I love Friday mornings. Faced with thoughts about what I need to get done in just one day is so much more peaceful than the thoughts I have on Monday mornings about what I need to get done in five days. This morning I am enjoying this. In playing around with these beautiful Pearl Cottons, I realized that in all my experiences with embroidery and hand quilting, there was one venture I had yet to try.
And that was drawing onto solid cloth free form (with a water soluble fabric pen), and then hand quilting the artwork. I most often do this sort of thing with embroidery, but I thought it would be interesting to quilt the art instead of embroider it. Using a range of colors kept my interest and felt a little bit more like my embroidery experiences than my hand quilting ones. When I hand quilt, I am almost always, yes definitely always in fact, following the lines of the piece work, rather than using any sort free form stitch style, or template stitch pattern.
A pillow is a great place to practice your hand quilting stitches. Creating the pillow front is exactly like creating a quilt top, but because the back side of the stitches will be hidden inside the pillow, you can feel a little less freaked out about your quilt back results as you go. You may remember I gave some tips about the stitch here and here. I am no expert, I just love it a lot. Can you imagine a whole single cloth quilt like this? Gorgeous. I am an inspired girl right now. The stitching takes a while, and you certainly wouldn't have to do it as densely as I've done this (I get carried away when I doodle). But doing a single cloth quilt would save you lots of cutting and piecing time. For this little pillow top (about 14x20") I hand basted the top, batting, and backing together pretty densely, and because it wasn't a giant, heavy quilt, I did the hand quilting without a hoop or frame entirely, which felt really comfortable. In that process though, I continually smooth out the surface, and hold it out flat with my open under hand as I stitch with my upper hand. Hard to describe unless you're next to me on the couch. Perhaps a little video one day soon.
There you go. Overcast, cool Friday morning. Pillows. Stitches. The weekend to look forward to. Oh, and the underside of that pillow is peeking out a tiny preview of a little print from my next fabric collection, Loulouthi. Lots to look forward to!
xoxo, Anna
ps. thank you so much for all the "white room" housewarming comments- I appreciate them so much, and feel so entirely blessed to have the space and your encouragement!