Oct 17 10

Butterflies are Free, RSS feeds, and What’s on Sale in the Store This Week

Today I added 3 butterflies to the quilt top and got all the embroidery done on them. The photo above shows one of the butterflies with a trapuntoed feather that will serve as its flight path…more on that later. I am still working on the quilt top, not the final quilt sandwich, so every picture I’m posting tonight is thread work done to the top before it is basted into that final quilt sandwich. Here’s the first butterfly fused into place…rather ho-hum:

Now here it is after adding thread work to finish the edges of the applique and doing some “doodling” inside the wings. Those antennae are just for fun and were stitched with a temporary stabilizer behind them:

Thread can really dress up a simple applique, can’t it? Now that butterfly is trapuntoed, so here’s what the back of the top looks like now:

Now here’s butterfly #2 just after it was fused into place:

This butterfly was cut from the Ellsion (aka Sizzix parent company) Allstar Butterfly Die:

This is one of the educational dies that schools use. Do you see those dotted lines? Those are perforations and what I did was trace shapes just slightly larger than the perforated shapes and then fuse those into place. If you’re familiar with this Sizzix die, you’ll see that I borrowed one of these small teardrops for that middle wing shape:

Butterfly #2 is trapuntoed and I decided to trapunto his flight path as well. Again, all this requires is pinning a piece of scrap batting behind the area in question, then stitching away and cutting off the excess batting before placing the top into the final quilt sandwich. Here’s what this looks like from the front:

(Notice that when you do something like this, if the plan is to hyperquilt the feather, you want to do that now, while it’s still just a quilt top. If you wait and add that when it’s in the final quilt sandwich, that feather won’t appear as prominent when you’re all done.) And here’s a shot of the back of that part of the top:

Can you tell that the batting for the flight path is different from the batting for the butterfly? My goal was to have a very thin batting for the flight path, but I was in a big hurry, not paying very close attention, and that batting is a bit loftier than I’d hoped. That may mess me up when I go to outline the feather with invisible thread, so stay tuned to find out how that goes! My shots of the 3rd butterfly didn’t come out too well, so I’ll have to wait until later to post new photos of that butterfly. But now this top is done, and ready to baste into the final quilt sandwich. Here’s a shot of the backside of the top-this shot will help you understand how to achieve different textural effects once I’ve quilted it and posted the quilted shots later on:

I’ve gotten many emails from folks who were surprised to see that they’ve missed many weeks of postings. Know that the url address of this blog changed when we launched our new web site 6-7 weeks ago, so if you subscribe to a feed to notify you of any blog updates, you won’t receive any notifications until you update our url address. The new address is:
https://blog.patsythompsondesigns.com/

And here’s what’s on sale in the store this week:

All YLI Variations Threads are on sale at 20% off this week. These are lovely trilobal polyester threads that are wonderful to work with and add some subtle interest to your quilts. Also on sale are Sulky Blendable Threads, both the 500 yard spools of 30 wt thread as well as the 330 yard spools of the 12 wt threads. I love using the 12 weight threads for stitching vein lines in leaves, like these:

And lastly, all stencils are 20% off! This includes both single stencils as well as the packaged sets. This is a great time to try out the stencils that have interchangeable center spine designs, and you’ll see how easy it is to create designer feather designs! To have the 20% off your retail purchase of these products, type “ides” in the discount code box at checkout. Sale prices are good through 11:59 pm (Eastern time) on 10/23/10.

One Comment

  1. Rosanne Bédard Says:

    Allo, it is me again whit my questions!
    When you do trapunto and pinning a piece of scrap batting behind the area in question, then stitching away and cutting off the excess batting before placing the top into the final quilt sandwich.
    In your photo I dont see stabiliser on the batting. So it is possible to work directly whit the batting on the machine bed? I would thibk the batting will go to the holes of the machine!
    An again please excuse my poor English
    Rosanne