Add some waves to your quilts with this free applique pattern!
In addition to the wavy stripes you see in the top image, the free pattern also includes a template designed to use at the bottom of a block, in combination with an animal applique.
Here’s an example.
These waves will work particularly well with the following patterns:
Let’s tiptoe down memory lane to see what I was doing during the fourth week of every year since the start of Shiny Happy World. 🙂 Click on the images to go to the posts.
Let’s tiptoe down memory lane to see what I was doing during the third week of every year since the start of Shiny Happy World. 🙂 Click on the images to go to the posts.
Let’s tiptoe down memory lane to see what I was doing during the second week of every year since the start of Shiny Happy World. 🙂 Click on the images to go to the posts.
Let’s tiptoe down memory lane to see what I was doing during the first week of every year since the start of Shiny Happy World. 🙂 Click on the images to go to the posts.
My very first embroidery pattern! I designed it especially for beginners. It uses only one stitch!
If I were making this today I’d back that white fabric with some interfacing so my thread tails wouldn’t shadow through to the front. 🙂
2012
In a nutshell? Anything! This post walks you through any special tools that will make weird fabrics easier.
2013
For perfect monster teeth.
2014
Because freckles are super cute.
2015
For my fellow optimists. 🙂
2016
***eligible for Week 1 sale***
An adorable dressable rag doll.
2017
***eligible for Week 1 sale***
Another adorable dressable rag doll! This is back when the Dress Up Bunch Club was happening. I introduced a new doll at the start of the year and then she was the model for a new clothing and accessories pattern every month that year. After a couple of years she had a VAST wardrobe – far better than my own. 🙂
2018
This post has tips that work for both sewn and crocheted softies.
2019
It’s different than every other way you measure gauge.
2020
In 2020 I decided I wanted to learn to use Procreate on my iPad. I started by just drawing a dot every day. Simple. No pressure. And a great way to try out different brushes. This is one of my favorites.
2021
More happy thoughts for the new year! This is clearly a theme. 🙂
People call them cloth books, quiet books, soft books – whatever you call them they’re easy and fun to make and a great way to get extra use out of your patterns.
The instructions below are for a 12-page book, 8 inches square, with flannel “batting” to make the pages extra soft and snuggly.
Here’s what mine looked like after filling it out.
The top of the worksheet is your planning guide. It lays out what the pages will look like when you’re reading them.
I decided to call my book Who’s Grumpy? I put one face on each page, including mostly smiling faces but one very grumpy cat. I deliberately placed the cat on an odd-numbered page so when someone is flipping the pages, that’s the immediate “reveal.” I’m imagining a kid pointing and calling out,”He’s grumpy!” as soon as you turn that page. 🙂
My book is a random collection of animals, but you can do anything!
Make a collection of a child’s favorite animals.
Make a souvenir of a visit to the zoo and the animals you saw there.
Make a collection of the animals native to your area.
Use this free ABC pattern to put an animal face on the even pages, and the sound that animal makes on the odd pages.
Make a Christmas book with the free patterns here.
The bottom of the worksheet is your construction guide. It shows how you need to make the pages so that when you put them all together it reads like you planned in the top of the worksheet. So, for example, the animal for page two (the koala) needs to be on the same rectangle of fabric as the animal for page 11 (the hippo).
Materials
You’ll need 3/4 yard of fabric for your book, and 3/4 yard of flannel.
I recommend pre-washing both the fabric and the flannel, and I actually recommend washing and drying the flannel one extra time because that stuff has a tendency to shrink a lot.
You’ll also need fusible adhesive. I use Heat & Bond Lite for all my quilts.
Cutting Instructions and Applique Preparation
From the fabric, cut 6 rectangles each 8 1/2 inches x 17 inches.
From the flannel cut 6 rectangles each 8 inches x 16 1/2 inches.
Print or trace your applique templates. Since my book is 8 inches square and my patterns are all designed to fit in 10 inch squares, I printed all the template pages at 80% size. There’s more info about resizing patterns here.
Instructions
Fold your fabric rectangles in half and press the fold to mark what will be the spine of the book.
Fuse your appliques. (Those little cards with the numbers are my page numbers, just helping me to keep everything organized while I worked.)
I usually make my quilt blocks “snapshot style.” By that I mean I imagine that I’ve snapped a photo of the animal, zoomed way in on its face. Here’s an example.
I’m trying to make it look like she has a lower body – it’s just cropped out of the photo – and I achieve that effect by lining the cut edge of the bottom of the applique like up with the raw edge at the bottom of my block. You can do this in your soft book exactly the same way. Just line up the straight edge at the bottom of the applique piece with the bottom edge of the page so both raw edges get included in the stitching when you finish the page edges.
For my book I decided to float the heads in the middle of the block – what I call “emoji style.” When I do that, I just don’t use the shoulder or body pieces. That means I had to choose animals where the head and body are separate pieces, so I didn’t include anything like this bear.
See? No way to separate the head from the body.
That was a little design digression. Now, back to the instructions. 🙂
Center a flannel rectangle on the back of each page rectangle. I cut the flannel smaller than the fabric in order to de-bulk the edges of the pages.
I used spray adhesive because every few years I forget how much I hate it and I give it another try before swearing off it for another few years. It would have been a lot easier (and less messy) to just dab a little fabric glue stick in each corner and a swipe down the center. 😛
Outline the applique. I just use a simple straight stitch with black thread.
It all worked out fine, but since I used fabric paint for mine catchlights, it means for the rest of the process I had to be very careful not to iron over the eyes. It would have been easier to add the catchlights at the very end.
Now comes the fun part – finishing the pages.
Sew pages 12/1 to pages 2/11, right sides facing, using 1/4-inch seam allowance all around. Leave a 4-5 inch opening for turning.
Repeat with pages 6/7 and 8/5.
Repeat with pages 4/9 and 10/3.
Clip the corners of each page and turn them right side out.
Here’s a close-up of the clipping. You want to get right up to the stitching without actually cutting the stitches.
Smooth all the edges, tuck the seam allowance in at the turning opening, and give it a good press.
You can close up that opening two ways.
Hand sew the opening closed using ladder stitch. This is slower, but completely invisible and results in the softest pages.
Topstitch the edges of the page all the way around, closing up the opening as you topstitch. This is faster, but results in a slightly stiffer page edge.
I chose option 2 – topstitching. I’m pretty sure the page edge will soften up over time, and even if it doesn’t it’s really not unpleasantly stiff. 🙂
Finally, stack the pages as follows.
Lay page 12/1 face down so that its back (page 2/11) is face up.
Over that lay page 10/3 face down so that its back (page 4/9) is facing up.
Over that lay page 8/5 face down so that its back (page 6/7) is facing up.
Sew the three layers together right down the spine of the book, using that pressed fold line as a guide. I stitched my spine twice for extra durability.
Close your book. You’re finished! Here’s my finished book. . .
Here are a bunch of additional ideas and links to further customize your book.
You can change the size of your book – just be sure to adjust the print size for your templates accordingly. I use 10-inches as the base for all my quilt blocks because it makes the math so dang easy. If you want a 9-inch book, print your templates at 90% size. If you want it to be 7.5 inches, print your templates at 75%. Easy peasy.
If you want to add or subtract pages, that will throw off the entire planning worksheet so you’d need to make your own. It also affects what batting you use in the pages. In my tests, even thin cotton batting was too puffy for a 12-page book, but it would probably work for an 8-page book. If you want to make yours longer than 12 pages, I’d recommend stabilizing the pages with interfacing instead of using the flannel.
Go crazy with fun special effects!
Maybe you want to use smooth shiny satin for your frog! Or fluffy fleece for your puppy. Or a little bit of white fur for the inner ears of the koala! This post will take you to the tutorial showing how to applique with satin, and at the bottom of that post there are links to tutorials for lots of other specialty fabrics.
Want to use an easy faux trapunto technique to give the koala a puffy nose?
Here are several free patterns that work with just some simple resizing. This post about making coasters has info about resizing an applique pattern that can be applied to any of these projects.
I design my quilts for 6 different sizes, from Itty Bitty Baby to King Size.
For each layout style, you’ll find a downloadable PDF with fabric requirements, cutting guides, and assembly diagrams for all six sizes in this post – Quilt Sizes and Supplies Needed.
Make adorable Christmas stockings using a yard of cut & sew fabric. These stockings are SUPER easy to make, and there are instructions printed right on the fabric. But if you’ve never sewn a stitch before and you want a little extra help you can find additional instructions (with videos) here.
Buy your fabric here. You need to get a full yard printed on any of Spoonflower’s fabric bases that are at least 56 inches wide. I used Organic Cotton Sateen because I love how the colors print on that fabric.
One yard gives you all the pieces you need for the following:
one large stocking (19 inches tall) fully lined with a contrasting cuff and hanging loop
one small stocking (10 inches tall) fully lined with a contrasting cuff
five small (5 1/2 inches tall) stockings perfect for filling with candy and hanging on the tree
Here’s a video showing ALL the steps.
If you’d rather have written instructions, here are all the steps – with links to a few additional videos you might find helpful.
Cut out stocking front and back, and the rectangle for the hanging loop. Do NOT cut the line between the main stocking (red) and the lining (light green).
To make the hanging loop, fold and press the rectangle in half the long way. Open, and fold each edge in to the center fold. Press. (There’s a video showing how to do this here.) Stitch down the long edge.
Pin stockings right sides together, sandwiching the hanging loop between the layers where indicated.
Sew around the edges using 1/4 inch seam allowance. Leave open for turning where indicated.
Clip seam allowance in concave curves. (There’s a video with more info about that here.) Turn right side out and press.
All of my applique quilt patterns (except the Paper Dolls) are built on a 10-inch grid, and I almost always design one animal for each block. But sometimes you may want to squish two animals into one block!
Maybe it’s a social animal like those meerkats in the first photo.
Maybe you want to add a baby animal, like these cats.
Or maybe you want to use the Peekaboo Mouse pattern to have a little mouse photobomb one of your other blocks.
Or maybe you want to add something that will deliberately bust out of its 10 inch frame, like this frog flicking his tongue into a neighboring block.
It’s easy to play with your blocks like this – but you want to make sure it still fits in a 10-inch square, and since I advise you to start with an 11-inch block and then trim it down to 10 1/2 inches and sew it together so it finishes as 10 inch – you need to know where those 10-inch edges are.
I used to just use one of my square rulers to measure. I’d lay out the block, then check to make sure it all fits properly, then make adjustments (if needed) and measure again. It worked, but I wanted a way that let me see the edges AND move things around to adjust them at the same time.
So here’s what I do. I made a little tool that’s quick, easy, and free.
So there you go. How to squish two animals into one block – and know that they’re going to fit beautifully!
Have fun with this!
Here are links to all the posts showing how to applique with fusible adhesive – my favorite method. It’s fast and easy and (with the right materials) it holds up beautifully to rough use and repeated washing.
I like to quilt my blocks before I add applique. It makes the process so easy and fun! Just zoom back and forth on the sewing machine and you’re done. 🙂
Some people prefer to applique first and then quilt around it – that’s fine too! The quilting lines CAN show through the applique pieces – especially if you’re appliqueing with a light-colored or solid fabric.
All of my applique quilts except Paper Dolls are built on a 10″ finished square block. The Dinosaurs quilt has the option of making special two-color landscape blocks.
If you’re making Paper Dolls, follow that pattern’s instructions for cutting your blocks.
If you’re making Dinosaurs and want to use the landscape blocks, get those instructions here.
For everything else, cut your main squares 11 inches. That doesn’t have to be a perfect cut, it just needs to be bigger than 10 1/2″ square, because that’s the size you’ll trim down to after you finish your applique and quilting.
If your quilt includes half blocks (like the word blocks in Beep Beep or Noisy Farm) cut those 6 inches x 11 inches.
If your quilt includes double blocks (like in Sea Creatures) cut those blocks 11 inches x 21 inches.
Cut a piece of batting the same size for each block. Again – this doesn’t have to be exact. I often cut my batting just a smidge bigger than my background fabric. I like being able to see it all the way around when I layer the pieces together.
You do not need to prewash your batting, but I recommend pressing your squares (with steam) and letting them cool before layering them with your fabric.
Layer a square of fabric over the batting, quilt those two layers together (no backing!), then press them again (with steam) and set them aside to wait for applique.
Here are links to all the posts about cutting your blocks.
