10. Hand stitch the face to the body, ensuring the face covers
the tummy piece.
11. Press the owl element on the reserve side.
12. Attach the owl to the tree branch. Embroider the owl's legs
and feet from the body to the branch.
13. Our Halloween door quilt is taking on a cheerful – – and
almost spooky – – personality.
Adding some shimmerrrrrrr
What this picture needs is some texture! Coming right up, using
Sulky embroidery Holoshimmer embroidery threads. Technically,
these beauties are more like filaments, so some extra care must
be taken when using them.
1. Use a machine embroidery needle – – a new one for this
new project – – and a slightly loosened top tension in your
machine. It’s also important to change to a new bobbin,
filled with bobbin thread.
2. Switch to your machine's darning foot.
3. We're going to paint some bark onto the tree branches.
4. Drop your machine's feed dogs.
5. Place the door quilt top into a large embroidery hoop, but
rather than having the work sitting on top of the hoop like
a drum, reverse the installation so that the inner hoop is on
top of the quilt and flat to the machine bed.
6. Grip the sides of the hoop and move the tree area up and
down in a random way, "drawing”, as in free motion quilting,
some lines up and down the branch, to create the illusion of
bark.
7. Trim the threads away as you stop and start to get all the
branch areas covered. This is an easy task using 4 1⁄2 inch EZ
snips. The blades curve upwards, away from the work, and
the simple squeezing action is a perfect way to get a precise
snip without any hand fatigue. I love these little snips.
I've become a pretty big fan of the Holoshimmer threads. The
thread effect is quite subtle, but effective. It picks up just the
smallest bits of light and creates a noticeable shimmer. It's
just perfect for the spooking cheerfulness of our door quilt. It
reminds me of dewy spidery webs – – EEEK! I added some plain
black thread to the tree bark too.
9. Switch to your machine's clear embroidery foot, and engage the feed dogs. Change to a yellow-gold Holoshimmer
thread. Select a decorative stitch and outline the moon. I
used a combination of two decorative stitches.
10. Cut 3 2 1⁄2 inch coordinating sashing strips. Attach them first
to the bottom edge and then to the sides, pressing the seam
inwards toward the dark sky fabric.
Our Halloween door quilt is looking spook-tac-ular!
We finished embellishing the Halloween door quilt with some
fancy threads and stitches. Our spooky little scene is ‘free-motion quilting’ with some spooky air currents. After all, the wind
should always blow a little mystery into Halloween night.
1. Make a quilt sandwich with a backing, quilt batting, and the
quilt top. Spray baste and smooth the layers together.
Use a marking pen to create some swirls to suggest air currents.
This will be your free motion quilting motif. It helps to draw a few
strategically placed motifs on the quilt, then you can bust loose on
the wider areas of the quilt.
8. Remove the quilt top from the hoop and press on the
reverse side.
QUILTsocial
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fall 2014
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