Appliqué Chickens with Clover Farm -

Hello makers – it’s Sara from Rose Hill Quilts bringing some adorable appliqué chickens! This pattern was the perfect opportunity to play with the Clover Farm fabric collection by Gracey Larson.

Discover this charming spring collection

This collection has handsome chickens, a bright pastel palette and bold florals (including everyone’s favourite strawberries!).

A machine appliqué project for beginners

I teach an introduction to appliqué quilting course at the adult education college in Oxford, and we often make chickens as the students’ first project. I wanted to share this pattern with you because it really suits the Clover Farm collection. These chickens are fun to draw freehand, mixing and matching different shapes. The aim is to have fun, drawing freely and giving the chickens their own personality.

Step-by-step instructions

If you want to make your own chickens you will need:

Fabric scraps: I used quarter yards of the Clover Farm prints in yellow and coral
Bondaweb (often referred to as Pellon Wonder Under in the US and Vliesofix in Australia)
A range of threads: I used 50wt for piecing, 28wt to highlight the appliqué details, perle cotton for the embroidery details (chicken eyes and feet), as well as 12wt for quilting.
Fabric background to apply your chickens too. In this project, I used 6.5-inch squares of Celery Sparkler, which is one of the collection’s coordinating basics.

Firstly, you need to apply the Bondaweb iron-on adhesive to the wrong side of the fabric you want to use for the chickens. In this case, I used some yellow and coral prints from the Clover Farm collection. For each of the chickens, you can then draw directly onto the paper side of the Bondaweb and cut the following pieces:

Yellow: body
Coral: beak, comb, tail, wing

Place all the body parts in the desired configuration for each chicken, remove the Bondaweb paper, and iron on to the background fabric. Make sure you apply the beak, the comb and the tail first, followed by the body, and finally, the wing.

Use your machine to stitch the edges of the appliqué with your choice of stitch. I used a mixture of zigzag and straight stitch, though you can also experiment with blanket and satin stitches.

Turn your chickens into a quilty project

I joined the chicken blocks with other 6.5-inch squares from the collection low volume prints, added wadding and put together a simple envelope cushion. I added some additional quilting stitching with 12wt weight to give the cushion a nice quilty texture. You could also make a wall hanging, or use the chickens as part of a fun tote bag!