Valerean

I'm in the process of making the second mini-quilt for my 2025 calendar project, and once again I have so much respect for quilters and sewists who do needle-turned applique. This one little bunny near about drove me crazy trying to sew it to my mini. This improvised piece has been slowly developing over the last week, and I have one last addition to the tableau before I call it done. I'm going to embroider 자신을 사랑하세요 on the right side, which in English means love yourself. I printed out the words in a large font so I could reference them while stitching, and used a disappearing marker to write them character by character on the piece to give myself embroidery lines. Then it's just a matter of back stitching all the lines. Here's the final mini-quilt. Since 2023 (the year of the rabbit in the Chinese zodiac) I've been quietly working on ways to be kind to and love myself instead of depending on kindness and love from others. These calendar project...

I did another experimental pear patchwork block using silk sewn backward to a muslin foundation and then turned out and ironed flat. The applique looked okay, but was a bit thick to sew through with my embroidery needle. Then I tried another needle-turned applique, this time doing it the way I thought it should work by cutting curves only when I reached them with the needle (and it was easier than the classic method.) I think the third method works best for me, so that's what I'm going to use for the project.

Over the past few days I've been turning these orphanned blocks into quilted and embroidered pieces, which I will make into gift bags for the upcoming birthdays and holidays. They're from an estate sale lot I purchased a while back, and it always gives me a good feeling to use something unfinished by another quilter. I decided to get a little ambitious and try cloning the applique work on the largest block to fill in the two unfinished squares. You might recall that I don't do applique work. As in at all. My experience is needle-turning exactly one tiny heart on my last linen quilt. That's it. Anyway, I was pretty proud of how well I did making the little Dresden plate pieces, and appliquing them in place. I quilted and embroidered the block as well, and then got my camera to take this picture, at which point I realized one of my appliques (upper right side) had too many points. I was so nervous I actually sewed in the test patch I cut to size the rest. ...

I put the last stitches in the fall scrap runner last night: After I ironed on the leaf appliques I stitched them down with gold and copper holographic Sulky, just to be sure they'd stay put. Looks very nice atop the kitchen wall:

I completed the quilting and binding for my fall table runner: All that's left to do is iron on these maple leaf batik fabric appliques, which I ended up buying from Etsy, and secure them with a bit of stitching. Stay tuned to see the final results. :)