I’ve enjoyed Whip Up’s mini quilt month features, and would love to make one of the more “arty” abstract quilts from the book, but for my first effort I restrained myself and went a bit more traditional.

I hand appliqued and embroidered the centre panel, with the house shape based on one from Mama Spark’s World’s My neighborhood block of the month patterns.

I used a very cunning (i.e. a slap the head, shout Doh! why didn’t that occur to me before?) technique that I discovered in Don’t Look Now‘s work, using Steam-a-seam paper to permanently bond the shapes to each other and the background, and then hand embroidered the edges to seal them. I love the look of this kind of appliqué – clean unbulky lines, and sharp corners that I never manage to achieve using needle-turn techniques.

This project has turned out to be a medley of many different stitching ideas, as the flowerbeds are crocheted to give a 3D element to the design:

I tried out some tracing techniques to embroider the lettering. I started off using an air-erasable pen, but had only got partway through the first home before the tracing had completely disappeared! Not immensely useful, so I ended up using a light brown indian ink fine-liner, which worked ok, although it meant that I had to be more accurate in order to cover the lines.

I used a new gadget to machine quilt round the appliquéd shapes and embroidered smoke, adding an extra layer of wadding to give depth. Darning foot – marvellous thing! Note: I was going to buy the branded Janome one for well over a tenner, but happened upon a sewing machine repair shop that had drawers full of  secondhand generic machine feet. With a bit of discussion we decided that the darning foot he had would probably fit my machine, and indeed it did. I do love a bargain, although it turns out that I will probably use this enough to make the Janome one value for money.

Finally, I added a legend to the back and a couple of hanging loops. I hope the recipients liked it.

Techniques used:

• Fusible web appliqué
• Hand embroidery: blanket, stem, back stitches
• Crochet (8 SC into a magic ring)
• Trapunto
• Free motion machine quilting
• Machine piecing
• Handmade bias binding
• Hand sewing (oft forgotten, most important)