This little house and heart Thimbleberries quilt has sat in my unfinished pile for about 5 years now. The top was complete, it just needed to be quilted. It was one of the extra monthly projects for a Thimbleberries Club I taught in 2010.
Recently, my mom, sister-in-law and I took some long arm training on a Gammill Statler Stitcher and we were to bring small projects to quilt. This was one of the projects I took thinking it would be a perfect project to learn how to quilt a border. The plan was to quilt an edge-2-edge design in the center and then quilt a separate design in the large blue border. Things were going great until I had a brain fart (is that ok to say in print?) and instead of putting the length of the center of my quilt as 28", I typed in 38" - Ooops! As soon as the first E2E row was quilted, I realized my mistake. That first row was only a couple of inches shy of the center of the quilt and I still had two more rows to quilt. To recover - without ripping - I decided to quilt the bottom half like the top half, leaving about a 4" space in the middle. Then I quilted an outline of the letters "Welcome" in the center. I was quite proud of my idea, but only mildly happy with the results. I was hoping the quilted "Welcome" would stand out but it was lost in all the other quilting.
After returning home, I had another brainstorm. I decided to thread paint in the letters, filling them in to make them stand out. I've never attempted any free motion quilting, let alone thread painting but decided to give it a whirl. I'm so happy I did because I love the end result.
I'm not even sure that thread painting is the correct term to use, as thread painting is usually done in portrait and art quilts. If you want to learn more about thread painting, you should check out Nancy Prince's website. She's an amazing award winning thread painting quilter.
Have you ever embellished a quilt by thread painting? Do share!
~Sharla
Thread painting is definitely the correct term to use! You should check out Renee @Quilts of a Feather's Starry Night thread painted quilt - totally awesome. The WELCOME in your quilt stands out nicely this way and looks great - what a wonderful way to embrace the oops!
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of thread painting! That is fabulous! And thanks for the link! Going to have to check it out!
ReplyDeleteYvonne, when I was googling 'thread painting' that quilt, "Starry Night", came up in my search. It is really cool. I've seen thread painted portrait quilts at quilt market that are just amazingly unbelievable. Thanks for stopping by!
ReplyDeleteAshley, there are some really amazing thread painted quilts out there. Some just accent the quilt, such as in applique, and some are pictures totally created with thread on a plain background. My little fill-in stitch on this quilt can't compare and why I questioned whether to even call it thread painting! Thanks for visiting!
ReplyDeleteYour thread painting looks great! Sometimes I like to do scribbling on my quilts when I need an extremely dense filler. I took one of Cindy Needham's Craftsy classes where she demonstrated it and showed examples on some of her quilts. Sometimes a quilt just needs a little thread painting :)
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