technique

Physical techniques used in making a quilt

The Thread MAgic Stitch Vocabulary Book is Available in Kindle!

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The Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book went up yesterday on Kindle and is now available! I’ve been sharing my chapters with you so you can get a taste. This is the classroom book that shows you most of the technique

es I use for my work.

I will be teaching the class, Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book for the Gems of the Praire Guild in Peoria on May 4th with a lecture on May 3rd.

This is my first guild gig in about 10 years. There are a lot of reasons for that, and I don’t know that I’m back to a gig I have to travel for yet. But I am so excited to be back in a classroom, and I’ve found there are so many techniques that have changed or modified over that period of time. And so many more things I can do with those techniques..

So I did this booklet, especially for this class. But it should stand alone as a set of exercises you can use to build your skills and stretch your abilities. There is a full toolbox of free motion techniques you can include in your work with just a little practice.

You can see several chapters up on earlier blog posts.

Product or Process. How Do You Learn Best

Bobbin Work

Hard Edge Applique

Skills covered
Free motion straight stitch
Free motion zigzag
Bobbin work
Hard edge applique
Soft edge applique
Working with Angelina Fiber
Working with dyed cheesecloth
Couching
Adding silk flowers and leaves
Globbing

I tried to write a book that would cover a lot of information in a small space. I’m hoping you find it useful. You can order the Kindle Stitch Vocabulary Book right now. The print book will be out at the end of the month, and it’s part of your kit if you are taking the class.

I’m so excited to be sharing this material with you and to be out teaching again with the best people in the world. Quilters!

Stitch Vocabulary Book: Hard Edge Applique

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Most people don’t think about free motion being an applique technique, but it gives you lovely curved edges with great textural lines. Here’s a sneak peek of the chapter on Hard Edge Applique.

Stitch Vocabulary Book: Bobbin Work

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Here’s Chapter Three of the Stitch Vocabulary Book! This time we’re focused on bobbin work. For more information about bobbin work check out Topsy Turvy and Skimming the Surface both on bobbin work.

Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book will be available for sale in early May!

Stitch Vocabulary: Zigzag Stitch

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Zigzag Stitch Vocabulary

What can you do with a free-motion zigzag stitch? Draw, outline, fill in, thread painting, sign your name, and more.

Translucence: Making Stitchery Look Transparent

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I’ve been rethinking how I usually make my dragonflies for my quilt Great Blue. I picked up some new research books and I was struck how very transparent and translucent their wings were. How could I do that?

Dissolvable stabilizer really is transparent and has that look. But it’s made to dissolve if it gets wet. I can’t promise that won’t ever happen. Humidity itself might dissolve the stabilizer.

I’m pretty sure Saran Wrap would tear. Sure enough not to try it.

I I have used organza or lace. It’s a neat look and I like it. But I wanted a more integrated stitched effect. I wanted them to appear to be see-through.

So I thought about it in terms of thread choices. I love Madeira Supertwist. It’s my go-to metallic thread. There are several color ranges. One range is of solid metallic colors. But one of the color ranges is opalescent and crystal. It’s translucent in itself. So I used it in the transparent part of the wings, and the metallic parts in the exoskeleton of the dragonflies.

It doesn’t look transparent exactly. It looks reflective, like glass or water. Not quite what I had in mind, but I think it does the job.

Here’s the difference. This bug is out of solid metallic thread. It makes a bolder statement, more like an exoskeleton than like see-through wings.

All stitchery is a gigo proposition. Good things in, Good things out. When you use excellent threads and get excellent although sometimes unexpected results. I’m going to try these crystalline threads in other ways where I want a translucent look.

Stitch Vocabulary: Straight Stitch

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In the next weeks, I intend to preview my new Stitch Vocabulary Book. It’s a classroom book to go with the Stitch Vocabulary Book Class. It’s a series of exercises to help you build up your free-motion skills. It’s also a sewn and bound record of your experimenting. The first page explores straight stitch.

A word about where this book is in production. I’m working on it in a daily way, and I’m sharing that with you. It is a work in process. If you are worried about my spelling, rest assured that I have people who help me with that. But if something doesn’t make sense or isn’t helpful, I really need to know.

I’m having trouble with the photos. But I promised to show you as I’m working. So please be patient. Right now I’m working on content.

This book is to go with a class at Gems of the Prairie Quilt Guild, May 3rd and 4th. They are currently sighing people up for class.

So here are pages from the introduction and the first exercise on Straight Stitch.

Introduction

Straight Stitch

Next week I’ll show you the exercise for Zigzag stitching. I’ve created a page on my site for more information, patterns and handouts for the Stitch Vocabulary Book.

Turning Over a New Leaf

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We’ve talked about ways to make leaves more real. Leaves are wonderful shapes in themselves, but because they bend and fold and move, they add movement to your piece.

I’ve been working on a fish quilt that I wanted to frame roughly in kelp leaves, and it seemed like a good study on making leaves fold. Kelp is a water plant that bends completely to the movement of the water. But it has a definite back and front. We’re going to experiment with making the leaves fold for this quilt. Here we have just raw cut leaves.

I can see some purples in this as shadows, perhaps, but what I really want my thread color to do is to define the front and the back of the leaves. I intend to stitch the edges pretty heavily, so I’m going to do the leaves separately. I’ve cut leaves freehand from several scraps of green and glued them to felt with Steak a Seam 2. On the back, I have Stitch and Tear which is a crisp tear-away non-woven interfacing. So my embroidery sandwich is my hand dye, Steam a Seam 2, and Stitch and Tear.

I took a piece of the release paper from the Steam a Seam 2 leaf cuts and have folded it in different ways so you can see how that affects the leaf. The front side edges will have heavy crenellation on them. The back sides will be smooth where the folds are.

My thread zones are back and front sides. The front needs to be bright/dark /intense colors. The back needs to be muddy, greyed, soft colors.

It seems like the fabric should define the leaves completely, but I’ve found that’s never really so. What defines much of the leaf color is the thread. If the thread is purple it’s at least a purplish leaf. Sometimes that’s the way to go.

stitching the leaves

Here’s a video showing the crenelated stitched edges.

The leaves fold in the water. On the front side, their edges are crinkled and bright. The edges on the back sides are smooth and greyed out. once they’re applied to the quilt I can take sheers and lace and overlay them with water so they look wet.

Here are some of my separate leaves, made to fold in the water.

I’m not so sure about this layout. I think I need to leave it on the wall for a while and see if I have the placement right. I may have overdone. But since nothing is stitched down, nothing is written in stone. I’ll see how it looks in the morning.

To explore more ways to make leaves check out my previous blog post, Over and Under

FS2/20: The Thread That Looks Like Beading

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Most of my work centers around threads, so I fuss about them quite a bit. Most threads divide into their components: metallic, rayon, cotton, and polyester. Fs 2/20 is a bit different. It has a black core the metallics are wrapped around and when it’s used in zigzag embroidery looks like little beads.

Madeira Threads Metallic Thread Color Chart FS 2/20

These lizards were stitched as bobbin work, out of FS 2/20. The eyes are sliver.

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In contrast, these butterflies were all out of Supertwist Madiera metallic, with FS 2/20 bodies. Again, shiny Sliver eyes.

Why does all that matter? Because those three kinds of thread offer a totally separate look that makes the objects embroidered in them automatically different from each other. Your eye sorts for shiny first. That means that first, it sees the shiny eyes, then the supertwist butterflies, and finally the rich beaded looking lizards. Now, how cool is that?

FS 2/20 is not an easy thread to find. To my knowledge, you need to get it from Madeira. But I do think it’s one of the most beautiful threads I know of. They also have Poly Neon and Supertwist and a bevy of embroidery stabilizers.

For more information about using different kinds of thread, check out Shimmer: Defining the Background.

Wake It Up! Sparking Color With Overstitching

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I love creating color with thread. The threads available make an endless choice of colors. You’re eye blends the bits f thread that peek out from their layers. It makes colors that are rich, dense, and complicated. What’s not to love?

But sometimes it gets too monochromatic. I was working on this heron and I wanted some fish companions for him.

When I picked out my threads for these, I wanted them red to stand out from all that grey in the heron. Red is funny. Like every color, it can lean either to the sun or the shade. A balanced red would use threads of both tempuratures. I used both kinds, a little purple and teal for shaders. And I threw in a green just to spark it.

By the time I got to the green, the whole mass was bland. Pretty. Stripy. Bland. I put in the green and it just woke up. Then more reds and finally oranges.

The green stitching on top is garnet stitch, in small circles. It changed everything!

Yellow overstitching creates a swirl on the fish face that helps round the face. Overstitching adds a color layer, but it also breaks through that bland smooth color.

It helps, of course that the yellow complements the purple, and the green complements the reds. But the textural elements also wake up the fish and feed our eyes.