Being very productive

I have been tackling my steep learning curve with my new embroidery machine and am finding that it is quite easy to do two things at once!
This morning I spent a long time playing with drawing my own designs from scratch and after much hair pulling I have produced a very simple quilting outline (which is so simple, I am not going to show you), but I think I am now much more confident to go on producing my own, more complex ones.
This afternoon, whilst increasing the number of leaf blocks in my growing collection,  I have been doing a little hand applique.  At the quilt convention, a few weeks ago, I bought some 'Applique paper' (here,  scroll down to see the product below). Basically, it is a semi soluble, fusible interfacing which you can leave in, but allows you to turn the edges of your fabric with a gluestick.  Using it has speeded up my applique no end as I can put together the pieces whilst the embroidery machine is working away.

This is one of my completed blocks.  It is a Quilt Show block of the month from a few years ago and is something I pull out in winter to do on cold nights.

This is my current block, number seven (so you can see I have actually done a fair bit).  Whilst I embroidered one leaf, I finished turning lots of leaves.

All of these paler ones!  OOps, when I laid them out, I realised I had one missing.  I spent an hour looking for some of the same fabric unsuccessfully, then had to look through the rubbish and actually found the missing one.  Lucky the rubbish had not gone out!
You can see one unturned leaf at the top, so you can see I have ironed the applique paper on to a piece of fabric, then it is easy to turn the edges to the back with a glue stick.
Whilst I was embroidering another leaf this evening, I got all twelve darker leaves sewn down.
So my new toy is actually helping me to get more done - and I get to play with lots of glorious colours of thread!

Happy Creating!