Today I've been creating our newest animal block to mark the month of Autism. Yes, you guessed it by the title, a monkey block.
Drawing this up for applique was fun. I always draw my designs using Inkscape (software I teach in my online workshop Free Software for Quilters). It takes a while to perfect all the lines and then breaking the whole drawing into individual pieces, reversing them, adding stitching lines and overlapping lines where needed.
Then it is time to select fabrics.... and you know, all my fabrics are color coordinated in bins, and no matter what ever order you stack them in, the colors you want will be in the bottom back bin - and who ever said quilters don't get a workout??
With fabrics selected - only need a few for this project, it is time to trace out the design onto fusible webbing.
Once pressed to the back of the appropriate fabrics, I'm ready to cut them out.
One tip here: I always lift one corner of the backing paper before cutting it out. It is so much easier to remove when I need to. I don't remove it all the way though as I need to cut around the lines first.
The help of a light box and my layout plan, makes it real easy to build up the block placing.
Now for my favorite part, the stitching. In the pattern I give directions for both blanket stitch and free motion. For this sample I'm using blanket stitch. I reduce both the width and length of the stitch to make it easier to get around the points and small curves.
Then I use free motion stitching to embroider in the extra lines such as the moth.
And there you have it - my finished Monkey Block
