. I almost went insane trying to get my first media bag through my machine, even using my jeans needles, and I broke A LOT!

The 2^nd bag I made sure to cut the foam ½” narrower that the fabric with much better results.

Now I Can Pop “That” Up – and “That” Can be Anything At All

Be sure to experiment, and enjoy working with this great product. I’m sure some of you will come up with some more creative ways to incorporate it into your projects – it really is worth it.

If you come up with an absolutely amazing way to make your quilts burst and pop, or if you discover something new about using foam, please contact us and let us know what you did and how you did it. Pictures are great to!