Nelke & Thread Painting

While my Tula Pink Bernina is in the shop, I am starting a new applique called Nelke by Esther Aliu. We are bird lovers and I just love the little birds in this piece. My challenge with this is to use Stonehenge fabric that is in my stash.

Here is the pattern.

We are in the midst of our rainy season. Stonehenge with its saturated colors is the perfect antidote to the long, dark and wet days. My colors are limited to stock on hand, including a few charm pieces.

The background is a white Moda grunge with faint green patches. The vase is a Celtic knot Stonehenge that I ordered for a project, but the colors weren’t right. I am hoping to incorporate the Celtic knots in the border and backing to use this up!

The stems were a little wide with my thinnest bias maker, so I am using a wider bias strip and then folding it in half and gluing. This also means that I have no raw edges on the bias at all and can use my vintage Bernina 730 Record to add texture with the cool serpentine stitch. The variegated olive thread is from Superior Threads Rainbow line.

Our robins have very plump, peachy colored breasts. I am widening the breast piece of the applique a bit to reflect the look of our local robins. Our local robins are also a larger bird, but here I am going with a fantasy tiny robin. They are a harbinger of spring and the gray/brown mottled Stonehenge mimics their color well. The gray/brown Stonehenge is also used in the vase to balance the color in the piece and to add contrast to the vase. Some slivers of gold Klimt fabric leftover from previous work bring a bit of “shiny” to the vases.

Stems stitched! Laying out the vase pieces.

Still have to wait a bit for my Tula Pink, so moving on to quilting a panel from Frond Design Studio on my Tiara sitdown machine. Frond is a woman owned business that uses their original art work silk screened onto fabric. Their colors are vibrant and outrageous and I love them. The cotton is very nice quality. I picked up this panel at a craft and quilt fair in November and am having some serious fun quilting and thread painting. Thread painting is simply the “art” of scribbling with thread. So much fun. This is a 40 x 28 panel that will be a wall hanging.