I've recently finished sewing this small wall hanging in raw-edge applique and stitch, and I'm pretty pleased with it. It's been so nice to work with jolly, bright colours while the days are still short and the weather is dull.
I started by drawing the design on some paper, traced the flower shapes onto freezer paper, cut out the shapes, ironed them onto the right side of my chosen fabrics and cut them out. I only cut out the biggest 'circles' of the large flowers and just roughly cut the edge off these paper patterns for the smaller 'circles' as I went.
I sewed the stripey blue background fabric to some wadding with free motion machine quilting and marked the flower positions and stalks with a frixion pen, using my paper design and a light box.
I sewed the stalks of the large flowers first using a folded strip of fabric held in place with green thread across it.
Then I did the large flower top left sewing the fabric down with whatever stitches took my fancy.
Next came the yellow flower at top right, which I sewed into position with matching thread, leaving the finishing touches until later as I was excited to do big flower no.2 in the centre.
I really like the way the white dots on the green fabric show through the stitches.
After this I attached the final two yellow flowers and couched down some thick cotton thread in green for the stems. The red stitch across the top of the flowers is fly stitch.
A bit more embroidery to the yellow flowers before I sewed some brown background stalks with whipped running stitch and more fly stitch.
My picture is framed with a narrow flange of bright orange, a wide plain green border and brown binding.
In this photo you can see the stem of a large flower.
It makes me smile every time I see it - what more can you ask?!
Happy stitching
Anita x
