Some more machine embroidery

I had the brilly idea that instead a buying a paper calendar this year, I would use a dry erase calendar board and make little quiltlets (ooh, that's a cool word) or wall hangings to be the picture above the board. So far, the first three months feature machine embroidery, which goes along with the theme I started last week; so I'll share them with you today.

January!

This is machine embroidery applique from Anita Goodesign. I was actually prepared ahead of time for January so was able to do this more involved design. I used metallic thread for the lines in the snow and I tried everything to get it to quit breaking, but wasn't very successful. Good thing there wasn't much stitching in that part! I do love how this one turned out.

February

You can probably tell that I waited until the last minute to do February, but it's still cute. This is a nice design from Embroidery Library. When using quilter's cotton fabric, the embroidery turns out much better if there's batting behind it while the stitching happens. Notice the puckering even though I used cutaway stabilizer. I was kinda bummed about that, but didn't have time to redo it  :(

March!

I did March on Sunday before going back to work on March 3, so again a bit last minute. But I had this one figured out ahead of time. This is also from Embroidery Library and done on white felt. I found out that's what they use for all the stitch-outs on their website. No puckering - yeah! I cut the felt into an oval after embroidering and stitched it to a quilt sandwich (the green fabric, batting & backing fabric). I did some light machine quilting on the "sandwich" before adding the oval. The green ric rac covered the edges of the oval nicely. 

I got the wire hanger at a quilt show and it comes apart so I can easily switch to the next month's quiltlet. 

Oh, and have you ever sewn the hanging sleeve on using the hemmer foot on your sewing machine? It's SO easy! I hate hand sewing so this is a great technique that makes me very happy. I learned about it in a class at Cathey's Sewing & Vacuum catheys.com, which is where I got my new embroidery machine. I'll try to get some how-to photos of the hanging sleeve for April. (Uh, oh, better get started on April's quiltlet!)