Questions Answered!

I have fallen way behind in answering questions, so I thought I’d use a blog post to answer a number of them.  Most recently,  Susan asked:

Patsy, On top picture how did u affix the fine fern leaves onto the backrground after u fused them on ? Satin stitch? They are sooo intricate…………

I’ve never used a satin stitch to finish the edges of something this delicate; I’m thinking that the satin stitch would likely overpower (and maybe even shred) the most delicate portions of the stem lines.  Instead, I free motion embroider the fern, usually using a combination of the irregular swirl design in the leaf sections and just “in-lining” in the very narrow stem lines.  The project I showed in that recent post is now in NC and I’m in OH, so here’s a shot of another fern from another project finished in this way:

…and here’s a closeup shot of another fern that will probably give you a better sense of that stitching:

In an earlier post about using heavy size 12 pearl cotton embroidery thread in the top needle, Lisa wrote:

Very nice. I wouldn’t think that the pearl cotton would go through your tension so easily or that it would fray. Is that what the silicone does for the thread?

Yes, that’s exactly why I would use the Silicone.  It will lubricate the thread and the thread will flow through the tension discs more easily, minimizing the risks of thread shredding or breaking.  In this case, it’s because the thread is so big and heavy.  In the case of metallic threads, I use it because the threads are so fragile and delicate.  Again, you don’t have to use this liquid silicone in either of the above mentioned scenarios.  And one more thing about these big, heavy threads.  Someone had written to me about how “furry” that Caron Collection thread looked.  That thread is relatively furry; you can see that a bit better in this photo that shows the Caron Collection thread next to DMC size 12 pearl cotton thread:

The furriness would not stop me from using it, though.  Sometimes, you want threads that have varying textures on your quilt, and that furriness is sometimes a sought-after attribute.  The Caron Collection also makes a very plump embroidery thread that is a blend of wool and silk (talk about furry!) and the whole reason I use that thread is for that wonderful texture!  Think of these threads as over-sized versions of the commercial quilting threads on the market.  Look at some King Tut thread next to a Sulky Blendable thread.  They are both 100% cotton threads, yet they are completely different.  One is ultra-smooth and will flow through your machine like butter, and the other is not so smooth and is fairly furry.

And many, many people wrote to me asking to explain the EKG stitching.  That really made me chuckle, because I feel like I’m always posting about it, so I’m thinking that everyone is bored to death reading about it!  Here’s a re-print of a post from a couple of years ago that explains it:

The Mysteries of The EKG Edge Finishing Design Are Revealed!

I frequently receive emails inquiring about the EKG stitching that I often use to finish off the edge of applique shapes, like the edging on the tulip above. I received this sweet email just the other day:

Hello,
I received regularely your news letters.
Your work is beautyful and I learn many things from you, I am a beguiner in the
quilting thing.
Please, I want to now what is this beautyful stich you do around your flower or
leave, is it a free hand stich or a machine stich and if so which one
Thank you for your help
rosanne

Rosanne,
Your note is so touching to me that I thought I would do a post on this finishing design because although it looks like it would be tough to do, it is as easy as pie! On top of that, it is very fun!

First, know that this is a design you will create-it is not a programmed embroidery stitch on your sewing machine. I call it the EKG design because it makes me think of an EKG pattern, kind of like a run of V-fib. Here is how to do it:
1. set up your machine for free motion work using the straight stitch (the way you set it uo for FMQ).
2. you begin your stitching at the inside edge of any applique shape. The design is created by gently moving the quilt slightly back and forth as you travel along that inside edge, all the while creating “V” shapes. Notice that the “V’s” vary in length and also in how wide they are:

3. As you travel along that outer applique edge, your goal is to keep the “V’s” perpendicular to the edge. If you need to pivot your piece as you work to keep yourself oriented, that’s ok! See how I was trying to stay perpendicular as I moved around the heart below:

4. The more “irregular” the lengths/widths of the “V’s,” the more interesting your work will be. Never let the length of a “V” exceed more than 1/2 the width of the applique piece you’re working in. Most of the time, you won’t come anywhere near that. When you are working inside a “skinny” applique shape (like a long stem), NEVER let a “V” from one side intersect a “V” from the other side as this will look messy.

You can use this finishing design on just about any shape. In general, I try to use a thread color that is related to the fabric color, but I try NOT to match it. In mean, gosh, I’m going to all this extra trouble to do this stitching, so I want to make sure people SEE it! Because of that, I usually pick a color that’s just a bit different. I wish I could say that I had invented this technique, but I did not. I learned it many years ago in a class by a wonderful quilter named Laura Heine. If you ever have the opportunity to take a class from her, do it!

One more thing about this…you can do this as a QUILTING technique, but I mainly us it as a FREE MOTION EMBROIDERY technique. In other words, I do all this stitching when the piece is just a quilt top…there is no bulk because there is no batting and because no portion of the stitch falls outside the fusible applique, I do not need to use a stabilizer. Once it’s in the final quilt sandwich, I stitch just outside the edge of the applique shapes with invisible thread and it creates a very cool texture. This technique really is worth trying if you haven’t yet.
And one more thing…there are just about 12 hours left to enter the Beam ‘n Read Give-Away!  To enter, just leave a comment by 11:59 pm (eastern time) tonight on the Beam ‘n Read Give-Away post from last Monday!  (scroll down 2 posts to find it!)

Filed under Free Motion Embroidery, Free Motion Quilting, Tips & Tricks . 6 Comments

It’s a Give-Away!

****11/21/11 UPDATE:  THIS GIVE AWAY IS NOW CLOSED

You guessed it-the Beam ‘n Read made it possible for me to actually SEE those thread tails to pull them through!  And last but not least, this light has been making it easier to remove the stabilizer from all my embroidered snowflake blocks:

Filed under Appli-K-Kutz Fabric Cutting Dies, Free Motion Embroidery, Free Motion Quilting, Machine Embroidered Applique, Sizzix . 109 Comments

Creating a Basic Feathered Frame for Your Quilt-Part I

You can really crank up the drama of a quilt by stitching some kind of a feathered frame around the center, whether it’s a small center like the quilt above or if it’s a larger center, such as on a pieced quilt that is surrounded by a feather border design. I just stitched a very simple feather border around my machine embroidered feathered wreath:

… and I thought it might make an interesting post about how easy it is to create a basic feathered frame.  We will create this frame by stitching very short freeform feathers in the border zone, and these will have the appearance of being mirror-image feathers,  but we’ll know they are not!

To begin, you’ll mark a line in the center of each of the borders along the 4 sides of the quilt; I use a soap remnant for this.  Next, you’ll bend a flexible curve ruler into an interesting shape, beginning at the center line and traveling to the edge of that border.  Once you’ve got a pleasing shape, just trace along the edge with that same soap sliver to mark it.    You can easily mark the opposite side of the border by flipping the ruler over and repeating this exercise.  This will give you a border that looks like this:

…and once you mark all four sides, you can really see the shape of the frame that will emerge once you quilt feathers along those spine guidelines:

Take this to your machine and you are ready to start quilting!  Now here’s the cool part…in feathered frame designs, all the action happens in 2 places; the place where feathers “take off” and the place where feathers “kiss.”  This means that these are the places that will catch the viewer’s eye, so these are the places where you’ll want to put some effort into making the viewer believe these are mirror-image feathers.  The first feather is easy; just stitch a basic freeform feather that respects that spine guideline.  As you go to stitch it’s “mirror-image” counterpart, take care to try to line up those first few plumes so they are opposite one another as below:

(To orient you, this stitching is occurring on the 2 sides of that soap line that marks the midway point of the border.)  Once those plumes are stitched, you can kind of take it easy and not pay attention to what was done on the opposite feather until you approach the kissing zone.  The key to all of this is doing a nice job when marking those spine guidelines.  As long as those babies are mirror image guidelines, you’re good to go.

So, you’re stitching along and you’re getting close to the kissing zone-what do you do?  Easy…just try to “mimic” what was already done on the feather you’re about to kiss.  On this quilt, it was easy because they barely even kiss:

This was an easy one because they’re barely reaching one another since the corner blocks aren’t involved in the feathered frame.  I mean, really, these feathers aren’t really kissing, it’s more like a handshake!  You’ll need to pay more attention to your stitching when the corners are part of the frame, as in this quilt, where we’ve really got a French kiss thing going on:

So now we’ve got phase 1 of our feathered frame done, created by stitching 8 short freeform feathers so they appear to all be mirror images of one another.  Even when stitched in a fairly innocuous thread color, you can begin to appreciate the wonderful framing effect:

I’ll post about part 2 once I’ve hyperquilted those feathers, and then you’ll really appreciate the framing effect!

Filed under Free Motion Quilting, Machine Embroidered Applique . 9 Comments

Just a Bit of Quilting Done

I haven’t had much time to quilt in the last week, so all I got done was the center section of this quilt.  With the background fill quilting done, you can see that the feathers are nice and plump because of the trapunto layer beneath them:

Here is a close-up shot of the background fill design:

This design has a lot of movement to it and it’s accentuated here by using a thread with subtle variegation.  You may remember this design from this earlier shot:

But this was the first opportunity I’ve had to use it in a “real” quilt.  It was very fun to stitch, but I kind of got into a “zone” and wasn’t paying attention and ended up sewing part of the top to itself where the quilt had doubled over on itself on the backside:

Fortunately, it only caught some of the batting, so I was able to pull all that out without having to rip out any stitching.  Phew!!

Filed under Free Motion Embroidery, Free Motion Quilting, Machine Embroidered Applique, Trapunto . 5 Comments

The Power of the Thin Black Line

Can you see how the thin black thread line that outlines all the pieces of this applique really adds a nice definition to this quilt?  It’s just like the narrow black outline that we see so often in line drawings, and it’s stitched here using a very heavy black cotton thread.  Most of the time, I outline with invisible thread, but sometimes, adding that thin black line can really add a cool intricacy to a design.

A couple years back, I started a large applique quilt that featured giant-sized Queen Anne’s lace.  I mean really over-sized Queen Anne’s lace, like each one is many feet long.  I wanted to add a thin black line to each of the applique shapes, except on that scale, that thin black line really needed to be a satin stitch that was fairly wide.  I put many feet of temporary stabilizer behind the quilt top and started embroidering it.  This first shot shows part of one of the flowers before I’d added the black line:

…and this next shot gives you a bit of a sense of how that black line helps define shapes:

Here’s a close up of part of the black-outlined Queen Anne’s lace:

Once everything was finally outlined in a black satin stitch, I tore away all the stabilizer, and I free motion embroidered the irregular swirl design inside  the flowers.  I then  decided that these giant flowers really needed to be trapuntoed.  I  was really kicking myself at that point, as I’d thought long and hard about the option of trapunto before I added that satin stitching (since I could do the satin stitching and add the trapunto layer at the same time), and I’d decided against it.  Rats!  So I pinned some batting behind all the applique and added a trapunto layer by outlining everything with invisible thread.  I cut away all the excess batting and then basted my final quilt sandwich together.   I’m picking this project back up now, and here is the beginning of outlining those large appliques, and you can see how the trapunto layer helps emphasize the applique shapes:

Fun, fun, fun!  And this is before the background fill stitching has even started!

Filed under Free Motion Embroidery, Free Motion Quilting, Trapunto . 8 Comments