Monday, May 5, 2014

What a wonderful way to spend a cold miserable Sunday. I do not usually do hand applique I usually prefer using my machine. This being said the pretty little lady would not have worked by machine. I used all cotton quilting fabric for my lady. Her face is some backing fabric in close to skin tones her hat just a pretty green fabric and the under brim some green homespun. 
The stitching proved a challenge especially turning the tight points and curves of her face. I started out using freezer paper but that was just too difficult but I had pressed some of the shape in so I removed the paper and using a pin and my needle stitched all around. 
I used a layering method to get the pieces laid. First was the little brim piece the the face and finally the hat then I stitched it all down with the tiniest stitches I could manage.The faced details were stitched with 1 or 2 strands of floss using back stitch for the nose, satin stitch for the lips and outline stitch for the hair. 
The hatband is Hungarian braid stitch done with variegated Perl 8 thread. The variegation did not come out too well in the photo. The little flower is made up of a mother of pearl flower button, a plastic flower button, a purple sequin and a pink bead.
This was fun to do but I do not think needle turned applique is really for me.