Journal 8

Secret thread painting for a sweet friend!

When I met Katy Jones (@imagingermonkey) at Glamp Stitchalot I thought she was so nice and helpful. She was even sweet enough to give me her adorable Olfa rotary cutter pin from Quilt Market when I mentioned how cute it was. A few weeks after Glamp I emailed and asked her questions about the industry and she was so quick to respond with suggestions and advice. I knew I had to do something for her generosity, so of course I had to thread paint her a mini quilt.

I looked at all the patterns in her Priory Square fabric collection and tried to decide which one would work best for the thread painting. I chose to use the fabric Sunday Clippings for the mini. I love the “ugly bird” (as Katy would say) and the collage looking cutouts. I especially love the way the soft watercolor flowers mix with the rigid harsh lines.

PRS-210-Sunday-Clippings-500px

I figured the perfect design to thread paint was the watercolor poppy with the bird. I started drawing out the bird and flower design using a chalk pencil and eraser so that it would be visible on the dark navy background fabric. I thread painted with Aurifil thread colors in 50 wt.

I began thread painting the bird and started with the maroon outline. I then went back and filled in with the ivory around the outline, which was a little tricky not to accidently go over.

Next up was the flower, which I was eager to start! I thread painted the flower in layers from the bottom color to the top color. I loved how the colors mixed together and overlapped creating different color values.

I decided to add the stem and leaves behind flower and bird to tie the whole design together.

I used the Peltex 72F double-sided fusible to stabilize the thread painting and keep it flat and not pucker, especially with two separate designs.

When I was trying to figure out how to piece the mini I thought about what she liked, half square triangles (HST) and hexies. I of course I knew she liked hexies because that was the class she taught at Glamp Stitchalot. I used fabrics from her Art Gallery collection Priory Square and other fabrics that I thought coordinated well. I wanted to give the borders more of scrappy look by using a variety of patterned fabrics for the HSTs and hexies.

I decided it would look awesome to thread paint the Priory Square logo like the one from the Aurifil box.

I quilted around the thread painting using a tiny micro stipple, to keep the balance between the size of the designs and the quilting. For the HST border I did matchstick quilting in alternating directions. On the hexie border I quilted them in a grid pattern in all directions, which gave them volume. I knew for the last border I wanted to find a quilt pattern with fluid movement to compliment the floral fabric. So I began researching the quilting Katy liked. I found out that many of her quilts were quilted in a ribbon stipple pattern. So I knew that would be the perfect quilt pattern to use.