Broderie Perse: Covid Quilt Challenge #5

Another weekend down, another quilt challenge done. This week our randomly chosen technique was broderie perse. Step one was to google the technique. Basically it's fussy cutting appliqué. We decided to go quite traditional with the project (since it's a very traditional technique) and also said that we would only use inherited fabrics for it. We did however concede that hand appliqué was maybe not achievable in a weekend (at least for us with little to no experience), so we used machine appliqué.

After a bit of googling, the next step was to pull out all the old fabrics we had and try to see what went together. Then it was a matter of adding fusible web to the things we wanted, cutting them out and laying them out. That was easier said than done. It was hard to picture what something might look like once it was cut out, so we each did some cutting before arranging, and we each ended up cutting out a few things that ultimately didn't make the cut.

My friend's fabric had bigger designs on it, and she didn't have much of it, so she went with individual bigger pieces.

She went through a few different arrangement of these pieces, but ended up with a lovely wreath.

She machine quilted around the outside and inside of the wreath, and picked a lovely back and binding to match.

Lovely backing fabric

The fabrics I chose to use had much smaller designs, so I chose to cut out 4 of everything, and make a symmetric design.

As you can see, this took a bit of a toll on the fabric I chose.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but once I got a few things cut out, this layout kind of designed itself. Originally I had less cut out and no overlap, but once I got a few things placed on the fabric, I decided to add some more (and of course it was the pieces that were the fussiest of the cutting that ended up being the ones I added).

I laid it out on my square ruler, because I knew that was about the size I wanted, and then I could easily audition in on different fabrics to find a background. I had a yellow background that I really liked the blue flowers on, but I had all those little yellow dots that wouldn't have worked.

Everything stuck down

Once I got it together, I wasn't sure about what I wanted to do about finishing it. Especially because I had a large number of very small pieces. I let that percolate for a while, and decided that since it was a more traditional technique, I would go with a more traditional finishing method. First I hand embroidered the pieces on (after googling a few stitches for ideas). Then I hand quilted around the design and a 1/2" cross hatch across the rest of it. That much hand work and manipulation meant that some of the small pieces lost their stickiness, so it was a good thing that I had stitched everything down in some way. All the hand work  took me a good chunk of Sunday, but I did manage to get it done in the weekend.

(Great mini quilt frames made by my grandfather)