Craftsy class, Lola Jenkins' Thread Art

I've actually finished a quilt! Ok, it's only small and no piecing but it's finished.

I bought a couple of Craftsy classes just before Christmas and I've been looking forward to doing Lola's project. Then I had a need to make a "Don't touch the quilts" small quilt for our show next month. Putting the two together made sense.

Here's my quilt, about A4 size.


I was originally thinking of using the first photo below of my daughter for this technique but I was going to remove the Christmas hat. Then she sent me the second photo and the idea for an "eyes only" quilt was born.


I cropped the photo and printed it black and white. Then I went over the main lines of contrast with a Sharpie.

I transferred the lines on to fabric with the same Sharpie but used a fine pen for the eyes.

All the hatching is done with black thread. I also quilted Bec's hair with a variegated thread and tight spirals.

I think I used five colours on the iris of the eye! Most of that is coloured pencils but I used Derwent Inktense for the shading on the face. As you can see I follow the less-is-more school when it comes to painting. The rose print on the fabric was already doing a lot for me but I found that by adding just a hint of brown to suggest the eye socket (following on from the eyebrow) was enough to stop it looking flat.

I finished off with a satin stitch edge, using the same colours that I quilted the hair with - not because I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered getting a different thread - well, mostly because I'm lazy but I liked it anyway! So there!

Usually I would do the satin stitch edge with a stabiliser on the back but even with tear-away and a close stitch, you sometimes get little bits of paper poking out. I decided to do an experiment. Sharon Schamber stabilises the edge of her quilts with glue and then glues on the binding. I thought that was a great idea so I glued all the edge with 'No more pins' and got all the pokey threads stuck down. I'm pleased with the satin stitch and there are no pokeys!

All in all, a fun project and one I will try again. More finishes to do for the show before I can start anything new though. Hopefully I'll be posting again soon with my next finish!