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

October 17th, 2010

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.

Furiously Sewing Away!

October 14th, 2010

I’ve been racing to finish all the free motion embroidery to finish the applique edges on this quilt top. The photo above is of part of the swirl stem with a few leaves. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but my aim is to always not match my thread color to the background fabric, since this is a place for your thread work to add some pizzazz to the quilt. It’s easier to see this in the yellow sizzix flower I was working on yesterday:

The pebbling in the center was stitched in an olive green rayon thread and the decorative thread work in the small red petals was a solid gold rayon thread. Here’s a shot of the edge finishing in the outer yellow petals:

…and that was stitched using a variegated green rayon thread. These large flowers are all trapuntoed, so here’s what the backside of that flower looks like now:

And here’s the center of the last flower. Notice that I quilted it using a design that you’d never actually see in a flower. This quilt is all about having fun and being whimsical, so I’m not worried about doing anything here literally:

And here’s the last flower totally finished. I love how those outer petals look with the lavender thread edging:

I’ve added the borders to this quilt and now I need to add a couple of butterflies and embroider them. I’m racing to get the top completed by the weekend so I can baste it into the final quilt sandwich and start quilting away… wish me luck!

Smallest Buttonhole Stitch Ever and What’s on Sale in The Store This week

October 10th, 2010

Isn’t this flourish just lovely? It’s from another Sizzix die and I totally fell in love with its intricacy and gentle curves. This photo is part of a new quilt block I’m making and that flower is also from another new Sizzix die. Can you tell that I’ve fallen in love with my Big Shot machine?! Anyway, I hemmed and hawed for a long time about that flourish, worrying that it was so delicate that maybe it just wouldn’t be suitable for a quilt. WRONG!! It took almost the smallest buttonhole stitch that my machine can make, but I finished those edges with the buttonhole stitch below:

(Try to ignore those loose threads-I’m out of town and I forgot to bring a sewing needle to pull threads through to the back.) My machine’s buttonhole stitch was set to 1.0/1.5 and I used Bottom Line green thread in the top and bottom both. You can really see the buttonhole stitching on the backside:

And I also forgot to pack any purple threads to decorate these purple flowers:

Darn! But, it will give me something fun to work on next week! In the meantime, I’ll plug away at my tiny buttonhole stitching…if my eyes don’t give out!

And what’s on sale in the store this week? Everything below is 20% off:
-All prepackaged fabric bundles (checkout those Tonga Treats if you’re in the mood for some fall colored batik fabrics!)
-All fabrics in the “Tidings” collection by Nancy Halvorson, as well as her book called “Tidings.”
Signature Pixelles threads (variegated polyesters) and Signature variegated cotton threads
**Just write “cotton” in the discount code box during checkout, and 20% will be deducted from the price of all these items!

Judgement Day!

October 5th, 2010

You can tell from this closeup of one of my sizzix flowers that judgement day came and I had to make a final decision about how to best layout all the applique pieces of this quilt. Sometimes the “itchin to get stitchin'” takes over and you just cross your fingers and hope your layout will work. When I’m fusing a lot of applique shapes over a large scene, I have to “ground” the design by making absolutely sure that the major lines of the quilt are correct. To do this, you remove everything except the major design elements and fuse them first, as in the photo below:


(You have to trust me that the colors on the background fabric are far richer than what the camera shows in these pictures.) Once I felt good about the positioning of the swirl stems and the large flowers, I went back and added all those applique daisies at the base:

Here’s a closeup of some of the daisies. These were kind of fun because I made some of them one color, some have 2 petal colors, and some have 3 petal colors:

Once the daisies were on, I went into the final fusing phase and added the teardrop shaped leaves onto the swirl stems:

I may go back in later and add a butterfly or bird up near the top, but I need to think about that for awhile. At this stage, it was in a place where I could start adding some thread work or embroidery to the top to jazz things up, and I was chomping at the bit for that! Here’s a shot of a flower on the machine bed as I was still adding some EKG-edge finishing to the outer layer of petals. You can see the effect of the thread work since some petals have thread work and others don’t:

Do you see those pins around the perimeter of the flower? Those are there because this is still just a quilt top. Those pins are holding a piece of scrap batting behind the flower so it is being trapuntoed. The excess batting will later be cut off but the flower will protrude out on the final quilt because of that extra layer of batting. Here’s a shot of the flower once the thread work was complete:

I’ll post more pictures as this quilt develops further. It’s been very fun to be able to make a quilt this quickly!

Quilt Layout Progress and What’s on Sale This Week

October 3rd, 2010

I like to lay out applique pieces on my quilt top, changing around flower positions, or stems or leaves or whatever. Here it is with a couple of stems “roughly” in place (I clip pieces off once I’m sure I like the final arrangement, but leave excess until I feel really sure about things.) At this point, I felt pretty sure I did not like that version of stems, so I switched to long, skinny swirls that open up at the tips to “flow” a flower out:

(Notice that applique pieces that are composed of multiple parts are completely fused together; it’s just that nothing is fused to the top fabric itself. That’s the beauty of working like this because you can easily move things around.) Then I began playing around with adding teardrop-shaped leaves. I think they go better with these stems than the original leaves did:

…and yet it’s still not quite right. I think I may switch around that higher flower on the left so that it flows off a swirl from the flower to its right. I’m itching to start free motion embroidering on this top and I can’t do anything until the whole enchilada is fused, so tomorrow will be judgment day!

And what’s on sale in our quilt shop this week? We’ve started receiving some of the hundreds of bolts of fabric we’ve ordered, so we’re putting all batiks sold by the yard on sale at 20% off. If you’re a fuser like me, this is the best fabric for fusing as the tight weave makes for nice, neat fabric edges. On the thread side of things, we’ve got 2 specials this week. All Masterpiece Threads (both the 600 yard spools and the 3000 yard cones) as well as all Art Studio Colors Threads (both 500 yard spools as well as the thread sets) are 20% off. Masterpiece is a very lightweight cotton thread that is wonderful for piecing; it’s so lightweight that it adds no bulk in the seam. Art Studio colors are 40 wt trilobal polyester threads that have a wonderful sheen; I use them to add wonderful highlights to my quilts. Both threads come in a wide variety of colors, so stock up! To receive the 20% discount at checkout, enter the discount code “oktoberfest” in the discount code box during checkout. Sale prices are good until midnight, Saturday October 9th at midnight.
P.S. Wouldn’t you know that I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to move around those swirls? (Actually, it really is tomorrow since it’s now 12:18 am!) Anyway, here it is with that left sided red flower’s swirl moved:

That seems a bit better…now I can go to sleep!