Another One Bites the Dust: Covid Quilt Challenge #9

Another week, another challenge. We have some plans (crazy, I know) for the next few weekends, so we decided we needed to do another challenge because it will be a month before we can do the next one. However, I also wasn't sure I was up for another full weekend, full brain power challenge. So this time, instead of randomly picking our challenge we decided to do some freehand machine embroidery (since we felt it would take a little less time/energy to do). It still took a good chunk of my day, but I was able to putter a little bit more.

We started by doing some googling, which was harder than it should have been because we didn't know the right words to use. We found eventually that the words "freehand machine embroidery" got us most of the way there, and then similar image searching narrowed it down for us. We were definitely looking for something a little more basic and we liked the more fun/whimsical ones with black thread outlines. We picked a cake that we liked the look of and decide to both do a version of it for our test piece. Since it was only 3 rectangles of fabric and a cake plate just done of stitching, we decided we could do it fairly quickly.

Mine

My friend's

What I learned was that I can't just freehand things without anything to go off of (as evidenced by my cake plate). I also started with a slight advantage as my friend had never even broken out her quilting foot. But she's a very talented individual and caught on very quickly (plus it helps that it's small pieces that aren't meant to be done perfectly).

This was all accomplished on Friday night. We knew that these projects were a bit less of a time commitment, so we decided we would do a bit of a series that we could possibly revisit another time as well. Because of this, we decided we wanted our things to be the same size and we picked 5" finished (which is the bottom end of our perimeter). For our series we picked a theme of fruit. We decided we would each make 3 fruit pieces.

We each ended up picking a smaller theme for our 3 fruits. I chose "July" as my theme, picking my favourite local fruits that I can get in July — strawberries, cherries, and yellow plums. I decided to do a different number for each piece — 1 strawberry, 2 cherries, and 3 plums — and I also decided that I wanted to incorporate a little bit green into each one (for some consistency).

After sketching each one, I cut out paper templates and then fabric pieces, which I laid out how I thought I wanted. Then I attached a little bit of fusible webbing to the pieces just to help them stick in place when I went to stitch them. I was a little worried when I cut the paper out, because there wasn't much of a difference between my plums and my cherries, but getting them in the right colours really made a difference.

After that it was just a matter of stitching things in place with black thread.

Then came the tricky part. We hadn't really decided how we were going to finish them; we just knew we didn't really want to bind them. I had a lot of extra when I worked, so I decided to trim the back and the batting down to size and then fold the front under and around to finish it on the back. I then used my machine stitches to sew around the outside to hold the border in place. I worked from the back to make sure I was stitching where I wanted. The machine work was a little less controllable than I wanted. It made for a very rustic feel, which on this project was fine, but wouldn't be good for things I wanted to look more  polished. If I had been feeling a little more ambitious I could have free-handed something, but I had enough trouble making sure that the edge staged in place and my stitching didn't get too far out of place with the pre-existing stitch that I don't know how successful I would have been.

My friend chose her theme to be "a study in yellow". We did not tell each other our themes or chosen fruit as we worked — we decided it would be more fun that way (and we wouldn't influence one another).  She ended up picking a banana, a pineapple, and a lemon.

She mostly used the same method I did of pre cutting the shapes she wanted and tacking them down with fusible web before stitching them.

However, for her pineapple top, she instead went with another method we had seen which was to use a bigger piece of fabric, stitch what you wanted and then trim down to just outside the stitching lines. She said it was a little difficult because you're basically in no man's land in terms of knowing where to go (instead of having an outline to follow). She used a paper template to help with that.

She also struggled with what to do to finish them. In the end, she decided to face them, but before she did that, she free motion stitched an outer border on them and then attached the facing. She did a very good job getting the outer border lined up before she turned everything under.

I think they look really cute framed from the back too.