Nov
10
14
Just after I started a series of blog posts about machine embroidery applique, the hard drive on my laptop died and I was without my computer and all my files for 2 1/2 weeks. This had the unintended consequence of placing a huge road block to getting this info up. This post is a sequel to my earlier post that you can read by clicking here. In the last post, I explained how to stitch a design in the center of a quilt block where the design set “on square” within the block. This was all done using the technique of floating the fabric block on a piece of hooped stabilizer. Now I will show you how to do the same thing except that the design will be set “on point” within the quilt block.
There is only one thing we will change from what we did earlier.
Step 1: Marking the fabric block: This is the only thing we will do differently. Instead of marking a line from the center of each side to the center of the opposite side, we mark temporary lines from each corner to the opposite corner. This means that instead of having a large + sign in the center of the fabric block, we’ll have a large “X”in the center of the block, as shown in this photo:
From this point on, everything we do is identical to how we handled things earlier when our design was set “on square” within the fabric block. We stitch out our center crosshair onto the hooped stabilizer just like before:
…and we line up the lines on the crosshair with the lines of our fabric block just like before. Once all our markings have been aligned, things look very different because the block is oriented on point instead of on square:
Once we stitch out the placement outlines, you can see that the heart is now set on point in the center of the block instead of “on square” in the center of the block:
To see that difference more clearly, compare the “on point” heart above with the “on square” center heart below:
Why am I telling you this stuff? There is actually a very good reason. If you can understand and remember the rationale for these 2 placements, you can create more complex quilt blocks without knowing how to digitize or without having to spend lots of $$$ on digitizing software. These 2 lessons are really the building blocks for doing some very cool stuff, so stay tuned!
And speaking of staying tuned, 11/10/14 is the beginning of the machine embroidery blog hop sponsored by I Have a Notion! I’ll have a new post up later today with the full lineup for the hop-please stop by!
Filed under Machine Embroidered Applique.
