Countdown to Christmas Quilt Along: Numbers Applique

I had a hard time deciding what technique to use for the numbers on my advent quilt for the Countdown to Christmas Quilt Along over at Better Off Thread.  I thought about doing reverse applique, a technique I came across in a neat book a little while ago called Pretty in Patchwork Holiday.   Really liked this book by the way, but I felt that the reverse applique would take too long.  Then I wanted to use my fabric scraps and do "regular" applique, but I didn't want to iron a bunch of Wonder Under.  That lead me to wool felt for the numbers.  I figured I could just cut them out and do a quick stitch around the edge.  

Plus, I felt that using solid colors would be a better contrast against the patterned pocket backgrounds.  I got some really great wool felt from Kindall Krafts on Etsy.  Great prices, fast shipping, and wonderful product!  On top of all that, the felt was so cutely packaged with a super sweet felt flower clip....loved it!  I was, however, a little worried about the colors matching, but I got lucky because they were all pretty perfect matches, except the blue was a little off....but still works!

As you can see, I haven't had a chance to sew all of the numbers down yet, however I am hoping that it will help increase the contrast on some of the pockets.  For example, pocket 14 was a tough one because the presents print is pretty bold and the green numbers have a hard time popping out....again I hope that stitching around the numbers will help a bit.

For the numbers, I used a font called Glasket, which I believe I downloaded from a website, like fonts.com or something like that a while ago.  I liked it a lot because it had an art deco kind of feel to it and well, I am a sucker for anything art deco!  I used Microsoft Word and typed the numbers at a size of 260, then formatted the font to outline only and printed 0 through 9.  I used template plastic over the print out and traced the numbers, then cut the numbers out of the template plastic.  Using the number templates, I traced outlines onto the wool felt and then cut them out, and voila....

Anyway, at least I got all of the numbers cut out...yay!  I need to keep chugging along and get this project together.  Thanks for checking it out.  Hopefully, I will have more to show you soon!