Using machine embroidery with quilting

[Lois B.]

I was at a quilt show and saw a quilt that was all done in roses using Machine Embroidery. It was beautifully quitled. Unfortunately, you could not get close enough to the quilt to see how it was done, even when the docent flipped a corner over for me. I've been wanting to use ME in a quilt, but a lot of quilts I've seen with it, the ME flops off the quilt a little (or a lot) resulting in an unattractive appearance. I know some people ME through the quilt sandwich to solve this problem. But I think it leaves the back side of the quilt not very attractive. I was wondering if anyone actually quilts over the machine embroidery design so that the equilt is evenly quilted?

[Margo C.]

I don't do machine embroidery, but can tell you that in order to have a quilt lie flat when it is finished, the density of quilting must be even over the whole surface.

If you do the embroidery through the entire quilt sandwich, you would need to add that much stitching between the motifs to equalize the density in order to make it flat, and you would have a very stiff project! :shock:

[Marianne G.]

I have used machine embroidery on several quilts and I treat it as appliqué. You can add FMQ or digitised quilting around and inside the embroidery. On a rose I would add details to the leaves and the petals of the roses with quilting, probably outline it and not quilt the surrounding areas to death. I have only done it on wall hangings not on a bed quilt but I can't see whey you can't do it on a bed quilt too. Machine embroidery should never be heavy, it must drape.
Marianne

[Susan B.]

My bird quilt in my profile is machine embroidered, and then fmq all around each design. Yes, I treated the embroidery like an applique and stitched tightly around the design. I learned partway through this project that it would be better to machine embroider through the top and batting and put the backing on later. Machine embroidery is not pretty on the back. Echoing can still be done as part of the quilting process.

Another way to use machine embroidery is with open quilting designs, just for quilting. It's a lot of loading of the quilt on a DSM, but I learned to use Clover clips to attach the quilt to the embroidery hoop. This was a lot of work, but the effect was pretty amazing. In the end, I'd rather just fmq.

[Susan B.]

Thanks for all your input. I appreciate all the nitty gritty details! I'll have to experiment a little before I take on a whole quilt. As ME becomes more popular, I suppose we'll see more of this style quilts at shows.

[Susan B.]

Have you seen Kenny Kreations? It is embroidery designs that are digitized beautiful and they are used on quilts. I seen some of the quilts at the Houston show this year using their designs. They were beautiful.

Shelley

[Susan B.]

I have some of his designs, but I haven't seen them made into a quilt yet. I'm sure they are spectacular!