Changing the stitching on "Plain Spoken"

Back in May, I made the decision to quilt my shot cotton "Plain Spoken quilt with embroidery stitches.  In the months since, I scoured embroidery books for a variety of usable stitches and began the stitching.  I enjoyed learning the embroidery stitches; it is quite amazing how holding the thread one way or another, or placing the needle here or there, can create a wide variety of designs.  But after doing about 80 different stitches, I decided I didn't like the way it looked on the quilt.  Too much variety of color, value, and pattern--all of which distracted from the flow of color in the quilt.   (Ignore the loose white stitches--that's just basting that will be removed when the quilting is done.)

And a close-up, with basting stitches removed.  No better.  

So I decided to go back to something simpler, and did trials with various weight threads in either a simple running stitch, or the "conversation" stitch that I used on my Regret quilt.  

I decided on the conversation stitch (thanks to Mary Beth for the suggestion).  I'm using two threads, a dark, dusky blue 20 wt pearl cotton (hand-dyed) in the darker strips, and 2 strands of 50 wt Aurifil sewing thread in a pale yellow-green in the lighter strips; varying between the two holds down the value contrast between thread and fabric.  I think this is better.  

The quilt is also secured with in-the-ditch hand-quilting in all the vertical seams, done before I began the embroidery.

Embroidery!

I recently finished piecing the shot cotton "Plain Spoken" quilt.  The next step was to figure out what I wanted to do for the quilting.  On an earlier shot cotton quilt, made from just the larger-size rectangles, I machine quilted a grid, and then added hand-quilting with embroidery thread, a simple line inside each rectangle.  I thought of doing similar hand-work on this quilt, so I tried it out on the sample above, right column.  Too boring, and the narrower rectangles needed a different treatment.  I've been wanting to expand my embroidery repertoire, so I decided to play with some embroidery stitching instead (working it through the three layers of top, batting, and backing, so that it serves as quilting as well)--done in the middle and left columns above.  I love how this looks!  So, my plan is to do vertical stitch-in-the-ditch in the seams between each column to secure everything, and then to do embroidery in the narrow rectangles (0.5 x 3").  I won't do any stitching at all in the larger rectangles (1.5 x 3").  It will take me a year or two to complete, but it will be a pleasure to do.  There are 1,440 narrow rectangles in this quilt, and I'm thinking I'll try to do something different in each one.  I've been going through embroidery books, picking out stitches that will be usable for this project, and so far have about 150 different stitches (e.g., back stitch, lazy daisy, French knot, etc.).  Since many of these stitches can be used in multiple ways, I think it's possible to come up with 1,440 variations, especially since the straight stitch (example in lower left corner above) is basically a short drawn line, so there are as many variations as one could make with a drawn line. . .

With a quilting plan in place, the next step was to baste together the three layers of the quilt.  I usually secure the layers by spray-basting, with the layers pinned to a vertical design wall--a method I learned from a Patsy Thompson video.  But this quilt is 90 x 112 (for a queen-size bed), and the spray-basting works best for something smaller, and for something done by machine rather than hand-quilting.  I decided to baste this on a low-nap carpet, a method described by Suzanne Marshall in her book Take-Away Appliqué, pp. 78-79.  I have a large carpeted area in the finished attic of my house that I could use.  First, the back gets pinned to the carpet, all around the edges:



Then the batting is smoothed out onto the backing.  (For hand-quilting, I use Hobbs Poly-Down.)  Then the top is smoothed out over the batting and secured with pins around all the edges.



Then, you sit on the quilt and baste it!  I've never tried this before, as I couldn't believe the quilt wouldn't shift from my moving around on it, and I also thought it would be a strain on my back.

But it has been working well.  I do only a half-hour at a time, twice a day.  After a week, I'm about half-way through.  I'll have to up the number of stints to three times a day, as I've got a guest coming into the guest room on Friday!

I'm stitching in the middle of every column, and in the middle of each row of larger rectangles.  It's a pleasure to be looking at all the color combinations close up.

More about the hand-stitching

I usually have at least one project in progress, set up by the comfortable couch in our living room.  Right now, I'm working on the hand-quilting that I'm adding to the machine stitching on the shot cotton quilt.  A sign of how pleasurable this work is:  I have found myself thinking that I don't want to finish the quilt quickly, so that I continue to have the stitching to do.  I love choosing each new color as I move from square to square.

 And I love seeing how the thread looks on the two different rectangles in the square.  Simple pleasures.

 

At this point, I'm about half-way done with the hand-quilting. 

Tray dyeing and some quilting decisions

To make a backing for my shot cotton "Spectrum" quilt (see here and here), I decided to experiment with tray dyeing, a method of getting multiple colors on one piece of fabric that I hadn't tried before.  I've very happy with the results.  I picked up three color samples at the paint department of Lowes, and then used my swatch book from Carol Soderlund's class to match up a dye formula.   As you can see below, I got very close indeed! 

I was especially pleased because the dyeing circumstances were not ideal.  My dye concentrates were a couple of months old, including two weeks not refrigerated.  I did the dyeing in the basement, with an ambient temperature of about 58 degrees.  Many dyers don't do dyeing if they can't get the temperature up to 70 or warmer, but this convinces me that colder temperatures work just fine.  I did leave the dye on the fabric for 24 hours before washing out; if it had been warmer, I could have done a wash-out after four hours.  The other not-ideal factor was that I was using a fabric that doesn't take up the dye as well as the standard fabric I use for dyeing, so I just eyeballed putting in more dye on the lighter two colors; the darker blue looked fine when wet, and it did turn out dark enough.  The photo below shows my dyeing set up.  I happened to have a couple of long flat cardboard boxes from the butcher.  I cut out one end of each and taped them together into a long tray, then lined it with heavy plastic.  I doubled over the fabric, so the dark blue ended up in the center and the green on both ends.  I didn't intend for any white areas to be left, so I'll be more careful with that the next time.  I stapled the plastic down in the cardboard to have a smooth surface.  Unfortunately, that mean that some dye leaked through.  The cardboard is too warped to use again, and I messed up the surface of the pingpong table.  Well, live and learn.  There are a couple of other options for trays that I can try the next time I want to use this technique.

 Once I had the back sandwiched to the front, the next decisions were about quilting.  I decided to do straight-line quilting in two directions. (Click on this and other photos to see larger.)

This seemed not enough to me, but I didn't want to put more lines of machine stitching on the quilt--too harsh for the softness of the shot cotton.  After a number of different trials, I decided to hand-quilt the inner squares with a long stitch, using 2 strands of a variety of embroidery threads.  I'm staying with the color of the two rectangles that make up the inner square, but choosing for some contrast in value.  (Click on the photo to see this larger.)

I'm enjoying spending the extra time with the quilt, having the chance to look closely at every square.