Can I Applique AFTER quilting?
 

Help! I want to finish up a quilt today to give my baby niece. It's not essential that I finish it today, but I want to, since it was supposed to be for Christmas!

I made a play quilt with simple squares, 2 of each fabric. Two of the squares are plain orange and I
went round and round about what to applique on and just couldn't decide. Now that it's quilted and bound (did it myself), I want to put my niece's first initial in the 2 orange blocks.

Can I applique them on now or would that mess it up? I'm kicking myself for not doing it first, but
that step was intimidating.

If it's not wise to applique at this point, should I get an iron-on and just stitch around the letter by hand?

Suggestions, please!

The finished squares are 6 inches.

I've done it, it works just fine! The cool part is that you will see the applique outline on the back of the quilt. Its kind of fun looking! Go dor it!

How are you going to applique it -- hand or machine. If do it by machine, your stitches will show on the back, but you can hand applique it and just stitch through the top fabric.

Yes, as Traditional pointed out you can do it by machine and make it part of the quilted design, or do it by hand and bring your needle only into the batting. Either way though .. make sure you stabilize the area well to avoid puckering the quilt.

Yes!! In fact I prefer to appliqué after quilting, especially if you want the appliqué to "pop". I made a baby quilt with a large pony flannel appliqué and it came out great--I did hand appliqué with the blanket stitch.

Thank you all for your input. I will be hand quilting it and don't want the stitches to show on the back since they are letters (J and B) so they'd show up backward.