contemporary quilt

Can I Kelp It? Couching Unusual Yarns

| ellenanneeddy

I needed some kelp for the bottom of this shore scene. I wanted something textural and yet not dense.

There aren’t a lot of great pictures of kelp. But I found these in an art nouveau book of botanicals. It twists. And it’s long and narrow with crinkled edges.

As a lucky find, there was this strange yarn at the rescue mission sale. Both of these are loopy yarns. They were in vogue several years ago for scarfs. They have loops woven in that will make great kelp. The color also fits into the scheme, blending with the heron.

It can be spread apart to look like kelp. That’s a difficulty all its own. You can spread yarn apart, but there aren’t enough fingers to hold it that way and free motion over it. You also can’t free-motion it without it being caught in the darning foot.

So I took a two-pronged approach, I knotted the yarn where I wanted it to spread,

I couched it in place with a regular presser foot, so that I could control the width of the yarn.

I covered it with a Dissolvable stabilizer. Then I stitched it all down with the darning foot where I wanted the kelp to be. I wet down the stabilizer to make it go away.

Some yarns need special care. Don’t be afraid to use several approaches to get what you want. In the end, all that matters is the result.

The Long and the Short of It: Blending Stitches with the Long Stitch

| ellenanneeddy

We’ve been talking about the variability of the zigzag stitch in free motion. Most of the time, I’m filling in a space where I want a line of color to show up. This is a trick that will give me a soft blend of color across the image without a hard line. I’ve heard it called the long stitch, although the old-fashioned description you hear with free motioners is the long short stitch. As with all free-motion zigzag stitching, the difference isn’t a setting on the machine. It’s how you move your fabric through the machine as you’re stitching.

Most of the time when I’m filling a space, I stitch a zigzag line at an angle around the edge, I shade the piece by stitching from side to side, and then I smooth the edges with a zigzag that moves straight through.

But when you just move from side to side you get a long blending stitch that flows into itself. The breast of the bird is done from side to side. The feathers are done with an outline, shading, and smoothing. You can see the difference.

You can find more information about the angle of stitching in the Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book or this post, Stitch Vocabulary: Zigzag Stitch.

Translucence: Making Stitchery Look Transparent

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve been rethinking how I usually make my dragonflies for my quilt Great Blue. I picked up some new research books and I was struck how very transparent and translucent their wings were. How could I do that?

Dissolvable stabilizer really is transparent and has that look. But it’s made to dissolve if it gets wet. I can’t promise that won’t ever happen. Humidity itself might dissolve the stabilizer.

I’m pretty sure Saran Wrap would tear. Sure enough not to try it.

I I have used organza or lace. It’s a neat look and I like it. But I wanted a more integrated stitched effect. I wanted them to appear to be see-through.

So I thought about it in terms of thread choices. I love Madeira Supertwist. It’s my go-to metallic thread. There are several color ranges. One range is of solid metallic colors. But one of the color ranges is opalescent and crystal. It’s translucent in itself. So I used it in the transparent part of the wings, and the metallic parts in the exoskeleton of the dragonflies.

It doesn’t look transparent exactly. It looks reflective, like glass or water. Not quite what I had in mind, but I think it does the job.

Here’s the difference. This bug is out of solid metallic thread. It makes a bolder statement, more like an exoskeleton than like see-through wings.

All stitchery is a gigo proposition. Good things in, Good things out. When you use excellent threads and get excellent although sometimes unexpected results. I’m going to try these crystalline threads in other ways where I want a translucent look.