Thank you ladies for all the positive feedback!

Ritzy, that is one gorgeous quilt! I love the bright colors. You are a very brave woman making it on such a small scale! Beautiful!
Kathy

Ritzy, your BOM is beyond amazing!! WOW!!!! I love the flowers.

Ritzy, thanks for the detailed explanation, in addition to the blog and Show and Tell--put together, they tell a great story about how your worked on your BOM Month 6!

Ritzy, I just had a look at your quilt. It's beautiful. The colors are fantastic.

Well I made a template of the center shape. I added a 1/4" all the way around and then used this to make copies. Once I had my copies I was ready to start filling the space with the flowers. I then made templates of the flowers using DecoBond. I ironed the templates to fabric and cut 1/4" larger all the way around. Then I used my trusty glue stick to press the edge under. My light box helped me place the shapes on my backing fabric; machine stitched them in place and then cut the backing fabric down to size. Then I paper pieced the edges on that. Picture of the finished blocks on the BOM show and tell.

Oh, Ritzy, don't make us beg! Please tell us what you're doing with your Month 6!!!

I decided not to do the applique design like the BOM because I am doing mine half sized, I don't like raw edge applique and I didn't want to fight to get those very small pointy shapes. I wanted to have fun. I sure am glad that I read on after your initial question. I was going to tell you how I did mine. Anyway, Renata--your bat is wonderful!!!! Well done on sticking to it to get what you wanted.

Thank you, Rita. It is really wonderful that so many people on the Forum are willing to pipe up anytime a question arises to offer their experience and knowledge. That is truly awesome! But, talking with JoJo on the phone literally on the other side of the country, well... that was "wow!"

I have really enjoyed reading this thread even though I don't have an embroidery machine. Renata, you did an amazing job, the bat is beautiful! Isn't this forum wonderful? So many generous people are prepared to give their time and advice. Good luck with the next design.

Thanks, JoJo!!! Thanks a million and one!!! I'm fearless again (until I find the next thing I can't figure out... but I will ask for help, rest assured). I do think the Genie IS out of the bottle and I think I am going to do something special for the four corners of Sedona Star, which will also be digitized. You are so right about the WARNING you put at the bottom of your posting...

Wow!! Renata, I am so proud of you. Your bat looks fantastic and I'm loving the metalic thread. Every corner looks crisp and clean! You really did GREAT. Thank you very much for the compliments, but I can't take all that credit my friend. I think digitizing has been in your blood all along. You just hadn't let it out to roam and play yet! I just encouraged you to let it out.

As for thread, the answer is whatever you like best. Personally, I like my satin stitches to be full and filled so that there is no applique fabric peaking through, but it's your design to choose what pleases your eye the best. My commercial machine does not like Isacord so I don't use it. I use Maderia Polyneon (more colorfast than rayon) or Rapos thread 40 weight. There are others that I use as well depending on the color that I need.

I can't wait to see what you do next now that the Genie is out of the bottle!

WARNING -- Digitizing is highly addicted and compulsive disorders can and do frequently occur causing episodes of dreaming about creating designs, modifying designs, and generally keeping your mind occupied at all hours day and night with the 'what if' factor! The best medicine for this is to frequently spend time at this new craft and stitching out newly created designs on different fabrics to see and learn how the same design can and will look different depending on the fabric/stablizer chosen.

Kathy and Debbie, thank you! You are so right, this is a fantastic community--I have learned so much and gotten so much help that I hope one day I will be able to do the same for someone along the way. If it had not been for those conversations with JoJo, I would still be watching YouTube videos and scratching my head about how to make digitizing work on my specific project. Of course, I've now only digitized one design... I still have a lot to learn!

Renata--your bat looks fantastic. What a fabulous community we have.