serenitybygrace

I am certainly not saying this is right, only what I have done on some potholders I have made. I am a relatively new quilter, also. I cut two layers of a fabric to go with the recipient's kitchen, (not enough time to piece at the time). I put a layer of insulbright shiny side out next to each layer of fabric and put one layer of cotton batting in the middle. I machine quilted each individual potholder according to the fabric used, sewing around owls, fruit, sunflowers, putting an X on fabric that had only small various colored dots with white around them, etc. I used bias tape to go with the fabric. I learned a lot about binding while making those potholders. I sewed back side of binding through all layers.
I have noticed that different batting has different recommendations about spaces between quilting rows. I would not quilt all over cute dog faces. I would look around at batting (maybe finding this info on the web?), get some that allows more space between quilting lines. I would only quilt those dog faces where the quilting would emphasize each face. The idea of iron on fusible sounds good, also (maybe use both ideas).