Applique is my Passion

I am thrilled to be able to finally see the end coming to the Alphabet quilt in Wool that I have been working on since last summer.  The border is on, and I am now adding some trim between the main part of the quilt and the border.  I have auditioned the trim here to see if I liked it.  The trim is two wool yarns that I had in my stash that I ply-ed together and then ply-ed that on itself so that it is four yarns for thickness to cover where I joined the border. This trim also helps to hold the border on because I hand- sewed it on and the sewing goes through the border and the part with the letters.   Here is a closeup of the hand embroidery.

Look at what I just made this week.  The sheep faces are appliques that have been felted with curly and combed wool fibers.  I used menswear wool fabrics and orange pearl cotton for the feather stitching, and wool batting from Fairfield. People are always amazed at the detail that can be achieved with felting.  It is so easy to shade to get dimension, by adding a little bit of gray to the color you are working with.  The gray needs to be mixed in your hands (push and pulling it to mix colors in your fingers).  The sheeps face patterns are part of the Crazy Sheep  pattern.

I am trying to figure a way to explain how I get from one critter to a whole quilt.  How do the blocks fit together without any pre-planning?  I make appliques for the critters and felt them with a Clover Felting tool, CL8901, which is similar in shape to a pen, with three needles.  I also use a single needle to do detail work.  Next I fill in the ground that the critters are walking on, with felting and then embroidered the flowers and trees.  Some of the flowers and leaves are becoming more 3-D.  I felted leaves in tiny heart shapes and flowers in little circles with bead centers. I have no idea where I am going with this, but I need a smaller piece than my two previous quilts, either to enter into shows, or to hang in our booth while the larger quilts are exhibited at shows.  Of course, I can't do the same thing twice, so this quilt I am working on is going to be pushing the envelope even further.