Advice Needed: Machine Appliqued Quilt Top and Hand Quilting in the Ditch?
 

Hi everyone,

I'm new here, but not soo new to quilting. However, I'm currently working on my very first applique quilt; a baby quilt for a friend of mine. Here's the front so far:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]362808[/ATTACH]

I've machine appliqued the animals, tree branch, leaves and apple with a tight zigzag stitch. A perched owl is still missing and some applique on the blue corner blocks as well, but I'm already thinking about how I'm going to quilt this. My backing fabric is this one here.

My first quilt was a log cabin quilt with hand quilting in the ditch and I really liked how it turned out and was wondering if anyone here has done a modified version of in the ditch quilting with applique. I was thinking that when I hand quilt it I could make sure to come up *under* the machine applique zigzag stitching, so that essentially the outline of the animals, tree branch, leaves and apple would show up only on the back of the quilt. Has anyone done this before? Does it have a name? And what are your experiences with it.

I also want to do some sort of abstract quilting for the sky background, meadow and borders, but that part should be easy enough.

So what do you all think? Thanks for your help!!
Kei

Oh my, how lovely your quilt is. It is so darn cute. May I ask the name of the pattern? You did such an awesome job on it!! I'm so delighted in looking at it.

Echoing around the tree and animals will make the applique 'pop' so I would definitely do that. I would be careful about quilting through the back and the batting only because it can make them pull away from the front. An echo line of quilting right next to the applique will secure all three layers. Sometimes if an applique is large, people will 'simulate' the hand quilting look on he back and that doesn't go through to the front, but it is only for looks.

Hi Jeanne,

I already answered you in a PM, but for everyone else...the design was hand drawn and then blown up in my local copy shop. :-)

I'm glad you like it!
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Alexandra,

thanks for your comments and advice. I was intending to go through the appliqued fabric, for example the sheep, but then have the stitching be underneath the zigzag machine stitching. That way all layers would be quilted together, but the stitching on the top of the quilt would be invisible because it's underneath the zigzag...this is only an idea so far, haven't tried it to see if it would actually work!

You mentioned echoing around the appliqued pieces. Do you mean near the zigzag stitch? And if so, how near do you mean and do you have any examples showing how that turns out? I'm afraid it might look strange due to the machine applique stitching. :-/

Thanks!
Kei

Welcome to the QB. Your quilt is adorable!

I haven't tried applique yet, so I can't respond to your question... but I couldn't resist writing to say how much I ADORE your quilt! It's so fabulous and textural. The baby will love feeling the fuzzy sheep! It's spectacular.

I have no advice on quilting this, but the quilt is adorable.

I love your name.

I'm not a hand quilter, can't give you any advice there, but just wanted to say that your design is adorable, and your fabrics are perfect for it. This is going to be such a wonderful baby gift.

I would echo quilt by hand (or machine close to the appliqué. It will make it pop wonderfully. For the sky I would use Fmq meandering, it would look cute. The quilt is adorable. Makes me want to have another baby.

Thanks Jenel, gramajo, dunster and Tashana!

Most of the fabrics, except for the organic cotton plush (from Westfalenstoffe), organic cotton faux lamb's wool (siebenblau.de) and the basic black for the eyes are all from Spoonflower. (For details see my blog entries on this quilt at kalaischreidoscopeofmymind.blogsport.de ). If you guys haven't heard of it yet, it is more expensive but you can design your own fabrics (for example, I designed the blue sky background for the quilt top) and have access to literally hundreds of thousands of designs from other members and available for printing on all different types of fabrics. I wanted to make the quilt an entirely organic quilt, so Spoonflower opened up a world of fabric possibilities for me!

Anyway, so far two votes for echo quilting. How close is too close to the applique stitching if I go for that route?
And *bump*....anyone heard of something like what I described above? A modified in the ditch quilting going through all three layers, but not visible on the top because the stitches are hidden underneath the applique zigzag stitch?

Thanks!