Janet does all her work by machine and has more than one form of machine appliqué up her sleeve. For this one she used fusible web and a small machine blanket stitch. The fine details were accomplished with freehand machine embroidery. This piece was quilted by Gail Belmont of Valley Springs, California.

After Janet made this quilt, her mother admired it so much that she wanted to make one just like it for herself. Janet rummaged through her stash and pulled out all of the fabrics that she still had any of, and sent them to mom. Mom’s quilt resembles the original so closely that you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart. The last time Janet and I had back-to-back booths at a quilt show, I hung her quilt and she hung her mother’s. Visitors who stood in front of the pole between us thought they were experiencing double vision. We had a lot of fun with that.

I hope you can see the chicken-wire fabric that Janet used as the background. Janet’s quilt design company is Hen Scratch Quilting. Can you tell she is fond of chickens and birds?

Until next time,
Kay

When I was working on Growing Hearts to Appliqué, Pam Crooks agreed to make an example. I was wowed with the result! I named her piece “Tropical Garden Hearts” because of the hot colors. This quilt appears as inspiration in Growing Hearts to Appliqué.

An avid appliquér, Pam has several methods in her bag of tricks. For this wall quilt, she traced around freezer-paper templates, cut out the pieces, then removed the templates. She placed the motifs by eye (wow), pinned everything on, and needle-turned. The stems were done the same way, using no special tool or gadget. My hat’s off to you, Pam!

Pam is known to use black backgrounds to splendid effect. Here, the black sets off the glowing colors beautifully. Pam lives in Soquel, California, and can never be found without an appliqué project or her extensive thread collection. You’ll see more of her work here in the future.

Until next time,
Kay