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Thumbelina Wall Quilt

For this small quilt we used the designs Thumbelina and the green frog from the Frogs set. The finished size of this wall quilt is 21" x 23".

You can purchase this wall quilt from our Etsy store!

You will need a fat quarter of pale blue fabric for the central panel. It can be a batik, hand-dye, marble or even patterned fabric. For the borders you will need 1.5" wide strips of blue and green fabrics in different shades, from pale to dark.

You will also need scraps of fabric for the appliqué, fabric for the backing and binding, batting and Steam-A-Seam2 fusible web for the appliqué.

Step One: Trim the fat quarter for the central part to a rectangle measuring 17 1/2" x 19 1/2".

Step Two: In order to make the checkered borders, cut green and blue fabrics into 1 1/2" wide strips. Combine them in pairs. We grouped pale green with pale blue (for the side borders), medium green with medium blue and dark green with dark blue (for the lower border), and medium blue with pale blue (for the top border).

Stitch these pairs together. Press. Then cut into smaller strips measuring 1 1/2" wide. You will need 80 such strips. It doesn't really matter how many strips of each color combination you have.

Step Three: On the table, arrange the pieces into borders around the central part: the left and the right borders consist of 19 pieces each, the upper and bottom borders consist of 21 pieces each.

Arrange the dark green-blue and medium green-blue pieces along the bottom, the medium blue and pale blue pieces at the top, and the medium green-blue and pale green-blue on the left and on the right.

Now join the small strips together for borders. First, join the 19 pieces of the left border and the 19 pieces of the right border. Then join the 21 pieces of the upper border and the 21 pieces of the lower border. Press all the borders.

Attach the left and right borders to the central part. Press. Then, attach the top and bottom borders to the central part. Press again.

Step Four: Out of paper, cut templates for the water-lily leaves and flowers. Cut ovals of different sizes. They do not need to be perfect ovals. Trim some ovals into lily flowers. When you're satisfied with your paper templates, place the scraps of fabric for the appliqué onto the Steam-A-Seam2 sheet. Follow the directions of the manufacturer to cut out applique pieces based on your templates.

When your fabric shapes are ready, arrange them on the quilt top.

Step Five: From your embroidery software, print out screenshots of the designs. Use them to decide where exactly you would like to place the embroidery. At this point, you can re-arrange the position of the appliqué and embroidery on the quilt top. When you are satisfied, sat aside the paper templates and press the appliqué shapes with a hot iron. The web will fuse and bond the appliqué to the top.

Step Six: Hoop the top with craft felt or DreamPoly low loft batting. It will work as a stabilizer. Embroider the Thumbelina design. With sharp scissors cut away the excess felt as close to the embroidewry as possible.

Repeat for the Frog design.

This is the right side of the embroidery.

When the embroidery was finished, we felt that we need more pink in our design. Thus the pink water-lily was added.

Step Seven: After the embroidery is finished, press the top, add the batting and backing, pin all three layers together and start quilting. Quilt with matching threads starting from the center. We free-motioned the applique parts and imitated ripples on the rest of the quilt.

Press the quilt with steam. Square. Finish the raw edges. For the binding, we used the 2 1/2" wide strips of fabrics we used in the quilt.