Let’s start stitching!!

We are coming to the end of the “Sadie, the Saddle-Billed Stork” project.

Today we will start the thread painting and quilting.

The first thing that I had to do was attach the “thread grass” to the background….

I had to be careful that I was covering all of the edges…..

If I needed a bit of extra grass, I used some of the offcuts that I had from making the grass….

Once they were stitched in place, you couldn’t tell that it had been patched.

At the top, I was careful to tuck the cheesecloth under the grass…..

Everything was now ready for Sadie to make her appearance….

I pinned her on and immediately started thinking about how I was going to thread-paint her…..

I realized that I was scared to start the thread painting and began by only doing simple things, like stitching around every one of the feathers and every section of her body. That was okay but wasn’t enough!!

I finally decided to go all in and spent the next several hours happily stitching…..

When I was happy with the stitching, I basted the quilt and started quilting.

Since I had laid down so much thread on the top, I decided to keep the quilting simple.

The meadow was quilted in a simple wavy line……

I loved the texture that it added to the piece.

I did change the quilting along the two “path-type” areas…..

The leaves had already been heavily thread painted so the quilting just outlined them further.

I added vertical squiggly lines in the background trees too.

It was a BLAST to quilt and I look forward to showing you the FINISHED quilt…..

Come back tomorrow!!!

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Stabilize me!!

A month or so ago, I posted about finishing up a Thread-painting that one of my friends had started…..

It was stabilized with a super-heavy backing which made the stitching easy to do.

Unfortunately, it meant that the piece could not be quilted so I ended up just turning it into a piece of wall art.

NOW I am planning to make a similar one for myself……

….but I can’t figure out what type of stabilizer to use.

I visited my local JoAnn’s and found tons of different types of interfacing!! Completely overwhelmed, I picked four types to bring home and try.

I planned my test pieces so that one section was sewn straight on the backing fabric and one section was on a piece of fabric that was fused down.

Here are my results……

The first was Pellon 931 which is called a” Fusible Midweight”.

Stitching on the fused fabrics worked okay, but there is definite puckering on the other side….

Next was Pellon 987 which is a “White Fusible Fleece”….

. I had great hopes for this version as it would give the piece a bit of texture. Alas, there was TOO much texture……

….but not TOO bad.

Next was Pellon 808…. “Craft-Fuse”…..

This one was the worst for distortion……

Finally, I tried Pellon 80 (Heavyweight Stabilizer). This one is different because you SEW it in rather than fuse it on…….

This provided the least amount of distortion…..

All of these stabilizers worked well on the areas where another fabric had been fused to the backing but this one was the only one that worked equally well with just one layer of fabric.

I think the fact that it isn’t physically attached (fused) gives it room to shift a bit.

The thing that I don’t like about this stabilizer is that it is thick and will definitely turn the piece into an art piece rather than a quilt.

So, that is where I stand right now and I could really use your help…..

What stabilizers do you use??

Do you see a theme?

If you have been following along this summer, you will know that I have played with a variety of techniques, but there has been one thing in my mind that I have been heading for…..

SADIE THE SADDLEBILL STORK!!

To refresh your memory, I took a photo of Sadie when we were traveling last year in Mozambique….

Back in December, I collaged the stork and then started working on the background. It took me 4-1/2 tries to get something that I was happy with. When I left you, this is where it was…..’

I had thought that I would work on it some during the 2022 tax season but that was just a pipe dream!!!

I tried couching down a few threads…..

but quickly realized that I didn’t like it and pulled them out again. I mean, what was I thinking when I put them in a row like this??? I do think that I could use this thread to add some highlights.

Anyway, this summer I spent a lot of time on my Botero Flower Garden…..

…loving the look of the dyed cheesecloth as an underlay.

And yesterday I posted about thread painting this meadow…..

So the question for September is “how can I use these two techniques to embellish Sadie’s background??”

I have concerns about both techniques…..

The cheesecloth will make the surface rough and I am worried that Sadie wouldn’t be able to lay flat…..especially with her sweet, skinny legs.

The fabric may not stand up to the intense thread painting in the 2nd meadow

So, do I need to do some sort of hybrid??

I would LOVE to hear your thoughts?

A little thread painting

As I mentioned in Tuesday’s post, I was asked to finish a couple of pieces that my friend Diane started before her death.

One of these was a thread-painted piece.

Diane had fused fabrics down to create the scene and then started adding some stitching…..

From looking at it, I would guess that she was using a free-motion zig-zag stitch…..

Both of my current machines are straight stitch only so I was a bit concerned about changing the method that she was using!!

But, once I got started, I enjoyed adding interest to the sweet scene!!

The pine trees were greatly enhanced by the fabrics that she had selected….

I was most concerned about the tree on the left. I just wasn’t sure exactly what she was wanting to show here…..

….maybe a sunset where just the outline of the tree showed?

I started out adding some light grey over the black branches, came back in with a bit darker gray, and finally pulled out a green/grey and started scribbling little circles over the black branches.

This is where it came alive…..

…and I am pleased with the final result!!

I did all of the stitching on my Juki Sit-Down Longarm and realize now that the extra power and speed made this much easier.

But, my favorite thing about this piece is the grass in the front field…..

I used four different threads in a gradation from the top to bottom and then added some highlights using a lighter thread…..

Since the top was backed with a heavy stabilizer (which made stitching easy), I didn’t see a reason to add batting and quilting.

I fused a backing fabric to the back and bound it in the same fabric.

I love the final piece…..

….and, typical of Diane, she pushed me to try something new and find out that I REALLY enjoyed doing it!!

Travel Log Quilt #4

The next quilt in my “Travel Log Quilt” series is one that was made from a trip that my daughter, Jenny, took back in 2006. Now I know that this isn’t MY travel quilt, but I had been to the same area LONG before digital cameras were a thing, so I claim it anyway.

She was a Freshman at University of Georgia and decided to do “May-mester” (a short 2 week term) in Australia. Since she had been born in Australia this seemed to be the most natural thing for her to do!! She had a wonderful time there, studying the flora and fauna of such an amazing continent.

Probably her favorite part of the trip was time spent on the ocean in the North-eastern state of Queensland. She enjoyed snorkeling, sky-diving (NOT part of the course) and watching the sea turtles as they made their way from the nest to their home in the ocean.

When she returned with photos from the trip, I was enamored with this picture of a gorgeous sea turtle floating along in the ocean………

….and also these photos of other undersea creatures……

At the time I was doing a lot of work with photos in quilts and wanted to do something that mixed the photos and fabric. I started out by setting up a “new” photo that placed the turtle slightly off-center with lots of ocean surrounding……

Each of the lines in the photo represents a small portion of the ocean that I “grabbed” from somewhere else in the photo. It looks choppy here, but the final printing looked great. I printed this photo on fabric using “Printed Treasures” fabric and then started adding”stuff to it.

The three yellow and black fish are all the same photo but just printed in different sizes. They are appliqued to the ocean…..

The reef picture was also printed but I placed it over some fabrics that had a similar look…..

Back then I didn’t have the confidence to free-hand the thread corals but drew them on a wash-out stabilizer, sewed them in place, and then washed the stabilizer away.

The other small fish were simply cut out and appliqued in place without any detail added. I really wanted to give the impression of a school of fish swimming along……