Sun, clouds, Water and Rocks: Making elements with Soft edged Appliqué

When we applique something, we think most about the fabrics used together and how they interact. But the way it’s appliqued, the stitch and threads used make just as big an impact. I’m going to talk for a couple of weeks about applique edges, and how those change the look of our work.

Steam A Seam 2

Soft edge applique is for things that don’t have single color edges. Bubbles. Clouds. Water. Mist. Angelina fiber. Sunlight. And rocks. Why? A hard line of stitching makes them stand out too strongly and makes an ugly line. So all I want to see is the change in fabric. Particularly with sheers and laces. It’s a direct applique technique because it’s glued and stitched directly to the top.

I do most of my applique with Steam A Seam 2. It’s a peanut butter sandwich with two pieces of paper and tacky glue in the center. I can peel off one side of the paper, tack it to my fabric, peel off the other side and then place it on your piece over and over again until I’m happy with the result and I iron it down.

I usually cut c and s shapes. These flow into each other, and they make all kinds of natural light and shadow. You can cut pieces one after another following a similar shape.

Here’s a sun and some clouds. Same shapes basically, but they fill in well. The nice thing about Steam A Seam 2 is that it sticks, but you can reposition it. I’ll put pieces up on my design wall and then play with them until they’re right.

I never really trust glue. Sorry. I just don’t. I’ve seen it too often. You iron it down and it peels back off. Maybe I don’t always iron long enough. But I always stitch it down, just in case. Then I know it’s not going to travel anywhere.

Soft edge applique is done with invisible thread in the top and an unobtrusive color thread in the bobbin. I use a zigzag free motion stitch, at an angle. That gives me the most amount of edge coverage.

I use an invisible thread. But which one? It seems to depend on you and your machine. I’ve had some good luck with YLI Wonder thread, but I need to take my machine speed down to a crawl to use it on the 770 Bernina. Madeira, Superior, and Gutermann have different grades of monofilament nylon and poly that you can try. If one doesn’t work, try another. I use a topstitching #90 needle, and Sewer’s Aid (a thread lubricant). Will it break? Yes, I can promise you that. But it leaves a soft edge to the piece that makes water and clouds look more real. If the breakage is making me crazy, I sew as slowly as your machine can.

Angled free motion zigzag stitch

Free motion zigzag stitching depends on the angle your fabric takes through the machine. The body shading angle is the one that will give you the most coverage, but the angle will change as you go around the piece. All you want to do is lightly zigzag over the edges.

Water, Land, Sky

It works for rocks too. Rocks aren’t soft, but their edges are never one solid color. So just having a soft edge where you see the hand dye makes a much better rock.

And the best part? I can add a whole other layer of water lace to put my frog in the water. How good is that?

Soft edge applique is perfect for natural elements. Next week we’ll talk about hard edge applique.

Getting fabric Straight: The wonders of starch

One of the constants of quilting is that the methods of fabric care we enjoy now don’t always work for quilting fabric. Why? Quilts are mostly cotton. Cotton is not perma-press. It can be made so, but it’s hardly cotton after that. It dries at a different temperature, it shrinks, it is more vulnerable to mildew. It does not act like a polyester fabric. And it never will. It’s cotton. It’s a natural fiber that does not ever act like a test tube baby. And it rumples. There are no wrinkles like cotton wrinkles.

So, many of the tools our grandmother’s used to work with cotton still work best. I have a wringer washer and mangle for dyeing fabric. They both are made pretty specifically for cotton and still do the job they were made for.

We talked several weeks ago about cotton and irons. Cotton takes real heat. The old fashioned irons do that.

Here’s the other unspoken bit about cotton. It’s made of fibers that move, shift and don’t stay steady. You can tear fabric straight on the edge and have it still not lie square. There is, however, a secret weapon. Starch.

You know that wonderful crisp feeling that your cotton has off the bolt, when it feels like a thin piece of paper, only fluid. That’s created by starch. Starch is one of several chemicals they use to finish fabric. So is formaldehyde. If you’ve ever walked into a fabric store and smelled a strong chemical smell, that’s probably it. A good prewash removes much of that smell. But it also removes the starch.

We joke about starch in someone’s underwear and complain of too much starch in new clothes, but for quilting, it really helps us out. It means things are more stable and don’t move around. Those moving, shifting, shifty fabrics stay flat and stay straight, making it easier to piece straight seams. I’m told it’s excellent for hand piecing. It keeps the fabric smooth and steady underneath the needle.

I became aware of the starch factor when I began to dye all my fabric. It just didn’t have the same body as unwashed fabric. I experimented with spray starch and found it expensive but helpful. It was also very hard to control how much starch you got. And you often got spots.

Then I found liquid starch. Stay Flo has turned out to be the best I’ve used. It comes in a jug and you mix it to the level you want. I usually use 1/3 cup of Stay Flow to 2/3 cup of water. Roughly. I mix that in a cheap spray bottle.

But here’s the secret weapon. On my last wash out, I put in a cupful of starch in the softener cup of my washer. I also put in a capful of a professional softer called ProSoft or Milsoft. On it’s final rinse, it starches all my fabric evenly. Then I let it hang dry and iron it while damp. Perfection.

Here’s an interesting article from The Spruce with more technical information about sizing and starches.

Starched fabric is so much easier to piece because it doesn’t shift as much.

I’ve been piecing another landscape gradation, and I gave it a final starch before pressing it. It changes how your fabric lies, how it irons, and how it handles under the needle. And you don’t need to stop and smell the formaldehyde. How good is that?

Splitting the sky: The Advantage of Split Light Sources

I don’t piece well. It’s not my skill. Anything that takes accuracy and careful cutting really isn’t my skill. The new 770 Bernina came with a foot that does make it better, but I don’t normally do large pieced tops. I know better. It’s not pretty when I do.

But there are rare occasions when I piece a split light source top.

Why? Why walk into accuracy land and piecing?

A light source brings you fabric with direction, and a built-in world. That world can be integral by itself. But if you want to filter the light as if it were through haze, woods, or shadow, you can piece two light source fabrics to create that shaded look. There are several approaches, with different effects.

Vertical Piecing

Where the Heart is

Where the Heart Is was pieced from two separate yards of the same blue/orange color range. I lay both pieces together on the cutting board and cut them in gradated strips, 2″, 3″, 4″, etc. Then I sewed them together with the narrowest light of one to the widest side of the other, in gradation. Set in a vertical arrangement, it makes for light flowing through the trees.

Horizontal Piecing with a Frame

Envy

Envy was one horizontal light source yard, split in gradations with a half yard cut in 2″ strips put between. The piecing creates a sense of space. The narrowest strip in the gradation defines the horizon line.

Piecing within Multiple Frames

Sometimes I split the two fabrics with the light at the widest on one side and the dark widest cut so they can carry the light across the piece. Twightlight Time was also double framed with a 2″ and a progressive border. Having a narrower border on the top weights the bottom of the piece.

Piecing Machines

Lately, Don found me a Singer 99 at a yard sale. For those of you not familiar with these darlings, they are a featherweight industrial drop-in bobbin Singer. They only straight stitch, but the stitch is impeccable. They are tougher, and faster and they use bobbins that are still commercially available. I’d never seen one before, but I fell in love instantly. It took a little work and some creative parts searching, but Don got it working for me and it’s perhaps the best piecing machine I’ve ever had. Did I mention Don is my hero?

So I pieced the guinea hen’s background on it.

How do you keep it straight? It’s tricky. If I get them out of order the fabric doesn’t progress correctly through its colors. I make all my cuts, leave the fabric on the cutting board until I can number the pieces all on the back side. Since there are two pieces of fabric cut, I label my fabric, 1a,2a, etc. and 1b, 2b, etc. and chalk in the sequence on the ends so I can always keep them in order.

Expanding Fabric Size

Sometimes there’s just a beautiful fabric that needs to be bigger. That’s been known to happen too.

I needed a background for What the Flock, a grouping of guinea hens. I’m low on fabric and money right now, so I have to make do. I found a purple piece that should make a great meadow, but a yard was just a bit small. So I pieced in another half-yard to expand it. I cut the half yard in 2.5″ widths and graded the yard-long piece in segments of 9″, 8″, 7″, 6″, and 5″,

Seam Rollers

For those of you like me, who hate to run back and forth to the iron, there is a seam roller. You can use this gadget to flatten your seams right where you’re sewing. Roll it over the seam and you’ll have flat, ready-to-sew seams without the iron woman run.


I don’t piece often, but these backgrounds are worth it. I love the shaded light and the action of light of the fabric across the piece.


the irony of ironing: taming exploding fabric drawers

Sheers and metallic lace make the water for this fish

I have several kinds of fabric stashes. There is a small but excellent stash of hand dyed cotton and cheesecloth, and the stabilizers I use. They need to be kept separate because I’d never find anything again if they were not. But there is a sparkle stash, the living falling wall of sheers. And then there is the fabric with no name. I don’t know what you call it. It’s out of the drunken prom queen collection. Sheers with velour. Twinkle organza, sparkle tulle, printed lame. It was originally fabrics samples for fancy dresses.

Much of it came from the Textile Fabric Outlet, which still is at 2121 21st Street in Chicago. But I’ve bought pieces anywhere I found them in my travels. I hope and pray I have a lifetime supply. I haven’t been there in a long time, but they assure me they still sell samples and remnants.


The fabric gets put into different drawers, according to it’s purpose. I have a collection of plastic drawers where I keep fabric and thread. They’re plastic, light weight and cheap. No one ever said they were decorative or stable. But they hold quite a lot of clutter. They pop together like pop bead necklaces. They also unpop from time to time.

That’s when the drawers explode.

Last week one of the stack of two fell of it’s own accord where I usually sit in the cutting room. Thankfully I was not there. Drawers everywhere. Fabric everywhere. And of course since I get lazy and don’t exactly put things away, it all looks like crumply, rumply wads of indescribable stuff that is hopefully fabric. Who knows?

That, and my machine being still out to be fixed led to at least three days of intensive ironing and sorting. Yes, I know, iron is a four letter word. But this time it really helped me out.

Anthony Jones, a fellow quilter who’s taught at many conferences with me once pointed out the difference between pressing and ironing. Anthony started as a tailor and has gone onto quilting. But his early training was in couture. He told me that ironing is the flattening of fabric. It’s a sliding movement across the fabric. Pressing is ironing in one place to persuade a seam to be on one side or another. Pressing leaves the fabric in one place. Ironing moves the fabric, and sometimes your seam as well. There is a difference.

Well, in this case it took ironing. It turned out I could iron 3 drawers in one day. That sounded like process until I counted up to around 40 drawers. I think I have my non-creative fabric project for low energy days for a long time.

One other word about ironing, it’s all in the fabric content. Anything that is a test tube baby,(nylon, rayon, and polyester) can and will melt. I’ve done it once in demo. It was quite dramatic. For regular cotton ironing I use a Black and Decker Classic iron, a recreation of the 1950s black irons. They use very high heat and generate a lot of steam. For the test tube babies, one of the modern irons that are made for polyester clothes is safer. I no longer use expensive irons. These fit my needs just fine.

I found fabric I’d long forgot. I have small sample bridal and dressy fabric samples that make the best dragonfly wings and bug bodies. And wonderful lace and organzas that make landscapes and sky washes. There were wonders I hadn’t seen in years.

And being someone who never really cleans, folds or puts away except when drawers fall out, I had no idea how much less space it takes up to store folded iron fabric instead of stuffing it in a drawer. Who knew?

My machine is home, 6 drawers are ironed and we will resume the channel to chaotic embroidery until the next disaster occurs.

Into White: The Search for White Thread Painting

Some things are an experiment. Some things are a quest. Some things are like the holy grail and you keep searching for them interminably.

White is one of those things. When you’re working with thread painting, the easy answer is many shades of grey and then white, or many shades of beige and then white. Both are incredibly boring.

Why couldn’t you just make it white? I hear you say. You could. If you want it to shine out stronger than any other element in the quilt and you don’t care about dimension, you could. Pure white can be like an out of place spotlight in a quilt.

So the quest is, what mix of colors, greys and beiges will make a white that will have good depth, cast and drama. And look like it’s white.

In that quest, I’ve done a step by step photo study on this bird, in hopes to study it.

I’ve talked about zoning and shading before so I won’t flog that in this blog. “Rethinking White” is a post about shading white applique flowers. It’s a bit different than totally building color in thread. Because it’s built on sheers instead of strictly thread. But you may find that a useful difference.

Dimension is made by arranging colors from either dark to light or light to dark. It builds the illusion of shape. The progression of colors creates shade and shadow.

Here is my thread range I chose. It’s a mix of blues, purples, greens greys and beige, laid out dark to light.

I’ve put together some process shots to help explain.

Head Shots

Dimension comes from having a dark, medium and light area in each color zone in your piece. If you can establish dark, medium and light, you can make depth, something that isn’t by nature flat. Then for interest’s sake I added a shocker and a shader color to spark it. Of course the beak and the eye bring it to life.

Changing Cast

The two things you are building are cast and dimension. Cast is the color under the color. Most colors either lead towards the sun or the shade. You get the clearest colors by using only sun or shade colors in an embroidery.

But sometimes clear color isn’t the goal. If you want to come to a neutral shade, you mix both. And try not to go too far from the center. It makes a fabulous blended shade, but it’s hard to accomplish.

The cast on the under feathers was more yellow than the rest of the bird. An over stitched layer of a bluer grey pulls the color closer to center.

White doesn’t have to be boring. Or grey, or beige. With a little thinking and a close eye we can create a blended white with dimension.

Thread Shopping: If You Can’t Order It All, What Should You Order

We’ve talked a lot about thread choices for one particular piece or another. But when you’re buying thread for a stash, what’s a good strategy? The notion that you need one of everything only works if you’re unbelievably rich. And if you’re faced with a thread chart or a whole display of thread it’s overwhelming anyway. Here’s some ideas about how to think about the threads you’ll really use. And some strategies for buying thread.

There are some threads where I really do need all the colors. I tend to have a whole sliver range because I stipple with it, and I can change the temperature across the piece by changing thread colors. Love that trick! I need all the colors there are.

Range gets defined several ways. Every color should have at least a dark, a medium and a light to shade with. You kind of can’t shade without that. Everything looks flat without.

It comes back to the color wheel. I want a range of everything. This helps check off the boxes. You may prefer darks, or tints or jewels. But it helps to have the wheel in front of you to make sure you have a bit of everything.

But there’s also differences in tone and tint. jewel color is just bright shades. Tone is darkened with black or brown. Tint is lightened. But mixing yellow greens and green yellows with some blue greens gives a more normalized green that is much richer. To get a good range, you want to go much darker, brighter and lighter than the color you want to achieve. I rarely do an embroidery with just light dark medium. It depends on the size. But for a large embroidery, I may use over 80 colors to mix what I want. You can’t use it if you don’t have it.

I put my go-to threads on the list every time. There are things I’m always running out of. Black polyester, FS Madeira 490, Black Supertwist, YLI Candelight Rainbow, certain shades of purple and green I use a lot for binding. If I know I’m going to use it a lot, it will probably trash me to run out of it. And I won’t want to wait for one thread to arrive. Don’t feel bad about ordering an extra spool if you just can’t run out of it. Your list may vary. Pay attention to favorites.

I keep a thread journal. As I run out of a spool of thread, I write down the color number so I can reorder it. I think I can keep that in my head but it really doesn’t work that way.

I make an inventory of whatever thread I’ve got first. When I’m working on a project everything gets garbled. I’ve recently bought a wall thread organizer, not for storage but for arranging threads for a project. But at the end of the day, odd colors go in the wrong bags, and I need to check to see what I’ve really got.

Threads on the right bottom are globbed on.

While I’m doing that, I pull out all the stepped on or smashed threads, almost empty threads, and really old stuff. Old thread is no bargain. It helps to seal thread in a plastic bag, but really old thread just breaks. You can probably use it in the bobbin easier than the top, in a pinch. But it’s not a pet. You don’t owe it anything. Although you can easily use it for globbing. Globbing applies thread in a glob on the surface of your quilt. It makes for beautiful foliage, swamp pond and river bottoms. For instructions on globbing, check out my post, Another Fine Mess: What’s on Your Floor

Bagging thread has another good use. I bag thread by colors mostly. All the blues, pale greens, dark greens, olive greens, reds, oranges, yellow oranges, pinks, purples, greys, teals, get their separate bag. That way I know if I have a range.

About white: Yes. Sometimes I really want white. But most of the time, it’s just too bright for the other colors around it. Instead try pale pastels or greys. White metallic is an exception. It is softer, so it doesn’t have such a high contrast, and that makes it much more usable. Make sure to use a complementary color in that pale mix for shadows. A pink bird probably wants soft green in the coloration.

Remember that colors always are in relationship with each other. The names are a verbal thing, and color is visual. So the names will fail us every time. Look at your colors in relationships with each other and with the background. The background fabric is the color of the light in your piece, so it sets the tone.

Don’t feel bad about having favorites. I love purple, so I buy more purple. I’ll find a way to use it because I love it. I have to make myself buy peach, but that’s ok. I probably have 10 purples to each peach, and that probably will work out in what I ordinarily choose for colors.

Try to pick your colors in decent light. I will do a blog about lighting soon, but you know what I mean. Lighting can change everything.

When I bought thread for students, I made the rule of light dark and medium shades in each color, extra black for outlining, and anything that struck me as marvelous eye candy. It’s not a bad rule. It usually worked. It’s candy without a calorie in sight.

It Came from the Dollar Store: Including Silk Flowers and Leaves in Quilts

Willow Marsh

Whether you think they’re great or their tacky, silk flowers and leaves make a great three dimensional addition to a quilt surface.

From my fall leaf collection

At one guild meeting someone gave me some silk leaves that had been packaging for the tables. I didn’t know what I’d do with them. But the colors were great. I tucked them in my bag and said thanks. Then I forgot about them.

They cluttered around the studio for some while, and then I had a quilt that needed them. This quilt ran on the tension between oranges and blues. Those hot orange shaded leaves were wonderful! And I was hooked.

Cheese cloth leaves

I’d spent a lot of time making leaves of numerous things: cheesecloth, organza, hand dye, felt, and lace. I love them too. But it’s a more abstracted look. The silk leaves gave me instant leaves with fabulous detail.

Since then, I’ve haunted the dollar store and craft shops looking for leaves and flowers. What’s available changes with the seasons and the fashions. The fall leaves are obvious, but the flowers change with season as well. The good news is that even a small garland or batch can give you petals and leaves for years and years of quilts

‘A word about the fiber content. These aren’t silk. I’ve never heard them calling anything but that, but they are actually polyester. Sometimes they’re already heat treated for texture. Do they wash? Probably about as well as most things I use on quilts. They withstand water just fine, but they don’t handle abrasion and folding well. They need to be treated gently.

This quilt needed a few flowers in the background. I tried stitching them in with thick thread, but I really didn’t like the look. I found a silk mum I took apart. I didn’t like it at all as a flat flower, but when I folded it in quarters, it was perfect. I stitched in a green calix , stem and some lines to define the flowers. I’m in love.

Willow Marsh

Every flower is a surprise and not everything works the same way.

hydrangea petals

Smaller flowers work better stitched down as a whole.

Golden Cicada

You may need a wire cutter to take the flowers apart. They have those at the dollar store too.

Wire cutters

I keep bins of different leaves and flowers I’ve dismantled. I never know when I’ll need them. They add extra texture, color and pizzazz

Drawing on Distortion: Give it a Kiss, Because It’s Going to Pucker Up

One of the issues with free motion embroidery is that it always puckers up. You always have some distortion. The worst is that the distortion is uneven and unpredictable. Sometimes it pulls the piece out of shape or makes it unrecognizable. Free motion objects take a lot of time. It’s heart breaking to have them distort past usability. It’s best to adjust for that from the start.

There’s some time honored ways to deal with distortion. First make the embroidery off the surface of the quilt. It can be applied afterwards with minimal distortion. I will be talking about separate embroideries in this article, although the information works for both off and on the quilt surface.

Stabilizers help a lot. Small embroideries under 2″ use three stabilizers all together. The drawing itself is on Totally Stable. It’s a lightweight stabilizer that irons on and is removeable. Stitch and Tear is the next layer. It’s a stiff tear away Pellon. Then I use a layer of acrylic felt that absorbs much of the stitching. I prefer the thinner versions. I attach the stitch and tear and felt with 505 spray. For anything larger, I use a layer of hand dyed fabric as the top layer.

Do remember that the drawing on the back will face the opposite side on the front. I know, I know. Think of it as looking through a slide backwards.

Now it gets confusing. My drawing layer is on the back. I’m going to turn it upside down to stitch. I’m not going to call them top and bottom. The sandwich has a front and the back. For stitching purposes the front is on the bottom and the back is on top. Got it?

I am using two hoops. Sharon Schamber’s red weighted halo hoop is my very favorite. It has a weighted core and a rubber coating. It grips and the weight supplies support.

Now it’s all up to the drawing. We can’t accurately predict the distortion but we can take some good guesses. To do that we need to look at the zigzag stitch

The zigzag stitch pulls across the stitch. The more layers of stitching, the more distortion. For a larger piece, you need to draw to adjust for that distortion. Mostly that means that things need to be a lot wider and bit longer. But you need to analyze the drawing to see where the distortion is likely to be bad.

So if you’re doing a straight zigzag stitch down the legs, it will shrink in the width. You’ll want to make it a bit wider there so it doesn’t become pencil thin.

Bird feathers end with a band of stitching around the end of the feather. Again, making the feathers longer and a bit too wide gives your a bit of extra space there will help eliminate the shrinkage effect.

I’ve elongated the wings and body on the kingfisher. I wasn’t able to get it completely embroidered to show you, but you can see the shrinking on the feather and the wings

It’s not a science. But you can hedge your bets for your best look. Keep watching my face book page to see how this bird looks finished.

What happens if you guess wrong? Several things. Sometimes that wrong guess works better than a correct guess. Sometimes I cut into an embroidery and anchor it with stitching to address the error. One thing is certain. Perfect happens somewhere else. I’m content with beautiful.

But Where Will It Land? The Spotlight on the Background

I’m a long time hand dyer. I started dyeing fabric when I was ten. My fabric is sponge dyed, which means it can include endlessly different shades. It creates a light source and a small world in itself. What I’ve been reminded of this week is that the background changes everything. It isn’t like you take the elements for a quilt and just transfer them over. The background has an opinion of it’s own. And it demands different things.

This week I embroidered a green heron. I’m pleased with it. Because it worked out so well, I found myself fussing over the background. Originally I tried this background. I liked it. It had an excellent place for a stand of lady slippers. It was right with a moon. I pinned up the heron and watched it disappear before my eyes.

It broke my heart. I thought I knew what I was doing. I went back to my fabric drawer and found several more pieces that might work.

Second green background

There was a green background that gave a little more contrast with the bird. I moved the rocks over on it. Hung it up. Pinned on the bird and found it disappeared there too. There was a huge chrysanthemum clearly in the piece. But it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Red background

So I pulled out the crazy fabric. Two bright pink/purple/red pieces. It changed the season. The red one needed swirling leaves and a muddy pond rather than a blue one. And there was a sort of “where’s the fire? quality to it.

The darker of the pinks was sort of crazy but fabulous. The bird popped. And it desperately needed fish.

Purple background

What am I doing now? Drawing the fish for it. Not so many but some. And falling leaves. Go figure.

Fish drawing

And it appears this has started me onto a series. I have the backgrounds all prepped and ready. I think I need a kingfisher and a blue heron. Back to the drawing board. Quite literally.

Diving kingfisher. I think it’s the next step.

I could use any kind of fabric. But hand dye is the only fabric that helps me design this way. It’s bossy. But I’m willing to listen, because it gives really good advice.