Adding Embroidery to Existing Quilt Patterns

Granted quilts have their own intrinsic beauty all worked in. Some of the wonderful quilts put out are lovely only due to the way the pattern is worked, however imagine adding embroidery to an already existing quilt pattern!

What is interesting about combining both quilting and embroidery is the attractive depth as well as the truly amazing color that embroidery offers. The other part of the marriage of the two is that a quilt that has some embroidery on it can be personalized through the embroidery. Thus a marriage quilt given to a bride can now have their first names embroidered on the quilt for a keepsake that has not only their names but the wedding date as well.

If you study some of the Victorian era "crazy quilts" you will find that many were made from the tiniest bits of fabric, sometimes even from leftover men’s ties! Then all those pieces were put together randomly which is where the name of “crazy quilts” emanates. You will find that those Victorian women very frequently utilized embroidery to actually embellish their quilts. Thus you’ll get the idea of what adding embroidery can do to an existing quilt pattern. Embroidery will give your quilts new depth and of course added texture.

One way that a particular group made a quilt for a lady who was battling cancer was to have each person in the group not only donate a piece of their clothing, but whoever the person was that gave that clothing was embroidered on the piece. This worked out well because the lady in question was tremendously popular at a computer site where everyone used a chat name or what is known as a user name.

Thus to her, her dearest friends were not Susie and Joan, but rather were Luminous and Mystique. To say that she cried when she received the quilt with all the names of her chat friends embroidered on each piece of the quilt is putting it mildly. When the lady ultimately succumbed to her cancer and passed away, the quilt was given to her daughter who also shared that computer site with her Mom, and now she treasures that quilt so very highly because it was made with love for her Mother!

This same technique could also be utilized using an appliqué. These are made using a piece of cloth over another piece of cloth, however the edges lend themselves very well to embroidery. This is often done with what is known in embroidery as a blanket stitch. The makers of embroidery floss offer floss in what is now an immense array of different fibers. You can now get floss in hemp, linen, silk, rayon and even perle cotton. Obviously too, the different colors now available are absolutely staggering, so whatever your needs are in floss is definitely available for you to utilize.

If your quilting is performed utilizing a machine, that’s great. Incorporating embroidery is now even easier with the machines that perform not only quilting but embroidery as well. Today’s sewing machines now have settings for embroidery, with an extensive list of stitches that are available. The specialty threads we just spoke about are also available for machine embroidery too.