technique

Physical techniques used in making a quilt

Hang ’em High: How To Make a rod Pocket without Hand Stitching

| ellenanneeddy

Every quilt you want to hang will need to have a rod pocket. The tradition is that you sew a tube and hand sew it on, I will never live that long. I hate to hand sew. It certainly would feel like I’d lived too long if I had to sew rod pockets that way.

Enter the wonderful world of glue. I’m a fond friend of Steam-a Seam for applique. But it has a version that comes in strips that makes a snap out of making a rod pocket.

Now we all know not to trust glue. It can, and will come loose at the most miserable times. I always stitch it down eventually for safety’s sake. But there are seams that take stress and seams that don’t. For a seam that has nothing pulling on it, you can fuse it and forget it. And a rod pocket has 2 hems and a seam that does not bear weight or take stress.

Each rod pocket is a rectangle that needs to be hemmed at the short sides and joined into a tube. It’s easy to do that with a strip of Steam a Seam 2.

It can be done in two pockets if you want a break in the center for a hanging hook.

What size should it be? Depends on your rods and depends on the size of your quilt. But I always go a bit wider than I think is needed. 6-8″ for something small. For a larger quilt, a 12″ pocket isn’t too big. If I cut the length of the rod pocket to the size of the quilt, by the time I fold over the two hems, it’s a perfect size to hold a rod without the rod peeking out.

I’ve put Steam a Seam 2 down both ends of the rod pockets and ironed the two hems. Then I’ve fold ed the rod pocket into thirds. I put Steam a Seam 2 on the folded up edge, and folded the other flap to meet. Iron it down and you have your rod pocket.

So now you have your pocket, without a stitch in it.

The rod pocket holds up the weight of the quilt, so it does need stitching to hold. But we can put it into place and baste it with the Steam a Seam 2 to prepare it for stitching.

I always stitch a rod pocket down, but I glue them first. I put two lines of Steam a Seam 2 down the length of the rod pocket. I center them on the back of the quilt on top and iron them down.

Then I put monofilament nylon or poly into both the top and bottom of my machine and set my stitch on a hemming stitch. I’ll need the hemming foot as well. It rides right along the edge of the pocket.

Set the hemming stitch just a bit wider than it sets for a regular hem. Stitch down one edge and then the other.

Will it show? Not very much. You might find the line of stitching where the hemming stitch is, but I guarantee you’ll have to look hard for it. Job done. Not a hand needle in sight.

For more information about Steam A Seam 2 check out Sun, Clouds, Water, and Rocks. You’ll find Steam a Seam 2 in 1/2″ strips at Amazon or at your local quilt store.

Good Bones: Rocks To Water

| ellenanneeddy
923-21 In the Reeds 2

Building something with dimension usually means it has a recognizable top and bottom. Design-wise, I believe you should be able to flip a piece on any side and have the design still move and work. But it loses a great deal of credibility if you have upside-down fish. It’s not a good look.

Be that as it may, it helps to have a recognizable border between sky, land, and water. How can we make those obviously separate, without just putting a line across it?

There are several subtle ways and some pretty direct ways.

Dyed cotton thread in the sky, thick metallic in the water

The easiest subtle way is to change the kind of thread you are using to stipple. Not the color necessarily. The kind of thread.

Threads separate in how they’re made and how much they shine. Metallic threads usually shine more than poly or rayon, certainly much more than cotton. Sliver-like threads that are flat tinsel shine the most. Next, come the twisted metallics like Supertwist. Then there are the wound metallics like Superior metallics.

Now, if water is shinier than air, and air is shinier than earth, you can separate them out by having different threads stippling the piece. I usually use Sliver or #8 weight metallic threads for water, and Supertwist for sky, and/ or earth. If they shine differently, your eye will automatically sort them out as different.

# eight weight metallic threads in water

But the best way I know to establish earth is rocks. This is not subtle. It’s an in-your-face statement of land. A pile of rocks at the water’s edge defines the water/earth border immediately. Ad it’s so easy to do.

I cut rocks out of leftover hand dye. I pick anything that is rock color, always adjustable to the color of the background, and cut a whole lot of rocks for when I need them. They’re backed with Steam-a-Seam 2 so I can move them around at will until I iron them down.

Fishy Business is a mostly water quilt. But a pile of rocks in one corner establishes the bottom of the pond. I may have globs of thread and some water ferns later to create more movement. Now all I want to do is establish a baseline with the rocks and start getting the water to flow.

I’m using soft edge applique techniques for this. Soft edge has no visible stitching or edge to it. Neither water or rocks are improved by having a hard applique edge around them. Instead, I’ll go around the edges with monofilament nylon and a zigzag stitch. There’s more information on, this in Sun, Clouds Water and Rocks.

I cut some elongated c shapes to make water from. Both in blue and green for the water and yellow for reflected sunlight.

You can see the progression on this in these shots. I started with a corner pile of rocks to establish the bottom of the pond. Then I added in the water ripples made of sheers backed with Steam-a-Seam 2. Since each fish I put in the water changes where the water ought to be, I’ve added them one by one and adjusted the water around them. I added sunlit water shapes across the middle.

I’m pleased with this so far. Nothing is sewn down yet, so I’ll leave it up and look at it in case it needs adjustment.

Having a sticky fusible like Steam-a-Seam 2 lets me design this way. When I’m ready, I’ll commit and iron it down. It’s a very fishy business after all.

What Rules? Testing Out Old Theories about guilding lilies

| ellenanneeddy
Swirling water, with metallic thread.

Whenever you teach, people want you to give you rules. Directions. Patterns. A safe way to get results.

That’s fair. That’s what they come to class for. What they’d really like is a formula. Add a plus b, divide by six and get your result. I do understand. And underneath it all, I have a list of odd rules as well.

But I do know that they’re odd. They’re based usually on experience. But sometimes they’re annoyingly limiting. And every so often, I test them out. I push the borders, just to see if it’s a superstition I’ve made for myself, or something really helpful. Or if the materials have changed.

This is a process I call gilding the lily. I take a really lovely print or rubbing and accentuate it with thread. I’ve taken to doing it a lot with oil paint stick rubbing.

One of the tricky things is working with metallic, of all sorts. Metallic goes with metallic, right? I used to be quite strict about that.

Until I had something I was embroidering there just wasn’t enough metallic colors for. And then I found my rule was silly. Of course I could dust something with metallic.

So lately I’ve been working with metallic oil stick paint. I’ve been embellishing rubbings with straight stitch and metallic thread, a technique I call Gilding the Lily. Did I have to use metallic thread? I thought so. I thought the poly thread would cover it up too much. I thought it needed the shine.

But I had to work the metallic thread from the top. And metallic thread, even the best metallic thread is touchy in the top of the machine. It goes through the needle 50 times before it lands in your fabric. So I tried it.

How silly of me. I sat down with a pile of rubbings and some beautiful poly neon. The look was different. But lovely. And my rules were so much eye shine.

It’s worth not shutting the doors of creativity because we have a safe sure method, a path we know. Sometimes we simply have to stumble past our safe path to experiment outside those possibilities to something new.

So if I waffled teaching you in class and couldn’t give you a complete formula for a perfect quilt, I hope you understood I’d given you permission to try anything your heart desired. Me too!

9

Seeing Right Through: Applique with Sheers

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Splash! in process

I know it’s not supposed to be quilter’s fabric. Sorry. I can’t leave it alone. It’s too much fun to play with test tube babies. Over the years I’ve collected a special stash of laces, organzas, chiffons, brocades and just plain weird stuff.

It’s not anything I would piece. But no one would call me a piecer so that’s moot. But it’s wonderful for the things in this world that are, by nature transparent and/or translucent. I’ve talked earlier about finishing sheer edges with a soft edge finish, Sun Rocks, Wind, Water: Elements with Soft Edges.

But there are times you want that edge to show. Edging lace and sheer applique is a way of not only defining the edge of the applique but of controlling the color and controlling exactly how transparent it is.

I’m working on some moonflowers and some snow drops for a quilt called Splash. The quilt features a dark mostly blue background, and I wanted glowing white flowers for the background. Moonflowers are morning glories that bloom only at night. They’re perfect.

It’s also a way of lightening a darker quilt.

I used both lace and organza for my flowers. I do like them to have small differences, so they have their own individuality. Then I placed them with Steam a Seam 2 on a piece of white felt, with some green leaves. Why felt? It’s a spectacular stabilizer, with a layer of Stitch and Tear underneath. Why white? Because it’s all going to show. Whatever color felt I put under the lace will show through and define the color of the finished flowers. Organza will show through the most, lace less so, and Angelina fiber the least.

Knowing that is power. Felt comes in a full Crayola box of colors and it allows me an extra layer of shading in the process. The thread I use will also define the colors and shade things into darks and lights. Here’s a collection of flowers with different backing felt colors.

white over pail blue
angelina fiber
white over pale blue
white over pink
white over white
White on White
white over turquoise

I use a number of pastels as well as different whites to stitch the edges to give depth. As usual, it’s darker where the sun isn’t shining.

shading the flower

I stitched the flowers with a free motion zigzag. Here’s a little video showing how that works.

I did these moonflowers separately from the piece because they’re relatively large and would have distorted the surface. But for the smaller snowdrops, I applied them directly with Steam a Seam ad then stitched on them directly. The cool thing about this is that the background peeks through, like all translucent flowers. It’s a cool effect.

snowdrops directly on the fabric

And it’s a great reason to play with sparkle lace. There should always be a reason for sparkle lace!

Hard Edge Applique: Redefining the Line

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We talked earlier about soft edge applique. Soft edge is a minimal treatment that simply covers the edge of an applique with monofilament nylon or poly thread with a zigzag stitch. For things like water, air, fire, rocks, mist, suns and moons it’s perfect. Sometimes it’s good for flower petals as well. It’s for anything that doesn’t need a hard defining edge. It creates soft color shifts across the quilt.

But some things need that edge. Bugs, birds, frogs and fish all need that hard definition. Or you can’t really see them at a distance. And it makes a huge difference when you go to photo your piece.

You know I’m a color girl. I’m going to want to use color every time I can. But over the years I have learned, if you want it to stand out, use the black for an outline.

green outline
black outline

I particularly have tried it with bugs. Metallic thread green thread always gets my attention, and I reach for it much in the way you might reach for cherry cordial chocolates. But I’m mildly disappointed with it in the end, because it never gives as defined a space.

basic outline

I’ve been working on this egret, and the my process shots reminded me how important that outline is. Again, I’ve been working on doing a dimensional white bird, so it has a lot of contrast underneath to shade to white on the top.

The bare bones outline define the areas to shade with color. I’ve come to rely on 40 weight Madeira Poly neon. It comes in several blacks, but the definitive one is color #1800. I’m using a free motion zigzag stitch to outline, which is why the width is variable. (See post Zigging Upended for a tutorial on zigzag stitch).

I build color, from dark to light from the outline. For more information about choosing those colors, check out this post: Into White: The Search for White Thread Painting. But it’s coloring within the lines. As you can guess, I’m not so good at that. The threads encroach over the line and things get mushy. So the final act is that reoutline.

Redefining the outline

You can see the difference that second outline makes. All the edges that are fuzzed and mussy are now tightened up and out there.

The outside edges will be defined as I stitch the bird down. But having the inner edges cleaned with an extra edge of stitchery redefines all the lines.

finished egret

When I applique the bird on, again I’ll use my zigzag stitch with black thread. It gives the outline definition and punch and helps separate the bird from the background.

Separation Anxiety: Making Mountains Out of Zigzag

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The hardest technical thing to deal with in free motion embroidery is the distortion. Any time you stitch rhythmically and close together, the fabric will distort, trying to make room for the extra thread in it. More so if you’re using a zigzag stitch. Zigzag stitching pulls on both sides and can make a top wave like a flag.

There are several easy cures: Using a stabilizer, using a hoop, using smaller width stitches. All that being done you can still end up with a crumpled mess lying like a hat. It’s not a happy moment. It’s made worse by the fact that the fabric made by that kind of stitching is usually pretty fabulous. Just lumpy.

Can you steam it? You can try. Sometimes it helps. Can you cut it apart and put it back together? I’ve done it. It’s a last resort, but it’s better than lying in lumps.

Or you can cure it by cutting off the rumple. I’ve done that a lot with embroidered subjects. But can you do that with elements of the background? Why not!

Cheesecloth mountains

This is a direct applique technique. I have some cheesecloth mountains for this owl in the meadow. If I stitch them down on the quilt surface I will end up waving the flag. So instead, I’m going to glue them on felt and do my detail stitching before we attach it to the front.

Do I lose something by this? Several things. I lose the look of the hand dye behind the cheesecloth, which I like quite a bit. And I lose the distortion. I hate the distortion. Do the math and make your choice.

The felt I’m using is a cheap acrylic felt from Joann’s. It’s stable, doesn’t fray, and stitches well. I’m making my mountains out of cheesecloth and Steam a Seam 2. On the back, I have a layer of Stitch and Tear stabilizer to help control the distortion and give support to the stitching.

Cheesecloth is porous. The glue will come through when you iron it. I’m using a Teflon pressing cloth to protect my iron.

The glue will come through onto my pressing cloth. I can clean that off with a Scotch Brite No Stick Scrubby.

Once I’ve got it glued down and stabilized, I can start stitching.

The stitching on these is moved through the machine from side to side. That creates a long stitch that fills the mountains quite nicely. It also distorts the fabric a lot. You can see the pull of the stitch on the fabric as the stitching fills.

When it’s all cut away the distortion is gone and all is left is a thin margin of felt that can be covered with minimal zigzag stitching. All those textured mountains with two small rows of zigzag that should not distort much.

I’ll pull off the last of the glue before I apply the mountains to the piece. I use a small square of plain cotton (something I never want to see again) as a pressing cloth and iron the embroideries on high heat. The glue will bubble through to the pressing cloth and pull right off. Make sure you remove the pressing cloth while it’s all steamy hot. Throw the cotton pressing cloth away. It will transfer that other bit of glue on to another piece if you reuse it.

This is a hard edge applique technique, because when I stitch it down, the stitching will be a visible line of polyester zigzag stitching.

everything but the owl

Now all I need to do is stitch down the flowers, add the owl and stipple.

For more information about cheesecloth check out: The Miracle of Cheesecloth: It’s not Just for Turkey Anymore and

For more information about zigzag stitching: All About the Line: Choosing the Right Stitch

Sun,Clouds, and Water: Making Elements with Soft edged Appliqué

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Background with sheers and lace for water
Sheers and lace for water

When we applique something, we think most about the fabrics used together and how they interact. But the way it’s appliqued, the stitch and threads used make just as big an impact. Applique edge change the look of our work.

Steam A Seam 2

Soft edge applique is for things that don’t have single color edges. Bubbles. Clouds. Water. Mist. Angelina fiber. Sunlight.. Why? A hard line of stitching makes them stand out too strongly and makes an ugly line. So all I want to see is the change in fabric. Particularly with sheers and laces. It’s a direct applique technique because it’s glued and stitched directly to the top.

I do most of my applique with Steam A Seam 2. It’s a peanut butter sandwich with two pieces of paper and tacky glue in the center. I can peel off one side of the paper, tack it to my fabric, peel off the other side and then place it on your piece over and over again until I’m happy with the result and I iron it down.

S shapes
c shapes

I usually cut c and s shapes. These flow into each other, and they make all kinds of natural light and shadow. You can cut pieces one after another following a similar shape.

moon and clouds

Here’s a sun and some clouds. Same shapes basically, but they fill in well. The nice thing about Steam A Seam 2 is that it sticks, but you can reposition it. I’ll put pieces up on my design wall and then play with them until they’re right.

I never really trust glue. Sorry. I just don’t. I’ve seen it too often. You iron it down and it peels back off. Maybe I don’t always iron long enough. But I always stitch it down, just in case. Then I know it’s not going to travel anywhere.

The glue will come through your lace onto your iron. So when you iron lace and sheers, you’ll need a pressing cloth. My favorite is the Applique Pressing Sheet. The glue will melt through on the the pressing sheet.

You can clean it off with a Scotch Brite Zero Scratch Scouring Pad, which will not scratch your pressing cloth.

For stitching, I use an invisible thread. But which one? It seems to depend on you and your machine. I’ve had some good luck with YLI Wonder thread, but I need to take my machine speed down to a crawl to use it on the 770 Bernina. Madeira, Superior, and Aurafil have different grades of monofilament nylon and poly that you can try. If one doesn’t work, try another. I use a topstitching #90 needle, and Sewer’s Aid (a thread lubricant). Will it break? Yes, I can promise you that. But it leaves a soft edge to the piece that makes water and clouds look more real. If the breakage is making me crazy, I sew as slowly as my machine can.

Soft edge applique is done with invisible thread in the top and an unobtrusive color thread in the bobbin. I use a zigzag free motion stitch, at an angle. That gives me the most amount of edge coverage.

Angled free motion zigzag stitch

Soft edge applique is done with invisible thread in the top and an unobtrusive color thread in the bobbin. I use a zigzag free motion stitch, at an angle. That gives me the most amount of edge coverage.

piece pinned up

Free motion zigzag stitching depends on the angle your fabric takes through the machine. The body shading angle is the one that will give you the most coverage, but the angle will change as you go around the piece. All you want to do is lightly zigzag over the edges.

And the best part? I can add a whole other layer of water lace to put my fish in the water. How good is that?

Soft edge applique is perfect for natural elements. Let the sun shine!

Over and under: three dimensional leaves

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The leaf is all one piece of fabric. The threadwork defines the fold.

If you’re making nature quilts, you’re likely to need to answer the leaf question. Leaves ripple and rumple and almost never lie flat. And they fold. How do we make that happen on the quilt surface?

Here some approaches.

defined by stitch

I tend to use a free motion zigzag stitch mostly to apply leaves. It’s fluid. It follows curves. And I can change color at will. I also tend to use a polyester Neon embroidery thread by Madeira. It’s strong, bright as a button and light enough to stitch over several times until I get what I want.

Dividing a leaf in half and coloring it with one side dark and the other light creates an immediate sense of dimension for this quilt. It’s the same fabric, but the coloration changes with the thread choices.

defined by applique method

Direct applique is applied right to the top of the piece with glue. I use Steam-A-Seam 2 by preference because it allows me to move the piece around before I iron it into a permanent place.

This makes simple shapes easily. But it doesn’t allow for wild curves and vines

The leaves are drawn on a separate fabric and stitched to the top. Then the access is all trimmed away.

cutaway leaves

Cut-away applique is done with a cloth laid over the top and stitched in the shape you want. Then the leaves, vines and trees can be cut away along the stitch line, leaving more fluid shapes.

Leaves formed by cut-away applique continue the background shading through peek-a-boo holes.

Cheesecloth leaves

The sheer qualities of cheesecloth and the texture mimics the cell structure of the leaves and lets bits of the background through. Cheesecloth makes fabulous leaves and can be dyed any color with Procion dyes. The wild stitching with lime and orange makes them look crinkled.

Making the leaf fold

This cheesecloth leaf folds along the darker blue line of thread. The threadwork itself defines the fold. The purple line on these leaves folds the center and the two slightly different thread colors top and bottom help confirm that.

Mostly leaves are defined by threadwork. These are some ways to make leaves look like they popped out of the background. And that’s pretty much what you want.

Lighting the Spark: creating thread images with contrast

| ellenanneeddy

Threadwork is delicate. Just because threads are tiny thin things. Just by their nature.

We can layer threads infinitely. But singularly they don’t have a lot of effect. So how do we keep threadwork from mushing into a soft blend? We need a spark. If we take just light and dark shades of a color, that’s a good start. But it’s bland.

What makes a spark? Contrast. Either in color, in shine or in temperature. High contrast keeps it from being dull. And since thread is such a little thing, it we can use intense contrast without overwhelming the piece.

sheen

The first thing we see with thread is it’s sheen. How shiny is it? Threads come from dull cottons, to smooth rayons and polys to sparkly metallics. The eye sees the sparkle first.

So if we want something to stand out, something really shiny will make the spark. Which is why I use Sliver, and a number of other flat shiny threads.

If you’re doing animals, you want their eyes to be the thing you see first. Sliver does that. You make an iris of any color, a black pupil, and a small iridescent spark inside the eye. It’s a spark inside a spark. And it brings an eye to life.

Or I can make my background shimmer by stippling sliver in gradated colors across the piece. Sliver is a delicate thread. It works best in a regular bobbin case. I use a matching polyester thread on top. If I stipple pretty much last, all the other stitching tells me where the stippling should be.

color

Color contrast always startles the eye. The highest contrast in color is always going to be the complement. Complements are powerful. The blue and peach make a spark between them to shade this bird.

The pinks are sparked by the yellow green overstitching that makes the feathers an flowers.

temperature

The hot gold details stand out against the smooth greens and blues and lights up the feathers.

black and white: Contrast in Value

Both black and white are extreme contrast. For threadwork, I’m careful of both of them. But they give us an edge. I almost always outline in solid black or black metallic. But on the raven’s wings, I overstitched the feathers with black to make them pop.

Contrast is always what makes our heads turn, our eyes turn, our hearts beat. And that’s the point to art, isn’t it?