A Very Versatile Machine Embroidery Design #2

Corner designs are very common machine embroidery designs.  This one is from Zundt, of course.  It looks pretty simple, and rather uninspiring, right?

Here it is, stitched in the corners, for a little donation quilt I made for The National Quilt Museum.

The fabric is silk/cotton Radiance, the large tulip is also a Zundt design, and the circle is shaped cotton lace insertion.

But before I made this quilt, I made this one, TulipFire:

Do you see the red embroidered on-point squares?  Those are made from this embroidery design, stitched four times in each block.

I simply combined them on-screen on my machine, and stitched the entire block at one time.  This has very dense satin stitch embroidery, outlined with gold metallic thread.

I was thrilled (and very surprised!) when this quilt won the Bernina award for Best Machine Workmanship at the 2013 AQS show in Paducah!

(And, yes, I made my dress, it’s an out-of-print Butterick pattern in a stable knit.)

Now, back to that embroidery design… If you skip the first color in the stitching (the satin stitching) and just stitch the second color (the metallic outline), you get an entirely different look from the same design, very light and airy.  This is Argentum, a 17″ square miniature.

Here’s a closer look at the subtle embroidery

So, I stitched this silver outline embroidery on silver Radiance, then hand-appliqued these teeny, tiny (about 1/8″ wide) bias tubes, then quilted the entire thing with Kimono silk 100 thread.

This little baby won first place in Miniatures at the 2014 Houston IQA show, and has been juried into 2015 Paducah.

As you can see, these are very different looks from the same embroidery design!  Think about different ways you can use your designs.

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