Machine-Embroidered Quilts Embroidery Project

	The Butterfly Quilt graced the cover of the premier issue of Designs in Machine Embroidery back in 1999.

Many telltale signs in the industry are visible - quilt designers crossing over into machine embroidery, the widespread availability of machine embroidered quilt designs, the introduction of larger hoops, not to mention Hoop-It-All’s new jumbo hoops (designed specifically for quilting), quilt design software and publications devoted solely to this topic.

If you love fabric, thread and texture, you’ll love machine embroidered quilts. Quilting offers machine embroiderers a new canvas with an endless array of possibilities. You can combine novelty fabrics, hand-painted treasures, highly textured textiles with embroidery designs and love the results (well, almost all of the results). You’ll find that you’re not limited to your drawing ability. In fact, the embroidery designs will handle all of the details.

	The Anniversary Quilt, as unveiled in Designs in Machine Embroidery magazine during 2004.

The term, machine-embroidered quilts, covers a large variety of quilts. A machine-embroidered quilt can be pieced, like Designs’ Anniversary Quilt from 2004, or it can be a whole cloth, like the Butterfly Quilt.

The embroidery designs can be applied to the quilt top first before the quilt sandwich is created, or, the embroidery designs can actually “quilt” the quilt.

	"One Silly Frog" incorporates both traditional embroidery on the quilt-top as well as machine embroidery on the finished quilt -through the top, batting and backing.

A machine-embroidered quilt can also incorporate both techniques. In One Silly Frog, the water lilies, frog and dragonflies were stitched after the background was pieced. The “ghost” dragonflies in the sky were machine embroidered after the quilt was layered with batting and backing.

We’ll delve into all these techniques in future articles in Designs in Machine Embroidery magazine. You’ll learn when to hoop all three layers and what type of stabilizers to use when hooping a single layer. Best of all, you’ll look at your embroidery machine with a new eye!

The instructions for both The Butterfly Quilt and One Silly Frog are in Eileen's new book, Contemporary Machine Embroidered Quilts.