Journal 16

“Magic” Thread Painted Pillow

I was so inspired when I met Sarah Jane at Spring Quilt Market and saw her new whimsical line “Magic”! The collection truly embodies children’s fantasy and imagination with a parade, unicorns, castles, dragons, mermaid and narwhals.

I love how Sarah Jane always tries to incorporate sweet border prints in her collections, so that is where I drew inspiration!

Now which character to choose…I decided on the little wizard because what is a better representation of “Magic” than a cute wizard!

I knew I wanted to put my thread painting in the center of a Feathered Star block by Jessie Ziegler (Threaded Quilter). I made the 16″ star which means my thread painting would be in a tiny 4″ square…whew! I wanted to include both blue and pink fabrics from Magic. So for my thread painting I used the color scheme of the wizard for the white/blue color way and put it on a soft pink background.

I started by drawing the design on the fabric with a pencil. I then began thread painting outline with black Aurifil. Next I threaded painted her face, hair, and stars using peach, pink, and yellow Aurifil.

Then I thread painted the light blue around the stars in the cape and hat.

I felt like the thread painted still needed something, so I added birds for her to cast a spell on.

I went back and forth on which fabric should go up against the thread painting and star points (which would be mermaids on blue). I tried lucky stars on white, lucky stars on navy, magic folk on white, magic folk on navy and baby dragon on grey. I felt like the whites blended into the mermaids too much, so that was out. The grey fabric just wasn’t the right fit.

I like the navy stars because I pulled out the stars in the cape but I went with magic folk in navy because it pulled all the blues and pinks together!

I fussy cut the mermaids for the star points (trying not to repeat the mermaids).

For the feathers on the stars I used baby dragons in pink/ baby dragons in blue and fussy cut the dragons and gold specks. For the diamond points on the star tips I used unicorn forest in pink and fussy cut the unicorns.

Since the star was made up of mostly light colored fabrics I chose to use castle plans in navy for the background. I love how the star jumps off the dark background!

For the back of the pillow I used magical parade in white and lucky stars in white, so they star appeared like they were in the sky above the parade.

For the quilting I wanted to keep it simple but create texture so I used 2 layers of Quilters Dream Wool batting and 1 layer or cotton batting on the front. I stipples around the thread painting and echoed the shape of the star points/mermaids.

For the rest of the star I stitched in the ditch and left them unquilted so they stay poofy!! For the background I echoed/carried out the shape created from the feathered star.