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Farmhouse Sentiments Blog Tour


I have known Eileen Roche from Designs In Machine Embroidery (DIME) since I first got started in the sewing industry, maybe for about 15 years. It has been fun following along with DIME and seeing all of the innovative and creative products they have launched along the way. That made it all the more special to be invited to participate in the Farmhouse Sentiments Blog Tour!

For the last couple of weeks, many bloggers have been sharing what they have created starting with the same panel then adding their own special twist. It was a lot of fun to play with this panel and I think that what I made really allowed me to showcase some of my very favorite Baby Lock embroidery tricks. And, of course, I had to add some quilting.

Here is what I came up with:
 

Farmhouse Sentiments Panel

To get started, I pressed the panel with Best Press then fused Baby Lock Fusible Appliqué Stabilizer to the back of it. This stabilizer is one of my favorites as it lends a lot of support to the fabric for embroidery and gives a soft, quilty touch to the finished project.

I recently got a Snap Hoop Monster from DIME, this project was the perfect place to try it out and I found that I absolutely LOVED working with it. Adding a batting type stabilizer makes hooping more challenging due to the thickness, being able to just position my base fabric where I wanted it then place the top magnet on top to hold it in place was so easy!

The downloaded designs include a 4-part wood grain design that is meant to be nested together to create an all over back ground quilting design (perfect for my quilty stabilizer!). The instructions show you how to print templates and use multiple hoopings, but I came up with a more efficient method – I love that embroidery technology allows me to be a little “lazy”! My Snap hoop is 9 1/2” x 14” so I combined the first 3 designs on the screen of my Solaris to stitch them at once. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a 10 5/8” x 16” magnetic hoop? I little birdie told me this may be coming soon…

The Solaris has a feature that allows me to Select All designs then Group them, this allows me to move the 3 designs as one as I position them on my project. I positioned the designs in the top left corner of the embroidery field for my first stitch placement.
 

Multiple Selection

Group

Once I finished this portion of the design, I re-hooped my piece and used the Projector on my Solaris to line up the second portion of the design. I repositioned the fabric in the hoop so that the right edge of my existing stitching was along the left side of the hoop so that I could align the same large design to nest with the existing stitching. In the photo below, the lighter gray is my stitched design and the dark gray is the new design being projected onto the fabric. I then moved the design until the projected image matched point to point with my previous stitching. I checked a few places along the length of the design.
 

The stitching and the new design don’t quite match.

Perfect!

When I was sure my two designs would nest nicely, I stitched the second design. I continued repositioning and nesting the wood grain design all over the rest of the panel.

After quilting the panel, it is time to embellish! The panel has a beautiful heart design meant to complete the screen printed phrase. I re-hoped my panel in approximately the area where I wanted to stitch the heart. A quick Camera Scan on my Solaris gave me an on screen view of my embroidered panel and I was able to position the heart applique in just the right spot.

Position the Heart Design

After the heart was embroidered, I decided to customize the panel by adding the names of my family inside the heart. I scanned again then played with different fonts, sizes and positions until I like the look then stitched the names.
 

Personalize the Embroidered Heart

One of the suggested options for this panel is to wrap it around a canvas and turn it into a custom made wall hanging. While I LOVE embroidery, you probably know that I am a quilter at heart! Few projects I make are without some kind of piecing so I thought it would be fun to add a border to the panel and use pieced heart blocks in the corners. I found a great tutorial from Cluck Cluck Sew with several different size options for a pieced heart. I used a 4” finished block, be sure to check it out!

After piecing my hearts, I added sashing strips between them then attached the borders to the panel. I zipped around all four edges to attach a back, stuffed it, then hand stitched the opening closed on my new pillow!

The Farmhouse Sentiments panel comes with a second theme and coordinating designs, I can’t wait to see what all of you come up with! Check out my facebook page to learn how you can win a Farmhouse Sentiments panel of your own as well as a special little gift from me!
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