New Quilt Finished – “Ferns in Flight”
This quilt is kind of an experiment for me. I am working on a similar quilt which is much larger but I used this smaller one to conduct some “field testing.” I am always intrigued by the challenge of trying to create more texture and more depth in a quilt. If you look at this close-up, you may be able to see what I am trying to do:
Can you see that there is a depth difference between the machine quilted vines and the “stitched-in” fern below the appliqued fern? The machine quilted vine is drawn downward, into the quilt sandwich by the machine quilting, but the “stitched-in” vine is puffed out a bit, it’s more prominent. This is the kind of effect you can get if you do free motion embroidery, (of course, using a stabilizer underneath for support) when the quilt is merely a quilt top and then once it’s in a quilt sandwich, you stitch just outside the embroidered line with monofilament thread. You can see another example of this in this next close-up:
This last close-up shows free motion embroidery on the fused fern area. The picture doesn’t show it well, but if you do your decorative stitching like this when it is only a top, you can make the whole fern stand out just a bit if you stitch just outside it with monofilament thread once it’s a full quilt sandwich.
Don’t you just love RED?!!!
