tkhooper

My club is doing a "Pet BOM" I'm doing cats. I'm not a very savvy quilter. I decided to do a cat with a beaded headdress in that lounge-y pose that I call the cleopatra pose. I thought it would be cute to do it on a stuffed chaise lounge on an egyptian garden fabric background. Now to say I'm over my head is an understatement.

1. The chaise has puckers even though I used a stabilizer. Will that work itself out as I add the french knot tufting?

2. I machine appliqued the cat to the chaise and background now I'm wondering do I bead over the stitching? That's going to be tough. Is there another answer? Do I not applique where I'm going to bead? Will the beading alone hold the cat head in place?

3. What is the best way to put on the legs on the chaise lounge. I'm a good embroiderer and I was thinking about doing that since it is close to the edge and small pieces and I'm thinking I'll never manage to needle turn them. Only two of the legs would show.

Thank you for any help you can give me. I'm also looking for an egyptian-like sashing.

ManiacQuilter2

Can you post a photo??

PaperPrincess

That's going to be quite the block! A photo would really help, but here's a few possible suggestions. Not sure about the puckers on the chaise. Is it like trapunto? If your beads are actually going to tuft the fabric, you should be OK. Can you use hot fix jewels? They have shapes other than the faceted crystals:
http://www.suessparklers.com/CTGY/Ho...on-Pearls.html
don't see why you can't embroider the legs.

Tartan

If you have done puckers in the appliqué, I suggest you trapunto it before tufting. I trapunto by placing a piece of batt under my appliqué that is stitched to the top background, stitch just outside the appliqué edge with thread that matches the background. Once I have stitch all around, I cut away the excess batt from behind the top. When the top, batt and backing are sandwiched, this leaves a double batt under the appliqué. I outline stitch the appliqué again and this should give you enough for nice tufting.

faykilgore

I would love to see a picture of this. Sounds facinating.

labtechkty

Me too...please post a picture..

Bree123

The beading usually would not catch the edge of the applique so I would generally not suggest leaving the edge raw & effectively straight stitching the applique down (via embroidering on the beads) unless you want your applique to fray quite a bit more in that one area.

As for the rest of your questions, either a photo or a more detailed description of your process & the outcome are necessary for us to provide any useful advice. I can try to guess based on what you've written, but I've made some assumptions that might be wrong.

(1) It sounds like you appliqued both the chaise & the cat using raw-edge machine applique. You mentioned "stabilizer". Stabilizer is for embroidery or for adding structure. For a quilt, you want to use Fusible Web (WonderUnder, Heat & Bond). I doubt the "puckers" will come out if you are knotting through a stabilizer, but I don't know. Depending on the stabilizer & how big the puckers are, perhaps doing the Trapunto that Tartan suggested will help to pull them out. Of course, Tartan is a really talented & experienced quilter. The rest of us rely on wash-away thread for our Trapunto because otherwise it is really obvious we went back over the same line twice & didn't come close to hitting the stitches in the same place. If you actually did use Fusible Web, let me know & I can tell you what I've done to get the bubbles between the layers of fabric out.

2. Whenever possible, when I'm layering applique I create applique units. I take the top layer & applique that to the layer of applique below that & then attach the whole "unit" to my background. It means I don't have to stitch through so many layers of fabric. I do this whether hand or machine appliqueing. Assuming you are attaching the beads by machine, I would applique the cat to the chaise, embroider by beads on, (add the chaise legs) & then attach the entire unit to the background & add trapunto. Once you've finished the trapunto, sew tufting through all the layers.

3. I'm not sure why the original chaise didn't have legs attached. If you end up remaking it, I'd draw some legs on. So much easier. It will not look right to have the rest of the chaise sewn raw-edge & then do a turned edge finish on the legs. You can fuse the legs to the background fabric & hand stitch them down if you don't think you can stitch them on your machine ... or you could embroider them -- just make sure to do that before adding anything puffy behind the rest of the chaise as I would think the added bulk might impact how nicely the embroidery turns out.

Please do post a picture so we can help better. It sounds like a really adorable design!

tkhooper

I'm not sure how to do this. I attached it. But now I don't know what to do.

Ah it is there. You can see the puckers at the bottom. And the lack of legs. It isn't raw edge as I understand it. I have taken a zigzag line of sewing around the edges except for the head. I though that would be to tough to bead through.

I hope this helps.

toverly

Adding details to already quilted is tough but it can be done. You just bead thru the top layer and not all the way thru. If you add a black tail over the puckers, you have them covered and you will have legs. Or at least that's the way the photo comes out. I recently finished an art piece where I embroidered, use a very sharp needle. Before I bound it I placed a cover fabric on the back to cover up the stitches and threads on the back. I used a lightweight fusible to "stay" the stitches and threads.

Bree123

Ah, I always forget about satin stitching applique since I rarely do that. I really, really hate to suggest that the only option I can think of to "fix" it is to start all over, but in this case, I can't figure out how to get the puckers out.

Here's what I'd suggest doing next time:
1) Heavily starch all fabrics before starting (especially the applique pieces)

2) Get some WonderUnder fusible web so your applique pieces don't shift while stitching.

Apply the fusible to the back of the cat & window it. Peel of fusible to uncover the part of the cat that is over the chaise. Fuse the cat to the chaise & stitch the cat down (yes, you will also need a stabilizer -- a tear away paper stabilizer has worked well for me with satin stitching. You definitely want something you can remove/dissolve so you're not adding extra layers to stitch through later on. Once the cat is stitched to the chaise, add fusible web to the back of the chaise & fuse the chaise/cat head to your background fabric & window it.

3) Stitch around the edges of the cat & chaise and then start your beading right away. Fusible gets stiffer the longer it's had to set. If you're doing the beading by hand, you'll want a sharp new beading needle & I use the Poke-a-Dot stick on thimbles so I can grab my needle/beads more easily than with a traditional thimble. If the fusible starts to get hard, you can reheat it to make it warm & pliable, but be warned that you can only do that maybe a couple of times before it stops working. If you want to avoid the aggravation, PaperPrincess is right that hot set beads are the way to go!

4) Once you have the beading done, you can add in the detail stitching & your tufts. Personally, I like doing both of those by hand because it gives me more control over the project. You could either do the detail stitching through the batting or you could just do it through the fabric. It just depends how puffy you want the finished look to be. Tartan gave you excellent information about doing trapunto. I'd either use a high-loft cotton like W&P or a wool batting so you can really see the definition of the stitching/tufts.

5) To make the chaise/cat really stand out, you can do a small fill around the design once you've layered everything for your final quilt & it will puff up of the quilt and look like you stuffed it.

A couple other notes:
* I'm not sure you have a wide enough seam allowance on the left side. If it's not at least 3/8" (maybe even 1/2"), I would move it slightly to the right so you don't get the trapunto batting caught in your seam.
* I would add the legs on to the chaise when you're cutting. You don't need to put the trapunto batting under them, but it will be so much easier to stitch around everything at once versus trying to add some legs on later. You'll just want to add the detail stitching at the top of the legs when you're doing the trapunto.

AND FINALLY ... after looking at all these steps if you would rather just be done with this thing & move on to something else, one option is to cut a small slit in your background fabric underneath the chaise (be very careful) & stuff it. I've done that with lettering to make a child's name puffy. You can fill it with wool yarn or fiber fill. The only thing you may still have to do is to pull out that one line of detail stitching (1/4" above the satin stitching line at bottom of chaise) & redo that. You might do better sewing it by hand since that gives you more control with spreading out the puckers. If you stuff it enough, the seams will be mostly hidden by the fabric. The areas with the puckers will likely look slightly different, but the difference won't be nearly as noticeable once it's stuffed. You definitely want to do your beading before stuffing the top area or the distortion will make it even more difficult to stitch through everything.

Good luck! It's a really adorable design & I can't wait to see your finished product!!!!!