Cardinal Table topper

Cardinal Table Topper was a gift made for my mother inlaw’s table as the Christmas holiday was just around the corner.  It was all done free hand.  I wanted a quick sew and this certainly ended up being just that.  This is how you too can accomplish this table topper.

I found a great picture of a cardinal that was easy to interpret into a three layered design.  I drew a branch on a piece of freezer paper (mat side) that I duplicated several times to make a the circular design.  The freezer paper is great for this purpose, as you can use the iron to adhere the design for marking and cutting. (shiny side to face the fabric) I took the bird picture and traced it onto the freezer paper (x3) and cut it into shapes to give the three individual layers.  I was now ready to move on to the next step.

Prepping the fabric with the iron on adhesive backing on the wrong side of all the fabrics to be used, was the next step.  Iron the freezer paper shapes to corresponding colors on the right side of the fabric, then cut them out.

Place the pieces in the desired design and then carefully iron the adhesive side facing down, to adhere into place. remove all freezer paper before next step.

Finished cardinal

Quilting

On to the free motion quilting.  Have fun with this, it DOES NOT have to be perfect.  I tend to follow the outline and just add in detail lines .  You can either do this with the feed dogs up or down, depending how free you want to be with the quilting.  I lowered the feed dogs for more free movement when doing the inner portion but kept them up when doing the birds and creating the grid in the very middle.

After you are done with the quilting, cut stips of fabric on the bias for the binding. sew together.

This is simplified version of the process, but I hope it can get you started.  Please feel free to contact me to ask any questions about this piece or any of my work.

Thank you