Happy accidents are mistakes with a silver lining. A year ago, I had one of those happy accidents.
Have you ever taken one of those quizzes online to find out who your spirit animal is or what character from a show you are most like? I decided to make one of those quizzes about quilters. The idea was to link quilter traits to flowers. I drafted a bunch of flowers and was going to send a free fusible applique pattern (2-D) to anyone who completed the quiz. (You can take it here if you want)
Well, one thing leads to another. I figured I should make these to promote a little more interest. Of course, I started with the easiest one first – the Daisy.
I was so excited. It was looking so cute…. until I noticed the stem. Do you see it?? That little rectangular green shadow under the petal?
Rather than get discouraged. I decided to solve the problem on the next one. I could either tweak the stem to it wouldn’t be noticeable or make the petals opaquer (yes – it is a real word). I opted for the later and that made all the difference.
To make the petals less transparent, I needed to add something like a stabilizer. I do remember a few of the sewing lessons my mom gave me.
Then, I started going down the rabbit hole. And it was amazing!
Stabilizer meant body. Body meant it might be able to hold a shape. Holding a shape meant I might be able to make the flowers 3-dimensional. But then what about the underside? Was there a double-sided stabilizer/fusible product out there? If I use a stabilizer, will it be too much bulk for a needle to handle? Could I solve that with a little engineering of the appliques? But what if I wanted to add embroidery or beads, the stabilizer may be too stiff? But if I added a little batting, that may act as a pincushion. That still didn’t solve my embroidery issue… What about couching? Maybe that could work.
That stream of consciousness and experimenting to see what could work was exhilarating. Yes, I was excited about quilting. I had ideas flooding into my head and I couldn’t wait to try them. Here are some of the results!
3-D Floral Fancy of this started because I didn’t like a fabric shadow under my fusible applique.
Happy Quilting!
