Thursday, December 20, 2012

Hand Embroidery with thickened Dye Prints


 With it getting  chilly here in California, that means below 30 degrees, as opposed to 30 degrees below 0, a temperature we would have in winters in Wisconsin, where I grew up, I pulled out my cotton velveteen quilt to finish stitching.  It keeps me warm as I stitch on it.  I used thickened procion dyes and had a great time drawing line patterns on it.  This quilt started out as a whole piece of fabric and I painted rectangles of solid, bright colors randomly on it with thickened dyes.  After letting it dry a little, I used a syringe, brush and cardboard tube to draw and print line patterns, again using thickened dyes.  It was a fun afternoon of serious play.   Then I cut it apart and reshuffled the rectangles to repeat the colors and patterns in a more random way.



The next step was to quilt it.  I have loved hand embroidery since my mom taught me years ago.  I can remember stitching on stamped pillow cases, floral designs and girls in old-fashioned dresses and bonnets.  Every time I embroider it brings back wonderful memories of my sweet mom. I still have her old Coats and Clark booklet of stitches, which is actually pretty good, and cost only a quarter, back in the day.


Here is a close-up of some of the embroidery on this quilt.  I use mostly perle cotton, #8.

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