2014 February Little Treasures BOM

I can’t apologize enough that this wasn’t posted on time. Many things interrupted my getting this posted including a death in my family. That said, I will leave the download available until March 8, 2014 to make up for the delay.

The artwork for the Little Treasures BOM is from Graphics and Graphics

All of my patterns are created in Electric Quilt Software

and digitized in Bernina Embroidery Plus Software

February’s block is 15-Inches. It is available with the machine embroidery files again and if you didn’t see the tutorial on how to create your embroidery parts by machine you can view that here.

The rest of the images shown on this page are how this block was sewn including the machine embroidery technique. This months pdf templates are properly reversed for you and each pattern from here on in will have reversed template pieces.

The download for February’s 2014 BOM is now available at Craftsy for 2.99.

The following are some images including the machine embroidery technique that can help you stitch out this block:

In this image above, I’d like to reiterate what I noted in the pdf file. the heart on the shoe stitches out as a raised satin effect. I do not know if any other digitizing softwares offer this feature, but in the new version of Bernina’s Designer Plus software v7, a raised satin stitch is possible.

What happens is that the stitchout stitches the same heart 5 times (less or more depending on what the digitizer sets it to) I leave it on the default, because the 5 times gives a really nice raised effect on it’s own. I will note I stitched this out on my Brother Ult 2001, so even an old machine such as mine is, can stitch these out with no problem.

What I’m trying to show in the above image and the below image are that I’ve removed my jump stitches. I find that while you can leave them in, it’s still better to just quickly cut them off. What can happen is that the jump thread can pull on the next area stitched out and it can set the layout off or worse, it will pull when your starting to stitch with the fabrics and then throw the whole thing off.

Jump Stitches on the back of the hoop cut off

Jump stitches cut again (really important at this part, because the face is so big a piece it is easy for it to bunch up if you don’t.

After I took face off, I cut the back jump stitches, and I removed the freezer paper on all my applique pieces this time prior to blind stitching them in place. I love this technique and will be doing that from now on.

While I didn’t remove all the freezer paper, I took out the main parts, and left the turned parts on, in some parts I did have to re-iron, but I did that anyway to flatten out the applique for blind stitching.

When stitching out the bear face, I had created an additional area on my design for the face so that if the stabilizer tore when taking off the other face, I could still stitch the beige area and the main face together.

To stitch the nose on the beige and the face without blind stitching them in place first (and you could do this on your normal machine if you wanted to first, then come back and do the embroidery) .. Anyway, I just put a bit of glue stick on the back of the face and beige to get them to hold better while stitching the nose on. (I stitched my blind stitch for beige and face when I was doing all the blind stitching, but if I’d thought to do them prior, I would have and I’d recommend that route over waiting.

I added a bit of glue stick to hold the pieces in place while stitching.

When it’s stitching the nose in place, it may look like it’s bunching at the top of the nose, but it all works out well in the end, so their is no need to worry unless something is really off on the stitchout.

Now see, no bunching is showing here after I have stitched the nose on.

With the face, I strongly, strongly recommend cutting those jumps on front and back. It’s doing alot of back and forth stitching on the face, and those jumps will bunch these up if you don’t make the effort to cut them.

Even on the back, don’t let the jumps get in your way.

I love doing faces this way, Can I even say that again… I just LOVE doing faces this way, it’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s pretty.

Cut those jumps 🙂

Freezer paper removed and ironed down. Let me recommend here, use a pressing sheet when ironing over the top of the face or any part where you’ve added embroidery. Especially if you have used rayon threads. All of my embroidery parts use rayon thread on the top of the fabric and polyester thread in the bobbin.

Better cut of the jumps and ironed now.

I’m just showing here some samples of the removal of the freezer paper.

My camera doesn’t take a good picture of  the press cloth, so I turned my iron off to just show how I ironed, then turned it on again using my press cloth to iron them properly.

Blind Stitching – Sometimes some parts are really small, so I will take and straight stitch them on the area underneath where they won’t show to hold them in place.

When I came to the middle shirt, I didn’t turn any edges under on this piece, instead I straight stitched the seam allowance down to the background and let all the other parts cover it naturally.

I’d like to mention here, that before you cut your pieces (and at the end of the post you’ll probably curse me for mentioning it now)

You could cut the hair a bit longer so you could add the bows in a dimensional way. I did this for March’s block, but am thinking it could be done for any of the blocks, then turned under when you know where the bow lies underneath, but you could create the bow with 2 right sides together on each side, turn it inside out and not use the blind stitch to stitch it down with. The middle of the bow would hold the two parts of the bow together when stitched down. This allows the bow to be “free”.

I also noted in the pdf but will reiterate, that when stitching the belt on the dress, I messed up. I put the bottom of the dress on first, then stitched the belt on, I do not recommend doing this, it’s very hard to get lined up, put the belt in first, and then add the bottom of the dress.

Here she is finished, and once Spring comes, I will try to find a way to make better pictures.

Want a preview of March’s block?

Tutorials I’ve written to help you with creating these blocks are:

Applique Tips & TricksFreezer Paper Tip

Freezer Paper Tip

Applique Placement – My Way

Machine Embroidery – A Different Take

Basic Dimensional Effects In Machine Embroidery

Tips & Tricks For Machine Embroidery

Coming In March

March will also bring the first of the bonus blocks I mentioned in the intro to this BOM. It won’t appear on March 4th, but will appear sometime during the month. If your not following me via one of the methods on the sidebar that I’ve offered here, you will need to watch the site. Bonus blocks will only be available for a very short time, I won’t be keeping them up for a month, so if you miss it, you’ll have to buy it if you want it.