Pages

▼

Monday, March 31, 2008

Free Motion Stitching

About 20 years ago Ellen Anne Eddy came out to our little sewing machine store in town and gave a workshop on using hand dyed fabrics and free motion stitching to create a little art piece. I bought some of her hand dyed fabric. She lived in Chicago at the time and later moved to Indiana. She wrote a book about her fabulous free motion quilts.

About 7 years ago she was in the area again to do a workshop for a guild. I was invited to spend the day there with her and some of my friends. We took Decor Bond and drew our design on it. My butterfly came from a coloring book. We ironed the Decor Bond onto the wrong side of our fabric and filled our bobbins with a glitzy heavyweight serger thread (an extra bobbin case purchased just for that purpose was used). From the drawing side I free motion stitched the outline of the butterfly with a dark thread. Then I came back in and started filling areas with stitching in other colors. I never did finish this project but now I think it needs to be done. The sparkly thread is almost impossible to capture in a picture to show you the real look.

It is gloomy and will be rainy soon. The only good thing is it is going to be warm today and the heavy rain should hold off until after my mother's Dr. appointment today. It's a good day to turn on my daylight bulbs and not look out the windows.
at

10 comments:

  1. The Calico CatMarch 31, 2008 at 9:33 AM

    Ellen is a great friend of one of my great friends. They are in Baltimore right now (Ellen just taught in Lancaster) too bad I am at work...

    ReplyDelete
  2. KarenMarch 31, 2008 at 10:20 AM

    You know, you are the second person to talk about Decor Bond. I never heard of it before Mickey Depre described how she uses it for her quilts. I guess I am going to have to buy some and PLAY!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMarch 31, 2008 at 11:40 AM

    Your free hand motion used for the butterfly shows your steady hand control. You are professional in everything you do.

    I too will have to check out Decor Bond. Sounds like it would work well for reverse applique also.

    J~MT

    ReplyDelete
  4. jovaliquiltsMarch 31, 2008 at 1:53 PM

    Lovely -- love the way the quilting lets you capture certain aspects of the hand-dyed.

    Ellen Ann Eddy was at our guild about a year and a half ago. Her quilts are amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  5. meggieMarch 31, 2008 at 5:47 PM

    Very handsome butterfly. A cosy sounding day.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The Idaho BeautyMarch 31, 2008 at 8:25 PM

    I have really liked using Decor Bond for some of my more heavily stitched pieces. I just assumed that it wouldn't allow for much texture once layered and quilted, but surprisingly, dimension does show up. It makes the overall piece when small hang so much nicer too.

    Hey Wanda, I've tagged you for the 6 word memoir. Come play!
    http://idahobeautyquilts.blogspot.com/2008/03/six-little-words.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. RebelMarch 31, 2008 at 10:54 PM

    WOW! That's amazing. I'm still just trying to learn the basics of free-motion quilting - it's inspiring to see what can be done with it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. RachApril 1, 2008 at 7:21 AM

    The butterfly is really goregeous. I especially love the way the colour variation in the base fabric gives shading to the wings.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Paula, the quilterApril 1, 2008 at 2:30 PM

    I'm still working on the coral reef I started in her workshop when she taught at the TAS (The Applique Society) show in Denver. It's on my design wall so I do not forget about it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. TBApril 2, 2008 at 5:30 AM

    The b'fly is beautiful! I may try making a dragonfly with the same process. Thanks for sharing this; it is certainly worth finishing.

    ReplyDelete

I will reply to all comments WITH A LINK. If you are anonymous or a Blogger account without your email enabled I can not reach you to reply.

There is an EMAIL address on my right sidebar if you have a question and you do not have a link.