Applique on my Longarm

Welcome.  This week I am excited to share two videos with you. There was so much to share that I decided to split the video into two parts.  Here is the finished project.

I want to do a special call-out to Anne Hurlburt.  She is a certified Art and Stitch instructor and did her Addendum on doing Applique on her longarm.  She has a ton of good information particularly for those using a Statler.

My approach was a bit different than Anne's, but is built on her technique.  I started with a design in Electric Quilt, transferred it to Art and Stitch (where I created my new master).  From Art and Stitch I created the stitching for my longarm.  I also took the shapes and cut them using my Silhouette Cameo.  All of this is described in Part 1 of the Video.

if you aren't using a Silhouette cutting machine, you can ignore the last section of Part 1.  Just print out the patterns in Art and Stitch and trace them on your fusible interfacing.

Postcript on 9/29/2014 - Loes Vanderheijden shared an even better way to transfer from EQ to Art and Stitch.  Here are her instructions.  

In Electric Quilt (I used EQ7):
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1. Open the desired block or stencil in your sketchbook and click on Edit to place it on the EQ Workspace.
2. Look at the rulers and make a note of the block dimensions.
3. Choose menu File > Export Metafile of Block
4. In the next dialog click on the button "Copy to Windows Clipboard".

In Art and Stitch (version 3):
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5. Start a new Design Page and choose menu Edit > Paste Special. This will place a copy of the EQ design on the Art and Stitch Design Page, as artwork.
6. While it's still selected, go to Properties panel, tab Transform and enter the dimensions you wrote down in step 2. Click on Apply.
7. To reduce the too many nodes, select all, right-click and choose Simplify Smoothen. Use the following settings:
Curve Precision (%): 30
Angle Tolerance: 57
Distance tolerance: 20.

Part 2 of the video shows the actual application and stitch out on my APQS Millennium with Intelliquilter.  Regardless of your computerized system, I think you will find this useful.

Part 2 was done using a small video camera and is a little choppy.  I did some major editing to shorten the video which is much more noticeable when using a camera.  

Once I finished my piece, I added an "envelope" back and created a full fall pillow.  I used lots of leftover batting pieces for stuffing the pillow form.

Footnote:  I heard from a couple of people that are using the Brother Scan-and-Cut system.  Silhouette has also recently come out with PixScan technology.  If you wanted to avoid tracing the jpeg Art and Stitch file, you could actually print out the filled shapes from Art and Stitch and scan directly into your system of choice.  (I just received my PixScan mat this afternoon and was very impressed with the accuracy of the scan of my printed Art and Stitch file.)

Happy quilting.

Kari

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