Funky Flower--Thread Painting with Aurifil & Island Batik

October's Island Batik challenge is Thread Painting with Aurifil. I always think of thread painting as closely related to free motion quilting, and FMQ is a skill I do not possess, so I'd been worried about this challenge. My inspiration came from a sentence in the prompt: "Imagine that fabric is your canvas and Aurifil thread your paint!" After mulling it over for weeks, I decided my "painting" would be in the form of the decorative stitches from my machine. 

 

I've been wanting to do a large, bold, single flower for a while and I had the perfect fabrics--a 10" stack of Floralicious. 

I rarely do scrappy backgrounds but I decided it would be the perfect look for the bold, funky look I was going for. I pulled the turquoise fabrics from the stack and then got out a stash builder roll that was in most recent ambassador box--I had gotten a pack that was all turquoise strips, so I used those to add to the pretty prints in Floralicious. I wanted the thread painting to also be quilting, so I layered my scrappy turquoise pieced back with Hobbs 80/20 Bleached batting and Island Batik solid white for the back. I quilted in organic wavy lines, hoping the quilting would look like a gentle breeze blowing.

Once I had the background done, it was time to start on the flower. I worked backwards: I knew I wanted the stem to go under the petals and I wanted the leaves under the stem. I had all the pieces made so I laid them out to get a feel for placement, then I started on the leaves. There were no true greens in Floralicious so I used other greens I had in my scrap pile. I picked out a fun leaf-like stitch and just got started!

After the leaves were in place, I moved on to the stem. I recently went to a meeting of the Triad Modern Quilt Guild as a guest when Latifah Saafir was the speaker. She did a demonstration of how she makes bias binding and I was glad to be able to use it so soon after her presentation. I did a total of 3 rows of stitching on the stem.

Now on to the petals! I was really excited about these bright colors. The petals are 2 layers sewn and turned inside out. At one point I was considering only partially stitching them to add a 3D element but I decided that would detract from the decorative thread work so I ditched that idea, but had already prepared all the petals. I also didn't really want the look of raw edge applique for this project. Here is the back after the first 6 petals have been stitched.

For each petal, I picked stitches and thread color when I got to it, I did not have an overall plan. I just played! And it was grand! I used Aurifil 2000 in the bobbin for most of it, though there two places where I felt I needed a darker bobbin thread to keep the light thread from showing on the top. When I did the wavy line quilting before adding any of the flower on top, I used 1148. I used a total of 16 different Aurifil colors in the decorative stitching, for a total of 18 different threads used. All were 50 weight except for one 28 weight, because that's what I had, and monofilament in smoke which I used to attach the flower center before adding the bright yellow flower stitch on top. Ready for that list of threads? 2605, 2884, 1231, 2735, 2783, 2810, 2245, 1243, 2520, 5006, 2530, 2260, 1104, 2130 (28 wt), 2134. 

 

I used a Schmetx Microtex Chrome needle for most of the stitching, though I did use a Schmetz top-stitch needle for some of the decorative stitching. 

Materials in this project were provided to me by Island Batik, Aurifil, Schmetz, and Hobbs.

Our prompt specified that finished projects were to be larger than 24" x 24". Twenty-four inches square is 576 square inches. After finishing the flower, I trimmed the edges to make more of a rectangle than a square. My finished project is 21" x 34" which is 714 square inches. I'm hoping that qualifies!

I was torn on what to use for binding. I tried several things, including the green of the stem and some of the background fabric. I didn't like them. In the end, I used a 10" strip from each of the 12 fabrics used in the petals. And the binding came out exact. Seriously. Exact. I did use a straight join instead of the typical diagonal join, partly because I only had 10" of each fabric and partly because I knew this would be a seasonal wall hanging that would not get much wear and tear. I've been close on binding before but never been exact like that!

I enjoyed using Island Batik Floralicious as my canvas and Aurifil thread as my paints! I like the decorative stitches, and I like that you can see some from a distance and others you need to be standing in front of it. I like to hang seasonal quilts on my door and I am very excited to use this next summer. I started calling it Funky Flower and the name has stuck. My Funky Flower makes me smile every time I see it.