Tag Archives: applique

Rest Quilt

March 21, 2025Uncategorizedapplique, bargello, c2025, cat, fmq, machine quilting, machine sewing, ruler quilting, self drafted, sitdFinch

My front door is not completely airtight. I tried getting some foam strips to put inside the doorframe, but then I couldn’t close the door. I thought about, and started, a crochet tube that I could hang on the hinges to block the most air from getting in…

But in the end, I decided a quilt that could cover most of the frame/door gap would be the most effective, most fun, and most aesthetically pleasing. I had a jelly roll from Moda Fabrics and decided to do a bargello-ish quilt. I wanted to depict a quarter rest, since I am a musician and I want my home to be a place of rest. A place between all the noise and chaos and effort-giving to rest, restore, relax.

I sketched out the shape on graph paper and determined the widths of the strip sets. I used two “leading edges”, one for the left side of the rest (white) and one for the left side of the background that bounds the rest (dark flowers). I used lighter and less busy prints for inside the rest, and the darker and busy prints for the background.

The blue and purple edges are the rest, so the top edge in the picture is the left edge of the rest, and the gray blocks below the bottom edge are the background strips

Rest fabric in the middle, with the busy background fabrics to both sides

As with a normal bargello, I assembled the strip sets and then cut them to the corresponding widths. The jelly roll didn’t have duplicates of all the fabrics, so I alternated the ones that didn’t have exact matches. Then I pressed the seams to alternate, and sewed the strip sets back together.

After some consideration, especially using a black and white filter on my camera, I decided the edges of the rest needed a tiny border to really make it stand out. I attached a strip of dark green as if it was bias tape, sealing the raw edges of the strip sets inside. Then I appliqued the background onto the right side of the rest, ripped off the unneeded background, and appliqued the rest into the extra background.

Pinned and ready to be appliqued – I used dark green thread and went right over the dark green strips

So that was the rest part, the middle part, done. I still needed two sides to make the quilt large enough. I cut a bunch of 2.5″ strips out of scraps and did a “jelly roll race” type of construction to make a big panel of stripes. Seeing as this area was meant to be busy and chaotic, I cut the panel and re-sewed it together on an angle a couple times. Then I split the panel in two for the two sides, and sewed them onto the middle rest panel.

Then it was time to quilt! I did my most confident free motion motifs: loops, “toothpaste”, and abstract geometric, and switched thread throughout. I liked just doing some freeform, unstructured quilting and filling the space with whatever I wanted. For the rest, I did free motion stitch in the ditch because I needed to change angles often and didn’t want to deal with moving the whole quilt 90 degrees every few inches.

I had to do two nerve wracking cutouts – one for the door handle and chain, and another for the peephole. I measured multiple times and then bravely cut once. 🙂

Peephole cutout 🙂 so strange to take the scissors to a finished quilt

Hand sewing the binding to the back with the friendly helper

To affix the quilt to the door, I made a little frame out of wooden yardsticks (my quilt hanging devices of choice) and screwed it into the door. I used fabric loops to hang the quilt on the frame. And thus, it was done, ready for the tail end of this winter and many winters to come.

Project completed March 2025.

Mixed Media Extravaganza

October 29, 2024Uncategorizedapplique, beading, c2024, crochet, embroidery, felting, fmq, hand embroidery, hand sewing, handspun, machine quilting, machine sewing, needle felting, paint, quilted not quilt, self drafted, spinning, tapestry weaving, weaving, wool yarnFinch

So I’ve collected a lot of skills 🙂 and after picking up a “summer” quilting kit from the Grand Tetons last year, I wanted to expand that project into a Whole Big Thing. The kit references the possibility of doing the same scene but with different fabrics for different seasons, but I wanted to do a full panorama with different peaks, depicting as much as I could of the Teton Range. I used some tracing paper to plan out panels for each of the four seasons, scaled so they’d match up with the quilted panel. My main reference photo is from Willow Flats Overlook when I visited in 2023. The perspective of the quilt is a bit different, but I kind of… made it work.

Main reference photo from Willow Flats Overlook

Plans! The tracing paper rolls out into the whole panorama but having individual pieces was better while I worked.

I started off with the applique quilting kit and added some free motion quilting for details. It was really fun to work on things on a smaller canvas and be able to do details without getting overwhelmed. I also added some hand embroidery for the flowers because I wanted them to pop out 🙂

My first instinct for the next panel was to use crochet, using some funky colorwork and textured stitches. I spun up yarn for each of the different sections: sky, lake, mountains of various white and gray mixes, and autumn-y colors for the sagebrush.

I added some weird bumpy parts and extra stitches in the foreground to mimic the fluffy sagebrush 🙂

I struggled with getting enough contrast between the gray of the mountains and the blue of the sky, so I took a black and white picture and spun up some darker blue that I could blend into the existing sky.

After I had summer and autumn, I struggled with what to do next. I knew I wanted an embroidery panel and a woven panel, but I wasn’t sure which should be spring and which should be winter. I talked it over with a friend and we decided that the crochet shouldn’t be next to the weaving, since they have similar textures and detail resolution. So winter was embroidery! I started by needle felting the background sky and foreground, to automatically add texture that I didn’t need to stitch. I spun some thin yarns of cream/white and rock gray, which was a fun challenge to spin thin enough and consistently enough that I could use it with a normal sized needle. I also thought some beads would be fun for the shininess of the snow 🙂

I was planning to do the winter foreground details with embroidery, but I realized I wanted to incorporate paint into this project, so I used acrylic paint to add trees, bushes, and rocks. It was difficult to paint onto the felted surface because the brush strokes pick up fibers from the felt, but it was doable.

Then I needed a tapestry weaving for spring. Just like with the crochet, I only used yarns I’ve spun, and spun up a few more just for this. I had four different mountain-y layers that I wanted to represent, so I spun four different grays with graduated levels of light gray. In hindsight, I made WAY TOO MUCH, but it was fun. And now I have more mountain gray for later.

I took a weaving class where we were able to take the loom home for a week, and capitalized on this moment to (a) finish this project, and (b) see if this type of loom is useful for tapestry weaving (that’s not its primary use). It was a successful proof of concept for using this type of loom for tapestry, but I think I’m going to pursue purchasing a different kind of loom for some more flexibility and growth potential.

upside down on the loom! I wove the sky first because I knew it would be a solid weaving instead of doing a bunch of color changes… and weaving upside down made me less stressed about getting it perfect

this is the first time I saw all four panels together, they’re pinned to a mini ironing board 🙂

I used some extra fiber to needle felt over the seams between the panels, and then did a border to secure everything together.

My main challenge in finishing this up was getting the crochet to sit the way I wanted it to. I ended up gluing it to some stiff scrap fabric to stabilize it, which went well…. Until I started sewing the fabric frame on. Hot glue and sewing machine needle is not a good pair. 🙂 But I took my time, learned my lesson, and got it done.

Spring! My favorite part to make was the field in the foreground, I improvised all of the color changes and just had a good time

Summer 🙂 so glad I bought this and kicked off this project. I really like the wavy lake quilting with variegated thread

Autumn! I really enjoyed spinning all this yarn, and I have a lot left over for future projects. I’m pretty happy with the shading on Mt. Moran (on the right) and the weird bumpy texture of the sagebrush in the foreground

Winter! I really like the contrast between the line-y-ness of the embroidery and the fuzzy needle felting, and I proved to myself that I can spin yarn to embroider with

Project completed October 2024

no way of knowing

May 24, 2021Uncategorizedapplique, c2021, collage quilt, deconstructed quilt, hand embroidery, hand sewing, machine quilting, machine sewingFinch

Over the past year, I’ve been exploring my feelings and memories and thoughts about my adoption. And with the support of my therapist and adoptee support group, I have created something that really encompasses this nebulous, complex…. experience I’ve had.

This is my attempt at telling, creating, authoring part of my story, and trying to communicate what it’s felt like to have this story and move into writing it myself.

I bought white fabric, dyed it with tea, and then painted it. Created the colors and used scissors and my hands to create the shape.

I took already made fabric and pulled it apart into bundles of thread and pieces with holes and frayed edges.

I incorporated the business card from the orphanage I spent time at, and little baby shoes I found in my parent’s basement. And some tea wrappers, as drinking tea is one of the ways I’m engaging with my heritage right now.

I created a landscape based on research from Google Earth of the surrounding hills and the city I was found in using this imprecise, bits-and-pieces applique.

I wanted to stop here. I had a piece I liked looking at, and it was what I had imagined. But it wasn’t the story I want to tell, the whole story, the true story. So I made it messy and complicated and disjointed, like adoption is, how adoption feels. To be cut off from the first person you ever met and knew, who grew you, to be separated from people who look like you, who you heard while you were waiting to be born. To have an origin story you can’t remember and can’t ever know. To be out of context, displaced… Displaced to somewhere nice, with good people, but to always be a branch grafted onto the family tree.

And so I covered it with black bits of fabric, obscuring it.

And cut it up and fit it together in the wrong places and stitched it together again.

And undid stitches and pulled pieces of fabric up and cut into it.

And covered it with ripped pieces of mesh tulle, covering it in more haze.

And, finally, fit the pieces of a poem I amalgamated from my bits of writing about adoption into the shredded edges. It doesn’t feel like closure, but I did need to express it. It was so strange to make a quilt that is not a grid and angles and 1/4″ seams. In the beginning it was daunting, and I instinctively tried to make it pretty, but that’s not what I feel and not what I wanted it to be.

Feel free to take a listen to the poem while you look.

Project completed May 23, 2021.

Dyed and painted muslin, scraps from previous projects, blue dresses, gray tulle, embroidery thread, and paper.

Quick Resources on adoption:
Long Form Resources on adoption:
- All You Can Ever Know – Memoir by Nicole Chung
- The Primal Wound – Nonfiction Book by Nancy Verrier

Plants Wall Hanging!!

February 27, 2021Uncategorizedapplique, c2021, elizabeth hartman, fmq, machine quilting, machine sewing, msqc, sitdFinch

So I’m a big plant person. I love plants. I have had an ongoing collection of succulents for a couple years, and last summer my cousin (who I made the memory quilt for) gifted me a bunch of mature houseplants like pothos, monstera, and colocasia. So I’ve wanted to do a plant quilt for a long time, and I actually bought half the supplies I needed for this quilt in early 2020. At that time, I was planning on doing the entirety of Elizabeth Hartman’s “Greenhouse Quilt”. Hartman creates incredible patterns of actual animals and objects, all pieced, not applique. This means there’s a lot of cutting itty bitty pieces of fabric, sewing itty bitty pieces of fabric… and a lot of mental effort to stay organized and on track. I had done one block of hers a while ago as a pillow, and used one of the plant blocks as a bag for a friend (below).

And then I saw MSQC’s “Cactus Carnival”, which is applique, and I knew I could combine both these patterns to create something that wasn’t too hard, and had hard angles and soft curves.

I attempted to standardize the sizes of the blocks, since MSQC’s pattern has a 10″ block, and Hartman’s pattern is based on a 6.5″ wide block with varying heights. I ended up adding borders to the Hartman blocks to make them 10″ wide and 15″ tall, so they could work in columns with the MSQC blocks.

I made four blocks of each of the five general plants from MSQC, and used Heat N Bond for all the applique, which ended up going a lot faster than anticipated. I used my rainbow variegated thread (kind of my favorite thread, let’s be honest I’ve used it for probably half my projects) to outline all my applique’d plants with blanket stitch. I didn’t even have to use Heat N Bond for the pot pieces, and laid those gently on top of my applique’d plants.

I’m only applique-ing the plant pieces here, the pot was a placeholder because the fabric hadn’t come in yet

Here I’m going around the main piece, but I come back later to go around every piece. The Heat N Bond doesn’t stay sticky through the washer and dryer, so you have to secure the pieces in another way.

Then I made two versions of each Hartman block – a standard size and an enlarged size. I used the normal pattern for the standard size block, and adjusted the plant to be 8″-9″ for the enlarged size block. The whole time I was kind of stressing because I didn’t think I had enough background fabric to all the blocks, but it ended up totally fine!

I put all the blocks together in a landscape orientation, which is kind of different for quilts! But I intended this to be a wall hanging in my room, behind where I Zoom/video chat from, so that it could be my background! So I arranged my blocks and sewed them together in columns. My first pass of quilting was just straight lines, stitch in the ditch up and down the columns, and then across horizontally.

Then, I did free motion quilting on the pots! I started off using this white thread I got, but it kept breaking, so then I switched to a shiny gray that I’ve had for a while, and that kept breaking too… Finally I figured out the problem was the needle! But that kind of just made the problem happen less often.

[Future Finch, who is writing this post, has completed the Plant Quilt and is working on the next quilt and running into the same problem while free motion quilting. I am now convinced that it’s because I was pushing the quilt through the machine too fast, which pulls the thread too tight and then it snaps. I have been working on slowing down and having patience, which is difficult! The machine is running very fast, so it’s kind of loud and the needle is moving quickly, but I have to move slowly and steadily. I’ve gotten to the point where it’s happening even less often than during the pots, but I’m still working too fast. I don’t know if I want to turn up the machine speed, although I think that could help. It just stresses me out because it’s so loud, which makes me go faster.]

But I persevered through my mistakes and the pots ended up so fun. I had six different “motifs”: swirls, abstract, wavy, rainbow, zigzag, and dots. Each pot, I rolled a die to decide which motif I’d use – as long as it wasn’t the same as the pot I just did or any adjacent pots. It was so fun to vamp on different motifs and find new ways to represent them. It was nice to not have to come up with an entirely new idea, but just a new take on the same motifs. So it was fun to do and fun to look at 🙂

As I was finishing up, I wasn’t sure if it needed more quilting or if I should quit while I was ahead. The applique plants and pots had their own blanket stitch outlines, and the pots had the FMQ, but the Hartman blocks were kind of empty. I called a friend and we decided that I should do limited quilting on the Hartman plants so they blended in with the whole quilt. I matched the designs between the standard and enlarged blocks, so the small cactus has the same quilting as the large catcus, etc. I think it really brought everything together! Last up was the binding and putting it through the washer and dryer. Since I found them at Target, I throw in a “color catcher” sheet with all my new quilts (and some of my more brightly colored clothes), which did come out a gray-ish green.

And now it’s hanging up behind my desk, courtesy of some quilt hanging clips my parents got me for Christmas a couple years ago. 🙂

Project completed February 11, 2021.

Colorful plant pieces: Artisan Batiks – Aviva by Lunn Studios for Robert Kaufman
Ombre Green: Wilmington Essentials – Ombre Washart Forest by Wilmington Prints
Brown pots: Bella Solids – Earth by Moda Fabrics
White background: Kona Cotton – Snow by Robert Kaufman Fabrics
Backing and binding: Painterly Petals – Textures Mint by Studio RK for Robert Kaufman

Memory Quilt 2

January 30, 2021Uncategorizedapplique, c2021, hand sewing, machine quilting, machine sewing, memory quilt, self drafted, sitdFinch

This memory quilt for my cousin was my other big project of 2020, finished in this first month of 2021. My cousin provided her mother’s clothes, which are incredibly fun and colorful. I knew I wanted to do a crazy quilt for my cousin, since she didn’t want something too big, and her mom’s clothes are truly too fun to do something simple with.

First, I inventoried all the fabric and cut off buttons and fasteners and other 3d elements I wanted to include. I chose a 3×3 layout for the back of 9 graphic t-shirts, and figured I’d do the crazy-pieced blocks to match on the front. Through the process, the front blocks ended up a bit smaller but it wasn’t a big deal.

For the piecing, I cut pieces with an uneven number of sides (a tip from the museum employee) for the center piece. Then I added on new fabric to each side, and continued until it was the right size. Since a lot of the fabric was stretchy and textured itself, I used some scrap fabric behind the block to stabilize everything.

I chose some logos to applique, just like my other memory quilt. I appliqued them on the blocks, prior to piecing the 9 blocks together. At this point I also added some lace, belts/scarves, and other ties by machine.

Black and gold belt, some lace, and appliqued logo

Then I pieced it together because I wanted to add the buttons and fasteners between some blocks. I added the buttons and such by hand, since they’re a bit fiddly on the machine.

These were the buttons of the shirt seen in the background of the picture below 🙂

These ribbon flowers were already part of a sweater, so I extracted them from the sweater and sewed them on!

Cute little fastener from the leg of pajama pants

My cousin wanted to feature her mom’s beautifully hand painted wedding dress, so I appliqued one of the main flowers on the middle block and on the back of the quilt. I did simple stitch in the ditch quilting, since the top was already very busy.

I used jean pants pockets to allow my cousin to hang up the quilt if she ever chooses.

Project completed January 2021.

Memory Quilt 1

January 2, 2021Uncategorizedapplique, c2020, hand sewing, machine quilting, machine sewing, memory quiltFinch

My uncle lost his wife in 2018 and I wanted to honor her with a memory quilt out of her old shirts. My uncle provided a bunch of bright polo shirts and other shirts of hers, which I made into a quilt for him. I wanted to keep it really simple and soft, so I cut out big squares from the shirts and laid them out in a grid pattern.

Most of the polos had awesome logos on them, which I wanted to include in some way. I thought a bit about applique-ing them to a border, but I didn’t want there to be lumpy or hard parts throughout the quilt. I decided to put all the logos together in one corner and applique-d them onto a square that already had the Buffalo Bills logo on it. I tacked them down with my sewing machine and then hand stitched around each one to really make sure they don’t go anywhere.

I kept the quilting really simple, two sets of diagonal lines. I used rainbow thread since my aunt was so bright and colorful.

This was my big project of 2020 and I’m so glad I was able to deliver it to my uncle before the year’s end. 2020 has been tough on all of us and I’ve struggled to get into my sewing room as often as I’d like, but I chipped away at this project little by little and I’m really happy with the result. I sent it off to my uncle and he sent me back a picture of it with his cat 🙂

Project completed December 2020.

Humu Humu Embroidery

October 27, 2020Uncategorizedapplique, c2020, embroidery, hand embroidery, hand sewing, self draftedFinch

A year ago, some friends and I went to Hawaii and I bought these really cool ocean beads for an embroidery project. I wanted to have a humuhumunukunukuapua’a with Maui in the background to honor all our snorkeling adventures 🙂

I pieced some scraps together to make the background, and appliqued the black lava flows on. Using lots of layers made the whole thing a bit thick, plus I sewed a backing stabilizing layer onto the back to help with limiting stretch from the embroidery hoop. Luckily I didn’t have to do much embroidery over the thickest parts.

This was my first time doing beadwork, and it was very labor intensive but fun. I used blue and white beads to make seafoam. For whatever reason, I have a stockpile of random beads that’s lived in my craft box forever, so it was nice to use some up. Plus, since I used scraps and thread I already owned, the only cost of this project was the beads themselves.

I used French knots for the ever-present cloud layer around Haleakala, mixing some white and gray threads.

Once upon a time I bought some gradient thread, which finally came in handy for giving the humuhumu texture in the orangey-yellow portions.

And then I added all my ocean/bubble beads! I tried to be as random as possible and the back of this looks like complete chaos 🙂 I cut some yardsticks to size and glued them into a frame. Embroidery often gets displayed in a circle hoop, but I knew from the beginning this piece was meant to be a rectangle. It sits next to my bird embroidery on my stairwell 🙂

Project completed September 2020.

This is what the back looks like! Thread tie offs, criss crosses, and chaos 🙂

Random Updates!

August 12, 2020Uncategorizedacrylic paint, applique, fmq, memory quilt, pillow, updateFinch

With COVID-19, I’ve struggled to get into the sewing room as often as I’d like, but I wanted to share some of the things I’ve worked on / am working on right now.

Currently in progress: 3 memory quilts for family and a skirt for a friend.

Fabric bought but project not started: another spiral rug and a cactus quilt.

Tangled masks straight out of the dryer before I discovered you can use hair ties to tame the strings, **PLEASE COMMENT OR EMAIL ME IF YOU WANT MASKS, I WILL SEND THEM TO YOU**

Pillow for my mom for her birthday using scraps from the bed runner I made her

Entryway paintings made with masking tape and acrylic paint

(above): Wall hanging of my mom’s dog for Mother’s Day, I used applique for the dog and FMQ to make grass texture which was really fun.

Friendly sewing helper blessing one of the memory quilts

Update of my Christmas cat pillow with the cat who inspired it!

Christmas Pillows

January 14, 2020Uncategorizedapplique, c2019, Christmas, embroidery, fmq, machine quilting, paper piecing, pillow, self drafted, sitdFinch

This year I did a bunch of little pillow projects for my friends and family 🙂 I got to learn some different techniques like fusible applique and paper piecing. I used lots of different fat quarters from Joann and scraps from previous projects. I generally used envelope backs and a little label to keep them closed. I stuffed them with some extra stuffing I had from pillows I’d bought previously, unfortunately none of them finished at a normal pillow form size.