Spring Collage Quilt

Join BERNINA Ambassador, Heidi Lund, and create a wonderful brightly colored spring collage quilt.

Spring Collage Quilt

Materials to Create a Spring Collage Quilt

The size of this wall hanging will be determined by your preference. I made this spring collage quilt 20″ wide by 34″ long.

Spring Collage Quilt-Materials

Materials to Create a Spring Collage Quilt

Start by assembling your quilt sandwich. I determined the size of the wall hanging that I wanted to make and cut my backing, batting and background fabric all the same size. Set aside.

Spring Collage Quilt-Cutting

Go thru your fabric stash and pull out novelty fabrics with floral motifs that you like. I put a little surprise in this quilt and added my favorite fish in complementary colors.

Using the small 18″ rotary cutter, trim around each motif that you would like to use, leaving approximately 1/4″ of fabric around each edge.

Spring Collage Quilt-trim each motif

Once you have a nice stack of trimmed motifs, you go back with your small spring snips and trim really close to the design. I call this fussy cutting and it is very relaxing for me. You can do this sitting in your favorite chair, with a small jelly roll pan in your lap to catch the trimming, all the while watching your favorite television program.

Spring Collage Quilt-Trimmed motifs

Be sure to have several different motifs cut out to choose from before you begin assembly.

Spring Collage Quilt-assemble the motifs

Lay your background fabric sandwich back out in your work area and start placement of motifs on your background fabric. I started with the flowers.

Spring Collage Quilt-Placement of motifs on background fabric

Next, I added the fish motifs.

Spring Collage Quilt-place fish motifs

Move motifs around until you have an arrangement that you like. Pin motifs in place.

Spring Collage Quilt-adding the fish motifs

If at all possible, pin in one direction only. This keeps you from getting poked as you sew and makes it easy to pull each pin out.

Spring Collage Quilt-pin in one direction

Set your machine up for free-motion. Make sure machine is cleaned and well oiled. Drop your feed dogs and attach your BERNINA free-motion foot #29 or another free-motion foot of your choosing. I used the BERNINA foot #44 as it has a large clear surface that helps hold my motifs down as I sew.

Load your machine with the rayon thread you would like to start with. I load a couple of bobbins with rayon thread that matches the backing fabric. I also lower my top tension a bit so that as I am using free-motion, I do not pull the bottom thread to the top. On my BERNINA 770 QE, I lower the tension to 3.75. I like to use my BERNINA knee lift and thread cutter as I move from motif to motif across my quilt.

Spring Collage Quilt-BERNINA Freehand System

Here is a photo of how the flowers looked stitched down free-motion.

Spring Collage Quilt-Free-motion Stitched Flowers

While free-motion quilting down each motif, you can unpin parts, pull them back and stitch under them to secure additional motifs.

Spring Collage Quilt-stitching down the motifs

Be bold and switch up your threads to either coordinate or define your different motifs.

Spring Collage Quilt-chose the coordinating thread

Once all your motifs are sewn down, you will want to sew your background down. I recommend the same free-motion techniques that you have been using all along. In this case, I created a water like pattern.

Spring Collage Quilt-free-motion stitching water-like pattern

The next step of this collage project is to throw the entire piece into your washer and dryer. It gives the wall hanging a really nice softness. Once washed and dried, you will notice that the fabric motifs are frayed along the edges. You can choose to leave the fuzzy edges or trim them using duck billed appliqué scissors and trim up your thread tails from the back.

Spring Collage Quilt-trimming the edges

Spring Collage Quilt-trimmed edges

You can now steam and press the piece. You will notice if there are any areas that you need to stitch over that you may have missed. Take your wall hanging to your cutting surface and true up all sides in preparation of finishing.

Spring Collage Quilt-trimming the edges of the quilt

Finish your wall hanging by adding a bind or facing. In this piece, I chose to do a fused binding. I fused steam a seam II to the back of by binding fabric. I used a wavy rotary cutter and cut 2″ strips of fused fabric. Using a medium iron, I folded the binding and pressed.

Spring Collage Quilt-folding and binding

Fuse the binding to your wall hanging and press in place. Take back to your sewing machine and stitch binding down to assure it will never come up.

Spring Collage Quilt stitching the binding

Enjoy your new spring collage quilt. They are really fun and freeing to make. I could hand everyone the same fabrics in one of my classes and not one wall hanging would end up looking the same. Try this fun way of collage.

Spring Collage Quilt-Finished Collage Quilt

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5 comments on “Spring Collage Quilt”

  • That is absolutely gorgeous!! I can’t wait to try something similar. I have bookmarked this page. I have always done hand embroidery but, this really looks like it would very enjoyable and rewarding, as well! I’ll have to think of a way to get my husband to buy me an embroidery machine. I just got the Accuquilt electric Go! Baby, so it may take some time. This project certainly is inspiring!

    • Thank you Pricilla. You don’t need an embroidery machine to make this project though. It uses great bright novelty print fabrics, a striped background and fabulous threads freemotion sewn on my home sewing machine a BERNINA 770qe. You can buy an embroidery unit for this machine though. Check it out at your local BERNINA dealer 🙂
      Heidi

  • Love the look of this project. When I do a collage like this I use fusible for the floral pieces and once I have them where I want, I peel the backing and press them in place. Then I do the thread work. It is helpful to have the pieces firmly in place first. Really pretty!

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