I apologize for the radio silence that's been going on here for a while now. Recently I've been doing a lot more thinking than sewing! And a bit of experimenting:
As I mentioned a while ago, I was very inspired by
Sandy Lawrence's fusible appliqued and machine embroidered quilt. I particularly liked the way the thread was a design feature of the quilt. And I really loved the way she used more than one colour on the edges of the appliques.
I, however, do not have an embroidery machine, or even many decorative stitches. But I did think that with careful sewing I would still be able to get some interesting multicolour effects. You can see that I had mixed success with that! There are some good bits, but there is no room for error. This is all 50 wt thread, and my plan was to use 30 wt for the "blanket" stitches so they would show up more. But it turned out that my local quilt store was closed for the
Creativ Festival the day I went to buy the 30 wt thread. So I had more time to think!
The other thing I've been investigating is quilting techniques for both machine and hand. I came across
this website where she hand quilts big stitches with pretty perle cotton thread. I've seen this before, but this time, with Sedona Star on my mind, the whole thing instantly jelled into a plan. I can do both the seam treatments AND the quilting with some nice colourful perle cottons! My sewing machine does a decent satin stitch, so I will start by satin stitching all the appliques, and then embellish them by hand. It will also allow me to throw in a little embroidery here and there within the shapes as well.
I am VERY excited about this plan! I can finally see how the whole thing is going to come together. And I am pretty sure this will be a unique approach! Right now I am waiting for my threads to arrive, but there is plenty of piecing to do in the meantime. Happy sewing!
