Heather contacted us recently. She’s been busy working on projects during lockdown. She had completed the machine applique on a Daisy Best quilt for a baby due in May, but her problem was how to quilt it – just to quilt in the inner and outer borders or add any quilting around the rather detailed designs.

Valerie’s advice to her centred around if Heather was planning to do the quilting by hand or by machine or even a combination of both? She suggested that if it was the latter then Heather could ‘fix’ the blocks with straight line stitching and the walking foot, and then do some ‘seed quilting’ in the background of the blocks as well as simple outline stitching of the characters too.

(For those that may not know seed quilting is a single quilting stitch at random intervals through all the layers so you move the thread between each stitch through the wadding)

Alternatively, she could use free motion quilting for this outline stitching on the machine too.

Otherwise, simple ‘single motifs in the blank spaces would be just as lovely

In the end, Heather stitched around each frame in the ditch. Outlined all teddies and free motion quilted in each square. She had just enough fabric to complete the edges as well.

What a lovely quilt, which we are sure will end up being truly loved