BLOG: Quilting + Appliqué

There are SO MANY different ways to outline applique pieces – and scribbly outlining is one of my favorites!

A lot of people applique with satin stitch or decorative stitching like blanket stitch. I demonstrate how to use decorative stitches in one of the lessons in my Fusible Applique Made Easy Class on Craftsy. Here’s an example of some of that stitching.

There’s blanket stitch around the bottom of the eyes, another stitch around the belly patch, and straight stitching everywhere else.

You can see lots more examples of this in the Parliament of Owls quilt pattern.

Fancy stitching can be fun, but I usually outline with a simple straight stitch and black thread. I love the cartoony look it gives and I think it really suits my applique designs. Plus it’s super easy!

(A lot of people worry that their fabric will fray if they just do a straight stitch outline. I posted a photo of one of my daughter’s quilts after over a year of constant use and many trips through the washer and dryer. Click here to see how it holds up.)

Sometimes, if I want a thicker line, I use a thicker thread. I like using 12 wt. thread from Sulky Petites and I’ve got a post here where I talk about what you need to do to work with thicker thread – what needle to use, what to use in the bobbin, etc.

Sometimes when I want a thicker line but I’m too lazy to change my needle (like maybe just on cat whiskers) I’ll use regular thread and go over the stitching two to three times, being careful to stitch right over the previous stitching so it looks like one solid, thicker line. You can see that in this cat.

I did most of the outlining with regular thread, but you can see the line is thicker on the whiskers and the mouth. That’s where I went over it a few times.

Lately I’ve been wanting to play around a bit with scribbly outlining, more like the lines in my sketchbook.

So I tried it! It took me a few blocks to get just the look I was trying for.

It took three rounds of stitching to get this look. Two just looked like a mistake – three looked intentional.

It’s kind of hard to deliberately go off the line! I’ve made hundreds of these blocks and by now it’s kind of automatic to follow the line as closely as possible. 🙂 I found it helped to deliberately ignore the line on pass two, to just pretend it wasn’t there and outline again as if it was a blank piece. Then on round three, if the first two lines were still too much on top of each other, I would deliberately veer off line. Make sure you cross over the line when you veer – you don’t want another line consistently inside or outside your original line. You want to cross over so sometimes it’s inside and sometimes it’s outside. That gives the best sketchy look.

Bonus! Four lines of scribbly outlining looks pretty much exactly like three. That means there’s no real benefit to doing four trips around the whole thing, but you can use that extra trip in some places to avoid having to start and stop to go around pieces like ears and muzzles and necks. For that snippet you see above, there are three rows of stitching around everything except the bit of the head that overlaps the ear. I went over that bit four times so I could stitch the ear without ever having to stop and tie a knot.

Here are links to all my posts about outline stitching.

• How to Topstitch and Edgestitch
• How Durable Is Straight Stitching?
• In What Order Do I Stitch?
• Stitching Eyes and Mouths – with lots of help for stitching tight curves
• Tips for Scribbly Outlining
• Playing with Thread Weight

Finished with this topic?

Return to the Let’s Make a Quilt main Table of Contents.

Move on to the lessons about how to trim and assemble your blocks.

Happy stitching!

A lot of people have questions about how to applique dark eyes on a dark face. It’s really important for the eyes to show up well, and dark on dark fabric tends to hide them!

This cutie is Ivy – one of the bears in my Bunches of Bears quilt pattern.

I made all the bears in my sample blocks in realistic colors – shades of brown, grey and rust. (Here’s a fabric collection you can use.)

Of course – living in Appalachia – I had to make a black bear.

But black bears are tricky!

Black eyes didn’t show up every well on the almost-black fabric I chose for the bear face.

The solution is to make an extra layer in a lighter color to back the eye.

Black bears usually have a cinnamon-colored snout, so I chose the same fabric to go behind the eyes. If your applique pattern doesn’t have a contrasting snout color (maybe you want to make a black cat from this pattern?) then just choose a slightly lighter shade of the face color.

I don’t recommend white. It will usually make your finished face look frightened. 🙁

Here’s what to do.

Using a scrap of your fusible adhesive, trace the eyes again. Fuse that to the back of the fabric you want to use to define the eyes.

When you cut them out – cut them a little bit bigger than the eyes you’ve traced.

I’ve cut mine with a little less than an extra 1/8 inch all the way around. You don’t have to measure it – you really just want a sliver of that color showing.

Now – fuse those pieces in place – along with all the other pieces on the block except the black eyes.

DO NOT FUSE DOWN THE BLACK EYES YET.

I know. It looks a little creepy at this point.

I usually outline all my applique pieces in black thread – but this is the exception. Stitch down the eye backings using matching thread.

If you do it now, you can be a little wobbly with your stitching. There’s no black eye for the wobbliness to show up against. If you fuse the black eye before you do the outlining you have to be very careful to keep your stitching right on that sliver of background color showing – and that would be hard.

Here’s a close up view where you can hopefully see my stitching. It’s just a simple straight stitch.

NOW you can applique the dark eyes and do all the rest of the outline stitching in black thread.

Whew! Much less creepy. 🙂 And look how nicely her eyes show up – without looking frightened.

Here’s the finished block.

What a sweetie! Her name is Ivy. 🙂

If you make softies (sewn or crocheted) instead of quilts – this post will help you make those eyes show up against dark faces.

Want to make a bear quilt? Get the Bunches of Bears pattern here.

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.

• How to Applique with Fusible Adhesive – a very basic intro
• How Durable is Applique with Fusible Adhesive?
• Fusible Applique the Easy Way – the way I currently work – use with any of my patterns that include SVG files
• How to Use a Light Box to Layer Your Applique – perfect placement every time
• How to Applique with Fusible Adhesive – photo tutorial – use with any of my patterns that do not include SVG files
• How to Applique with Fusible Adhesive – video tutorial – use with any of my patterns that do not include SVG files

Here are links to special posts about eyes.

• Easy Eye Options for Applique
• Using Fabric Markers and Paints for Small Eyes
• Free Embroidery Machine Files for Machine-Stitched Eyes
• How to Machine Stitch Eyes without an Embroidery Machine
• How to Minimize Show-Through on White Eyes
• How to Applique Dark Eyes on Dark Faces
• How to Add Catchlights to Eyes

Here are links to some extra fun things you can do with your applique.

• How to Add a Baby Animal to Any Block
• How to Squish Two Animals into One Block
• How to Add Playful 3D Bits to Your Applique
• How to Add Soft 3D Pieces to your Quilt Block
• How to Add a Door (that Opens!) to Your Quilt Block
• How to Give Your Monster an Underbite
• Fake Trapunto (Stuffed) Applique
• Broderie Perse Applique

Other Applique Methods

• How to Applique with Freezer Paper
• How to Do Needle Turn Applique

Finished with this topic?

Return to the Let’s Make a Quilt main Table of Contents.

Move on to the lessons about outline stitching.

Happy stitching!

Quilt layouts can be very simple – or very complex.

When I design a quilt pattern I always make up a sample – usually a simple grid.

But if you think of my quilt patterns as patterns for collections of blocks that you can put together any way you like – it opens up all kinds of other possibilities!

In this video I show a few different quilt layouts you can use for almost any of my patterns. It’s a long video because I’m talking you through the whole process, but you can scroll past the video to see lots of photo examples with shorter descriptions.

For each layout style, you’ll find a downloadable PDF with fabric requirements, cutting instructions, assembly diagrams and more for six different sizes in this post – Quilt Sizes and Supplied Needed (I Did All the Math).

This is a long post with lots of photos. Don’t want to scroll through the whole thing? Use these links to jump right to info and examples of each layout style. . .

• Simple Grid
• Checkerboard Grid
• Grid with Sashing
• Stripes with Sashing
• Wide Stripes
• Wonky Faux Sashing
• Polaroid Blocks
• Alternate Grid with Double Blocks
• Alternate Grid with Half Blocks
• Non-Quilt Projects

Simple Grid

Most of my quilt patterns default to this, and you can simplify the ones that don’t by just leaving out any half or double size blocks. Here’s an example using the Wild Flowers quilt pattern.

This kind of grid is the easiest to sew up. Just sew together all the blocks in each row, then sew all the rows together. Easy peasy.

You can fancy up the quilt design a little bit by adding in some blocks from other patterns (almost all my patterns are designed for 10-inch squares so it’s easy to mix and match) or – if it’s a quilt with faces – by adding some Fancy Doodads accessories.

Here’s a Bunches of Bears quilt made by Brenda where she did both. She added in this Koala block, and several of the accessories from the Fancy Doodads pattern.

This is a great way for you to add some of your own creativity, but still have a quilt that’s really easy to assemble.

What if you’re in a hurry?

Checkerboard Grid

You can make a quilt where you only applique half the blocks. The other blocks are just quilted. Here’s a great example of that with an Arctic Chill quilt made by Lisa.

And here’s an example of the Woodland Critters quilt assembled with alternating plain blocks.

Grid with Sashing

Maybe you want to add sashing to your quilt!

That’s really easy to do – it’s still a simple grid assembly. The hardest part is the math to figure out how the sashing changes the number of blocks needed and how much fabric you need to buy – and I’ve done all that for you in this post.

Here’s a fairy traditional grid and border layout. I used the Noisy Farm pattern but left out all the half blocks, and added sashing.

This post has all the info you need to add sashing to a Quilt As You Go quilt.

Stripes with Sashing

You can also just add sashing between rows or columns instead of sashing around each block. I built that design into the Dinosaurs pattern.

But you can do that with any pattern!

Your stripes can go tall too, instead of wide. Here’s the morning glory block from the Wild Flowers pattern repeated in tall stripes with sashing between them.

Wide Stripes

Of course, you can set your quilt in long stripes without adding sashing – and you don’t have to have that stripe filled up with applique either. Look at the fun striped quilt Linda made with the Mix & Match Monsters pattern!

Wonky Faux Sashing

You can also add wonky faux sashing to any quilt.

All the blocks are off-kilter and irregular so it looks like it would be really hard to assemble, but actually it’s still just a simple grid. Here’s an example made by Kathleen of a bunch of blocks from the Funny Faces Quilt Block of the Month Club (plus a couple of chickens of her own design), set with wonky sashing.

This post tells you how to add that wonky faux sashing to any pattern.

Bonus! See how the tree frog’s toes hang outside of his block?

You can make any applique bust out of its block using this tutorial.

Here are a few more fun examples.

Polaroid Blocks

One more fun setting that looks complicated but is actually still a simple grid assembly. . .

A Polaroid quilt!

There’s a tutorial showing how to do that here.

Now, on to the most complicated thing you can do to vary the setting of your quilt (which still isn’t really hard to do). You can break up that simple grid.

You can do that in two ways.

Alternate Grid with Double Blocks

The first way is designed into some of my patterns – using double-size blocks. You can see that in the Sea Creatures pattern.

Alternate Grid with Half Blocks

Double-size blocks are pretty hard to do if the pattern doesn’t already include those sizes. But it’s REALLY EASY (and even more effective) to add some half-size blocks to any pattern.

Half-blocks are included in the Woodland Critters pattern.

The Beep Beep pattern too.

Word blocks like these are one of my favorite ways to add half blocks to a quilt pattern that doesn’t include them. There’s a free ABC applique pattern here that you can use to add sounds, names, birth dates, and more. Here’s a version of the Bunches of Bears pattern where I added words.

And here’s a Wild Flowers quilt with a quote added.

The hardest part about working with this broken grid is sewing the squares together, and the final quilting.

This post has all the information you need to make a quilt with this kind of layout – cutting sizes, assembly guides, etc.

This post has a video showing how to quilt a quilt with an alternate grid, since you don’t have continuous lines crossing the entire quilt.

Add lots of meow blocks to a the Cuddly Cats quilt, add the names of your children to the Mix & Match Monsters quilt, and more. Have fun and play around with your layouts!

Not Quilts

Of course, you can also use your block patterns to make things that aren’t quilts.

Here are several free patterns that work with my basic 10-inch applique squares – no resizing needed!

• Make a Wall Hanging with a Wonky Churn Dash Frame
• Trick or Treat Bag (medium tote bag)
• Quilted Tablet Cover
• How to Turn Any Quilt Block into a Pillow
• Fast and Easy Placemats
• Fancy Felt Frame
• Receiving Blanket

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.

• Free Bib Pattern
• Simple Christmas Stocking
• Mini Bunny Tote Bag
• Turn Any Quilt Block Patterns into Cute Coasters
• Cozy Bear Coasters
• The Big Bag (applique on the pocket)
• Cloth Book for Babies

Return to the main Let’s Make a Quilt Table of Contents.

The suggestions here are really just the tip of the iceberg. If you do a unique quilt layout I’d love to see it! Share a photo in the Shiny Happy People group. 🙂

Find links to all the posts about pattern size and layouts here.

Quilt Sizes and Supplies Needed

Play with Your Layouts – Multiple Possibilities for One Quilt Pattern

Sashing

• How to Add Sashing to a Quilt
• How to Add Sashing to a Quilt Pattern
• How to Add Sashing to a Quilt As You Go Quilt
• How to Pin Long Seams
• How to Make Wonky Faux Sashing with Quilt As You Go Blocks

How to Make Applique Bust Out of Its Frame

Alternate or Broken Grid layouts (adding half and double blocks)

• How to Make a Quilt with an Alternate Grid
• Quilt Block Sizes for Alternate Grid Layouts
• How to Assemble a Quilt that Uses an Alternate Grid
• How to Quilt a Broken Grid

How to Make an Applique Rag Quilt

How to Make a Polaroid Quilt

How to Make a Wonky Churn Dash Frame for Any Block

Finished with this topic?

Return to the Let’s Make a Quilt main Table of Contents.

Move on to the lessons about choosing your fabric.

Happy stitching!