I have been designing applique patterns for over 20 years now! When I compare what I do now to how I started my design process I can see the growth. My drawings are more polished, my pattern instructions so much better than when I started this journey. The learning never ends, and I continue to grow. 😊
Over the last few months I have received quite a few inquiries about including templates in my patterns for applique using embroidering machines. I see there is more and more interest in this type of applique, and have realized I need to address the issue. This, however, is not an easy feat. I use Electric Quilt software to draw my designs, and the templates that I am able to print in that software do not fit the requirements needed for the type of templates needed for machine embroidery. Let me explain with the illustration below. I am using the three “petals” shown in the circle of this flower design. This is what the templates look like when printed directly from Electric Quilt.
Note, however that the top edges of piece #1 will be tucked under pieces 2 and 3. And the top points will also be placed under the next piece to be sewn down. No issue at all if you are hand appliqueing or using a domestic sewing machine. But this is a problem with an embroidery machine, where you don’t want the pieces layered, but with all sides butted up against each other. I figured out how to do this using Adobe Illustrator. See the difference in the templates?
And here you can see excess fabric if using the Electric Quilt templates.
In addition, nowadays a lot of people use electronic cutters to speed up cutting both templates and fabric pieces. I can think of Cricut, ScanNCut, Silhouette… In some cases you can open up pdf files directly and proceed to cut. When that is not the case, you will probably need SVG files. So I have been trying to figure out the best way to do that, too.
The last three days I have spent hours and hours figuring this out. Turns out it is A LOT of work. But I think I will give this a try with this year’s BOM projects, and see if this is useful for visitors. And, if so, if it is worth investing time in offering these templates as additional files.
For the time being, I have been able to put together 3 zip files with both pdf and svg files for the first block of each of this year’s BOM patterns. If you are interested in any of them, they are available here.
For now, enough with all this time on the computer. I am ready for the weekend to begin. Maybe some knitting for a change? And a movie? 😜
I am a self-learner. I taught myself to sew and to quilt. And I taught myself how to draw. I love to dye my own fabrics, am a fanatic of free-motion quilting, and dabble with mixed media. I am a quilt designer and teacher, and design and publish my own line of quilt patterns. With this blog I would like to share the bits and pieces of my life. 
