Thread Painting

I have been thread painting…. miles and miles of thread have been used recently.

The Guild I belong to, Waterford Quilt Guild in Virginia, had a speaker cancel for later in the year and I was asked if I would share the Thread Painting process… Of course I said SURE!

So to be ready… I have been making samples. I showed 2 small pictures a post or 2 back. I have one of them completed.  The Flower Basket.

This is a detail of the stitching on one of the flowers. The threads I used were mostly Master Piece and So Fine, in the colors I had on hand. One or two, regular weigh threads may have made it into this…. because I did not want to go shopping or to wait for thread in the mail!

This is the back, before I put the quilt backing on and quilted it

And this is finished. It measures about 25 inches square.

The elephant is being quilted now. Originally I wanted the back to be visible… since I Thread Painted in 2 layers, but I also wanted to get it quilted so I could get to the really fun part and embellish! I plan to add lots more sparkle and beads to the headpiece and blanket.

 

The last one so far….is this large flower runner. I decided to quilt it in a large geometric pattern, just to keep the graphic look, and only the top flower area is quilted, so the front and back are visible. So, for now it is done. The threads are the ones I thought I would use… not shown is a black, a green and a blue blue thread… that I used in the darkest areas of the center flower.

   

I alluded to another one…  actually I have 2 that I am thinking about. I only have enough time to make one of them. I think I want to paint one -as in whole cloth…(of a flower that I took) to show that you can do more than just echo the commercial fabric… with the thread. You can also use the thread to create depth and dimension. Let me say from the beginning that I am NOT a painter…. I lack a very important ability that applies to drawing and painting. I cannot see and translate the subtle shadings of color and the dimensions of shadow and apply it… and then there is perspective and scale… also difficult for my flat mind to comprehend. The other involves a tree… which just now occurs to me that I could combine the 2 ideas into one if I were to do the tree… hum, I have some thinking to do!

As always, More Later- Beth