Technicolor Vine Machine Appliqué

I remember the first time I saw machine appliqué. I was standing in a horrific line to get fabric cut at Joann's Fabrics (gag) and looked over at the Viking machines and one was whirling away at an embroidery design. An appliqué embroidery design. I had never seen that done before and I instantly loved it. Fast forward 3 years later, to now.
I’ve had a tutorial before about appliquéing letters, but here’s another appliqué tutorial, with a few more instructions this time. This time the sample item is my Technicolor Vine appliqué design.
1. Hoop your fabric and stabilizer. (duh) Load the thread color you want to use for your final satin stitching, in this case, yellow.
2. Sew the placement stitch. It’s hard to see here because without bionic eye balls because its yellow. Sorry.

3. Cut a scrap of fabric large enough to cover the placement lines, usually just a rectangle. Now you can either spray it temporary spray glue (I like 505) but I actually prefer to just starch the heck out the rectangle. Just use heavy duty spray starch that you would use for any other clothing item. (Assuming you iron, I don’t.) Lay the heavily starched square over the placement lines and sew the second stitching.

4. Remove hoop from machine and trim away excess yellow fabric with small curved appliqué scissors, $5 bucks at WalMart. DO NOT REMOVE THE fabric from the hoop!!

5. Replace hoop, sew the tack down line. This is usually a wavy zig-zag or just another straight line, depending on the design. (There may or may not be two tackdown lines sewn. Usually just one though.)

6. Sew final stitching, usually a satin stitch, but not always. Sometimes I use different types of cover stitching* like a criss cross pattern of Xs, as seen in my geranium design or even just a fancy swirly cover design, like my boutique label. But for this design, a regular ol’ satin stitch was used, as seen below.

7. Finish the embroidery process. In this case, one more leafy couple and then the stem.

8. Sew up your pillow!

*Here are some different cover stitch lines other than satin stitching.
Here’s kind of a butterfly edge (orange thread), with a zig-zaggy stem stitch (green thread) on these circle appliqués.

Here’s a criss-cross of Xs on the main petals (orange stitching) of  this geranium applique.

That’s it my cyber-embroidery buddies! Machine applique is super easy, so give it a try.

How to Make Stocking Ornaments

How cute are these little stocking ornaments? A great way to use those little embroidery designs. But if you don’t have an embroidery machine you can just use really cute printed fabric. Click here to get the pattern for free. Alright, I realize you don’t really need a pattern for a stocking, but hey it’s free, so take it or leave it ya begger. The stocking itself took 5 minutes to make, the embroidery took 7 minutes. Not bad, huh?
I really like how my embroidered snowman turned out. He (or she?) can be purchased here.

And my shaggy-edges little Christmas tree just makes me happy to look at.

So here’s how you make these little guys:
Download the pattern and cut out your fabric. Embroider the fabric first, but that’s optional. Make sure the stocking pieces are cut mirror image, like below.

Place right sides together of the stocking pieces and sew all around, except the top. Place the cuff pieces right sides together and stitch just the sides. (I don’t know if you can see in the photo but I did serge (or you can zig-zag) the bottoms. But you don’t have to. Then place the cuff over your stocking—right sides together—and pin in place, like below picture.

Sew around the top, attaching the cuff to the stocking. Pull up the cuff, like below picture and press with iron.

Tuck the cuff all the way inside, iron again, then fold cuff over 1-2” inches and press again. Use a small piece (3” inches or so)of ribbon or scrap of bias tape, fold in half, tuck in the raw edges, double stitch through all layers.

Hang and admire!

I know, I know it’s only November, not even past Turkey Day and here I am posting about Christmas. Well, to fill a tree with all of these stockings will take a while to make, so you better get started early. These would make great little neighbor gifts too. Hmmm….there’s an idea for me as well.

Scripture Tote Bag

Hallie has been needing a new scripture tote bag. She grew out of her old scripture bag made by my fabulous (now far away friend) Candy of Candy Argyle Designs. So I made Hallie a new bag for church. While I was contemplating how to decorate her bag (yes, I think about these boring details) I had an embroidery customer email me asking if I had an CTR designs. CTR stands for Choose The Right which is basically the theme for all Sunday School children of the LDS faith. Well, I didn’t have such a design, but I said I could quickly make one. So being the brilliant gal that I am, I put those two ideas together—a CTR Scripture Bag! If you’d like to buy the design, click here.
If you’d like to make this scripture, bag you’ll need to cut:
Main body: 1 piece, 18”x11” of canvas,
Top strips: 2 pieces, 2”x11” each
Cotton batting to interface for structure: 1 piece, 21”x11”
Lining: : 1 piece of lightweight cotton, 21”x11”
Straps: You’ll need 2 pieces of 1-inch handbag webbing 19” each.
Fabric to cover straps: Cut 2 pieces of lightweight cotton 3”x19”
That should be it for your supplies!
I’m too lazy to type here all my steps, but trust me, it’s easy.  Like 30-minutes easy for this speedy sewer and maybe 1 hour for those without the Speedy-Sewer-Super Power. Just google “how to sew a tote bag”. But if you’d read this far, you obviously already know how to sew and don’t need no stinkin’ directions.
On the other side I added my Boutique Tag with her name, and voila, cute and chic scripture bag for lil’ miss Hallie.

My NEW Website!

I have been working for months now to get my very own website up and running. Now my embroidery designs can be instantly downloaded after purchase. No more waiting for me to email them to customers! Sweet Fancy Moses! (Name that episode of Seinfeld.) I’ll still keep my etsy shop but I hope that eventually my customers will move on over to www.meringuedesigns.net. 
Now I can offer coupon codes to newsletter subscribers and free designs just to say thanks to my awesome customers all around the world. Interestingly enough, I have quite a few customers in Australia, England, and Germany.
Thank goodness I hired a fabulous web designer, my brother in law Trevor. There is no way I would have known what to do. No chance at all. My brains (or lack of them) can only stretch so far.
Happy Stitching!