Last week in the newsletter I asked for reader suggestions for what to watch while I stitch embroidery samples for my new book. The response was AMAZING! And lots of you said you watch while working too so I thought I’d share all the suggestions in one awesome list. I’m adding a star to the ones I’ve watched and can also recommend. 🙂
Here are all the shows that got multiple mentions (in order of number of mentions) . . .
Doc Martin
*Father Brown
*Midsomer Murders
*Downton Abbey
Doctor Blake Mysteries
*The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Shetland
Anne with an “E”
Outlander
Vera
Lark Rise to Candleford
Scott & Bailey
*West Wing
A Place to Call Home
*Sherlock
*Great British Baking Show
*Death in Paradise
*Frasier
*Longmire
Broadchurch
McLeod’s Daughters
Murdoch Mysteries
Home Fires
Agatha Raisin
*Bletchley Circle
Line of Duty
The Incredible Dr. Pol
Bodyguard
*Inspector Morse
The Paradise
Endeavor
*Rosemary and Thyme
Hinterland
Grace and Frankie
Vikings
And here are the rest (in alphabetical order). . .
*Arrow
Artful Detective
Back Roads
Being Human
Blue Bloods
*Bones
*Cheers
The Closer
Darkest Hour
Denver Pet Show
Derek
Designated Survivor
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
Doctor Foster
Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman
Drop Dead Diva
*Elementary
Escape to the Country/Escape from the City/Escape to the Continent
*Flash
*Friends
Game of Thrones
Girlfriends
The Good Cop
Home Fires
Homecoming
Indian Summers
Inspector Lewis
Jack Irish
Jack Ryan
Jamestown
Keeping Faith
Kids’ Baking Championship
*Kingdom
Land Girls
The Last Kingdom
Last Tango in Halifax
Legends
Little Dorrit
Little Women
Love Child
*Madmen
Mercy Street
The Miniaturist
Misfits
Mr. Selfridge
*Monk
Mozart in the Jungle
The Mysteries of Laura
Mystery Road
The Nature of Things
NCIS
Offspring
Ozark
The Palace
*Poirot
Rake
Reign
Ripper Street
*Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Schitt’s Creek
The Science of Stupid
Secret Agent Selection WWII
Silent Witness
Striking Out
Sugar Rush
*Supergirl
The Supervet
This Is Us
Time Goes By
The Time of Our Lives
Timeless
The Tudors
The Unforgotten
The Waltons
Watership Down
We Will Meet Again
White Collar
Wolf Hall
Yukon Vet
Oh – and for those who don’t get the newsletter, here are the shows I mentioned that I’ve already watched and loved to stitch to. . .
The Crown
Call the Midwife
Victoria
Foyle’s War
Miss Fisher Mysteries
Poldark
Law & Order
Grey’s Anatomy
You guys – this is an amazing list! Please keep adding suggestions in the comments so we have a continuing resource. 🙂
Want to learn how to make a quilt with an easy online workshop – totally free?
Sign up for Let’s Make a Quilt here. You’ll learn how to get started, the tools and supplies you’ll need, and how to make a quilt from start to finish using Quilt As You Go and applique with fusible adhesive.
It’s the easiest, most fun way to make an applique quilt. You can do it!
There’s a new free applique pattern for you! Merry Christmas!
This adorable elf pattern is the same size and style as the other free Christmas applique patterns (10 inch finished blocks). There are five now! (You’ll find links to all of them at the bottom of this post.)
The image has already been reversed, so just trace or print. If you’re tracing, be sure to trace the facial features too. You’ll need those for Step 4.
Step 2
Rough cut around each shape and fuse it to the back of your fabric.
Leave a little bit extra all the way around - a little extra extra (at least 1/4 inch) where there’s a dotted line, like the top of the shoulders and the base of the ears.
Step 3
Cut around each piece neatly. Cut directly on the solid lines.
Leave a little seam allowance on the dotted lines - those are the seam allowances that will tuck behind other pieces.
Step 4
Remember when I told you to make sure you traced the facial features in Step 1? Now you’re going to use that. Hold the face up to a window so the light shines through it. You’ll be able to see the eyes, nose and mouth, and the adhesive will stabilize the fabric so you can trace on it without it crinkling up.
I traced just inside the eyes, and directly on the nose and mouth.
Here you can see all the tracing I did – without the light shining through.
Step 5
If you’re doing Quilt As You Go (I did) then you can quilt your block before adding the applique. So easy!
Cut your background fabric and a piece of 100% cotton batting 11 inches square.
Layer the block with a piece of 100% cotton batting. Quilt any pattern you like!
If you’re making a one-block project, go ahead and finish it up!
If you’re making a bunch of elf blocks to join into a quilt - have fun!
What can you do with just one block pattern? Tons of things!
Check out this page I’ve been slowly building – 100 Things to Do with an Applique Pattern. There are links to a bunch of free patterns you can use with your applique pattern to make bibs, pillow covers, tote bags, and more! 🙂
Here are all the free Christmas applique patterns so far.
If you’re looking for a different fun Christmas quilt pattern check out this post. It has a bunch of free patterns for little signs that you can add to a Shiny Happy Houses quilt to turn it into a North Pole quilt. 🙂
Have fun! And share a photo of what you make! You can share it in the Shiny Happy People group or tag it with #shinyhappyworld on Instagram.
If you like this free pattern, sign up for the Shiny Happy News! Subscribers get a weekly newsletter full of sewing tips and tricks, free patterns, special discounts, and other things to make you smile. 🙂
I’ve got free patterns below for both the tree and the hat – plus some extra fancification ideas for both at the bottom of the post. Have fun with these!
You can use these patterns for any holiday decorations – the repeat pattern is easy to follow to make them larger if you need. Or just use thicker yarn!
If you’re making a hat for a larger softie, just follow this pattern of increasing one stitch per round until the hat is big enough to fit, then stitch at least four rounds of straight single crochet for the contrasting band. You may need to add more rounds of contrast to feel like it’s in the right proportion with the hat, depending on how much bigger you make it. Trust your judgement. 🙂
For the tree. . .
Picking up after round 16 above.
Round 17 sc twice in next st, sc in next 18 sts (20)
Round 18 sc twice in next st, sc in next 19 sts (21)
Round 19 sc twice in next st, sc in next 20 sts (22)
Round 20 sc twice in next st, sc in next 21 sts (23)
Round 21 sc twice in next st, sc in next 22 sts (24)
Stuff the tree and slip a large washer across the stuffing at the base of the tree. This will give your tree a nice flat base and the washer adds a nice weight.
Round 22 [sc2tog, sc in next 2 sts] 6 times (18)
Here’s what it looks like after that first decrease round wraps around the edge of the washer.
If you don’t have a metal washer, you can cut a circle of cardboard. It will give you the flatness without the weight.
If you want to make your tree bigger, keep following the same increase pattern after round 21. To make your decrease rounds easier to calculate, make sure to make your last increase round one whose stitch count is evenly divided into 6.
I dressed up my tree with some simple white-headed pins – but there are tons of possibilities to dress up both the tree and the hat!
If your hat is kind of stiff and you want it to flop down like the one in the photo, you can drop a metal nut into the tip of the hat. The weight will keep it dipping down. I use a surprising amount of hardware store items in my softies. 🙂
If you decide to give a holiday Milo Mouse as a gift, I suggest pairing it with these books.
The Night Before Christmas – I had the line “Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse” in my head as I designed Milo. There are so many beautiful editions of this story available – the link goes to one with very traditional illustrations.
She’s super easy to make. Everything is crocheted together – the only sewing you need to do is a simple bit of running stitch to attach her wig to her head. Easy peasy!
This project uses just one fancy skill – stitching one row below to get that mouth. Don’t worry – there’s a link in the pattern to a video showing how, right at the spot where you’ll need it.
You can go through all those posts now, or just hop to them as you get to those points in the pattern – whatever works best for you!
Yarn
This pattern can be used with any weight yarn. The samples are crocheted with Big Stitch worsted weight yarn, and all yardage/hook recommendations are calculated based on the sample. If you use a different weight yarn you may need to adjust how many plastic pellets you use to fill it.
Materials
Size H crochet hook (or size needed to get a tight fabric)
two 12mm black animal eyes
tapestry needle
1/2 cup plastic poly pellets (optional – can use polyester fiberfill instead)
nylon knee high (optional – only needed if you use plastic pellets for squishiness)
yarn
Gauge Notes
This pattern doesn’t specify a gauge. It’s a stuffed toy, and you don’t need to be too picky about exact sizing. The most important thing is that you use a hook size that creates a nice looking fabric for your yarn. If you use the recommended hook size, and your fabric looks very loose (so that stuffing would show through), then you will want to use a smaller hook. Other than that, no measuring required!
Stitch into the Back
All stitches in this pattern (that are worked in the round) are worked through the back loop only, unless otherwise directed. Look at this picture.
See how one loop is highlighted in black? This is the back loop, and it’s what you’ll stitch into. Stitching into the back loop creates ridges on the right side of the piece.
Want to see crocheting through the back loop in action? Check out this blog post. It talks all about why Stacey crochets through the back loop and even has a handy dandy video showing how to find that loop. 🙂
Round 3 [sc twice in next st, sc in next st.] 6 times (18)
Round 4 [sc twice in next st, sc in next 2 sts.] 6 times (24)
Round 5-6 sc in each st. (24, 2 rounds)
The next two rounds give your squishy monster that lip. If you’re just getting started and want to skip that – no problem! Just repeat rounds 5-6 instead of following the instructions for rounds 7-8.
Round 8 sc in next 7 sts. Sc in next 10 sts, back in the original (inner) round of stitching. Sc in last 7 sts. (24)
Round 9 [sc twice in next st, sc in next 3 sts.] 6 times (30)
Round 10-11 sc in each st. (30, 2 rounds)
Insert the eyes in round 4, centered on the lip, with 3 stitches between them.
Round 12 [sc2tog, sc in next 3 sts.] 6 times (24)
Round 13 [sc2tog, sc in next 2 sts.] 6 times (18)
Fill a section of nylon knee high with 1/2 cup plastic pellets. Tie the end closed in a knot.
Stacey has a post here about using plastic pellets in amigurumi. Again, if you’re a beginner and want to skip the plastic pellets this time, that’s just fine. Just use some polyester fiberfill stuffing instead. Your monster won’t have that squishy beanbag feel, but it will still be adorable.
Stuff the bag of pellets into the monster body. It will be a very tight fit.
Several years ago my mother-in-law made us a fantastic flannel rag quilt. We use it all the time, and every time I look at it I think that it would be super easy to add applique to that style of quilt.
I finally did it!
And it was just as fun and easy as I thought. 🙂
I made mine using the Bunches of Bears quilt pattern, but you could use any quilt pattern you like. All the square quilt blocks in my own patterns are already sized for 10 inch blocks. If you’re using someone else’s pattern you may need to enlarge or reduce the images.
So let’s go!
My quilt is nap sized – 50 x 60 inches – perfect for using on the couch. It’s 5 blocks wide and 6 blocks tall and the blocks all finish at 10 inches.
You can resize the pattern by changing the size of the blocks or by changing the number of blocks. 🙂
I used ten flannel colors (one of each color in the Dash Plaid collection from Dear Stella Fabrics) and bought one yard of each.
I prewashed my flannel. I think people don’t usually do that for rag quilts, but flannel is notorious for shrinking a lot and I didn’t want the shrinking to distort the applique. Don’t use fabric softener in the wash – it can resist the fusible adhesive. Dryer sheets are fine.
Each block is three layers of flannel, so you’ll need to cut 90 blocks, each 11 inches square. You can get nine from one yard of fabric.
Sneaky tip – if you have some ugly flannel that you can’t figure out how it got into your stash, cut 30 of the squares out of that and hide it in the middle of your layers. 🙂
Applique 30 of the squares using any method you like. I used my favorite fusible adhesive method. There’s a video tutorial here. I used Heat & Bond Lite printable fusible adhesive sheets and regular cotton here. You could use flannel for the appliques too if you like, but I wanted to play with the contrasting textures. 🙂
When you position your faces, line up the bottom edge 3/8 inch up from the bottom edge of the block. That way, when you sew the blocks together using 1/2 inch seam allowance, you’ll catch the bottom edge of the applique in the stitching and it will be nice and secure.
Fuse the face into place.
Layer a second square of flannel behind the one with the applique (both facing right side up).
Stitch down all the edges on your applique. Outlining through both layers of flannel adds just a little bit of poof and dimension to your block – not as much as quilting with batting, but similar.
I used the “scribbly” method of going around each bit three times with regular weight black thread and a simple straight stitch. There’s a post here with more detail about that, and one here with more info about using a heavier weight thread if you prefer that.
After you get all 30 blocks appliqued, it’s time to sew them together. This was actually the hardest part, because it’s backwards from any other kind of sewing you’ll do normally.
Add a third layer of flannel to each block, this time with the right side facing the back of the quilt. (It’s going to become your quilt back.)
Using 1/2″ seam allowance, sew two blocks wrong sides together so that the seam allowance is on the right side of the quilt.
Here’s what it looks like from the back.
See? That last layer of flannel makes a nice quilt back, and you have a nice clean seam.
I joined all of my blocks into rows of five, then sewed those rows together for the finished quilt.
The intersections can get very bulky, so I snipped into the seam allowance 1/2″ from each edge and sewed my crossing seam through that slit so I wasn’t stitching the seam allowance down.
And look – my seam secures the bottom edge of each bear, just like I planned. 🙂
I found it helpful to use my quarter inch foot, but adjust it out to 1/2 inch for sewing all those layers together.
I also lengthened my stitch to 3.0 and reduced the pressure on my presser foot to keep the layers from creeping. If you can’t make that adjustment on your machine, just use a lot of pins or clips, as if you were sewing napped fabrics together.
Once all the blocks are sewn together, sew all the way around the outside edge of the quilt, one half inch in from the raw edge.
Now it’s time to snip all those seams.
Snip 1/2 inch apart all along all the seam allowances, almost up to the stitching line. Be very careful not to cut into your stitching. If you slip and snip it, repair it now by sewing over the snipped seam.
If you’re trying to snip with regular scissors, you’ll need to take a LOT of breaks. They’re really not designed for this kind of work.
If you can afford to buy a special set of snips just for this kind of work, it is absolutely worth it. I tried several brands and the Fiskars Easy Action Tabletop Rag Quilt Snips were by far my favorite. They have a spring action, so their default setting is open, which saves a surprising amount of strain on your wrist. They’re super sharp, and the blades are slightly serrated, so they really grip the fabric well, helping them cut right up to the tips of the blades without “pushing” the fabric out at all.
Even with the fancy snips I took a break between snipping the horizontal and vertical seams. It took about two hours total.
Don’t forget to snip around the outside edges too.
When you’re done snipping, throw it in the wash and tumble dry.
Ta daa!
All those snipped edges fray in the wash and you get a really soft, fluffy ridge between each block. This blanket is just begging for someone to snuggle under it.
If you make an applique flannel rag quilt, we’d love to see it! Post a photo in the Shiny Happy People group so we can all oooh and aaah. 🙂
Find links to all the posts about pattern size and layouts here.
Stacey and I both have really terrific monster classes on Craftsy. The Shiny Happy World sale code doesn’t work on them, but Craftsy has sales all the time and if you use these links you’ll get the current sale price.
Stacey’s Design Your Own Monster class is fantastic – my favorite of all her classes. Get that class here.
My Cute Quilt-As-You-Go Applique Monsters class includes my Mix & Match Monsters pattern. It’s so much fun to make! Get that class here.
