Last week, I shared with you my 1st project for #AutumnJubilee2022 . This week, the next step in the Autumn Jubilee Wool Stitch Along, was to “embellish your wool Cornucopia”. Go take a look at Carole’s post when you finish here, and see how fantastic her project is coming along. As you may remember, I deviated from the Wool & all that hand stitching. When I read today’s post, I got inspired to get busy, and do the machine applique stitching on my fusible applique pieces.
Before I could start the machine applique stitching, I needed to do a couple of things. I layered up my project with a piece of Warm and Natural Quilt batting and a piece of Pellon 806, stitch and tear stabilizer, behind my background fabric and batting. I will confess to using some 505 spray to keep everything in position until I could get a few safety pins in place. You may ask why do all that before applique stitching, and the answer is, I like the stitches to have something to “bite into”. I could use just batting, but putting the stabilizer behind the batting keeps me from getting all that batting fluff in my machine. Of course, some will get in there with each puncture of the needle, but my feed dogs will be clean.
I pulled out threads that I thought might work well, and started with an Aurifil tan, a 50 wt cotton for around the cornucopia and other light colored items.
I also used some Coats & Clark variegated thread, which is also a 50 weight quilting cotton. This was used around many of the leaves and pumpkin.
As I stitched, I decided that I needed a dark red and a green, and pulled those from my wall of embroidery threads. Using a blanket stitch, (#42 on my Janome 8900) I was soon finished. (I did take a short break this afternoon for an eye appointment, and was SO happy that they didn’t dilate my eyes, and I could get back to stitching!)
After reading Carole’s post today about embellishing her Cornucopia, and her suggestion to maybe do a little embroidery, I decided that I would do just that.
Early this month, I downloaded a cute embroidery design from Sew Sweetly, and thought it would work nicely on this project. If you are looking for cute Fall designs, the ones sold by Sew Sweetly stitch out very well. You might remember I used some of Sew Sweetly designs in a 2020 project during Autumn Jubilee 2020.
I decided to add the embroidery design on an angle on the left corner of the project, using the same thread colors that I had previously stitched with in the machine applique. The exception is the gold for the leaf. I couldn’t use the Coats & Clark in my embroidery machine, so I pulled a deep gold for one part of the embroidery. Note, I started with a 5×7 design, and resized it by reducing it to 80 % and rotating it in the machine. In the photo below, you can see the basting stitch that my machine does (black thread); which really helps me with the placement.
I think the final stitching looks pretty darn good. Note – the machine embroidery was done on my Janome 11000. This time I used the 6×8 magnetic hoop, and just hooped a piece of tear away stabilizer. I did a basting stitch in my hoop to hold the project in place, showing me the “field” that it would stitch in. Once the stitching was finished that stabilizer that was hooped easily tore away. There is still a piece on the entire back of the project that will be carefully removed once the project is closer to finished.
So here is how it looks at the end of Monday – and oh, dinner was late because I was just having such fun!
I’ve pretty well decided it will be a wall hanging. I think I might want to do a bit of embellishing stitching on the leaves, acorns, and pumpkin so that Pellon will stay on the back until I know I am ready to quilt. I’m kind of waiting for the “next” from Carole at From My Carolina Home, just in case she has another brilliant idea. When I cut the background piece, I cut it at 18×21, so I do have some room to play a little bit more. It’s a nice size for a small wall hanging.
Are you stitching along with #AutumnJubilee2022? ? ? Go take a look at Carole’s blog and keep your eye on her wide variety of projects! She will be covering everything from quilting, cooking, sewing, stamping gardening along with the wool applique, and there are lots of giveaways. When you follow, tell her I sent you!
Happy Stitching!
Stitching Grandma 