Thursday, March 1, 2007

M for Mother...

Now this block is lovely to do and you have two choices as to how you want to make yours!
I noticed in the instructions for this block Cheri made hers by making the center section as a completely separate section that is then appliqued to the background containing the border. My bom pieces didn't call for doing this as they included strips for making the border and sewing it on afterwards to the center section. I switched out the border fabric for one of my own...heck I switched out a lot this month!

In Cheri's way you have to stitch down the center..then embroider, or mark it well, embroider the edges and then sew down your center. I didn't care that much about having border seams so I did them my way...again one of the things I love about quilt making!

So you have to choose which method you want to use. I made my border strips much bigger so I had something to grasp onto with the hoop and could trim them later for a nice un-raveled edge. Sewing them on as "borders" also made it easier to sew the embroidery close to the sewn edge. In this case I stitched the words before adding the borders. I marked the seam and gave myself another 1/4" of space and marked the words. Then I sewed them on looking at the pictures for a guide and finished doing all the feather stitch after all the borders were sewn on.

BTW you don't have to do a feather stitch. Libby did hers as a sweet curly backstitch line that loops around the block and it looks lovely. I just happen to love featherstitch!

I thought about doing a larger M on this one too but couldn't make it work to my liking so I left it off again. I figured N-O-P is right there as well as adding a big S for Santa so I'm happy with the mix so far.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do I get the pattern for the cute block M is for Mother?

Cathy said...

This is such a sweet block. Is there a pattern available for it and if so where would I find it please. Thank you!

Cathy ♥
hazelruthe@yahoo.com