Thread Painting Workshop With Karla Spinks

In October, Conversations-in-Cloth arranged to sponsor a class with local thread-painting (aka free-motion embroidery) expert Karla Spinks. Read/See more about the workshops.


My little Blue Bird, free-motion embroidery.
Here he is mostly cut free from the stabilizers and is ready to be appliqued to a background. Maybe that will be a art quilt / journal quilt in 2011?

"Look, Ma! No hands!" Well--not quite. But I will say this little bird is completely free-hand. Although I have an embroidery unit on my sewing machine, I never learned to use it, although my Aunt Rosita is the Queen of computer-driven embroidery.


Karla had us start out by thread-painting some flower fabric. Once we had that mastered, we could move on to something more challenging. Most of us chose birds.

Karla asked us to bring in samples of our own work, and I realized that I already had quite a few examples of free-motion embroidery.

Here are some samples from my thread painting present and past :

Horses




Gramma Pickles


Little Gardener :






Chickadee-dee-dee




Celebrate



Day at the Lake II





Oliver (aka Bubble Boy)







My advice : It just takes time and practice. A few weeks ago, I heard something on the radio about talent and success. The conclusion was that talent only takes you so far. Most things take practice, time and effort.

Theresa says that when she's teaching, she tells her students they can call her after the class, but not to whine. They have to put in 4 hours of practicing until they really start to get the hang of it. People in the class were amazed that my little bluebird came out so well, but I told them I just have more hours of practice at this already. They'll get there, too! This is not something that happens overnight (unless you do have a computerized embroidery unit).

Here are some other tips I picked up from the class :
Karla says :
* Heavy foot and slow hands. If your stitches are not nice, speed up.
* You don't need locking stitches to start because you go over and over and over and over it.
* Hollis rips more than she sews. She doesn't ever cross threads.
What needles to use?
Hollis Chatelain uses a size 90 needle, but they leave bigger holes. When I first started doing free-motion embroidery, I had a lot of problems with breaking the embroidery threads and other issues that seemed to be solved by using a 90 needle. Now looking back, I was probably not threading my machine right through the tension discs (It takes a while to learn the ins and outs of a new machine.) In my experience, the size 90 needle does leave bigger holes initially, but the fabric eventually relaxes and closes in around the threads. Karla says that Bob at Superior Threads recommends a size 80 needle, so that's what I used for the workshop. And it's true--smaller holes.


The members of CinC, with a few guests. We were at Julie's Sewing Center in Appleton, WI.

Back Row : Connie, Karla Spinks (Teacher), Lois, JoAnne, Pat
Middle Row : Brenda, Betty, Lynda
Front Row : Michele (me), Theresa
In October, CinC sponsored a 2-day workshop on Thread Painting with Karla Spinks.

Threadpainting on the Horses

I finished thread-painting the horses today. I want to finish this wall-hanging for my dad in time for Christmas. For about 15 years, now he's had 2 retired horses to take care of. He had to put down the 36-year old horse, as she developed some health problems that would make living through the coming winter outside very difficult. The other retired horse went to a farm to live with some other horses. She seems to have settled in already. Since he won't have any horses at Christmas, I'll give him these horses that he doesn't have to feed or water. Don't worry--It will still be a surprise. My Dad hardly ever turns the computer on these days. He doesn't read my blogs.

Here are some detail shots :

The rail fence is completely covered with thread.






Here are some (not all) of the threads I used in this piece.


Here's the backside which shows better the outlines of the thread-painting.

On to adding the borders and quilting it all!

Thread Calligraphy Class with Nancy K.

At this year's Sewing Expo, I was able to take the all-day hands-on Thread Calligraphy class with Nancy Kazlauckas. I bought her book last year, but never really took the time to sit down and DO it.

Here are some samples from that first day :

This is on fleece. The bright yellow (lower) is rayon embroidery thread. The gold (upper) is the Madeira metallic FS thread.

One thing I discovered was that the Madeira Metallic FS threads are wonderful! As Nancy says, they stitch on "like butter" with excellent coverage for the letters. They also add a classy and elegant sheen that almost looks like little beads are sparkling with the thread. Now I wish I had purchased more than just the one spool! Fortunately, I know where to get more!

This is a remarkably easy technique. And Nancy is a very down-to-earth person who happens to be a good teacher, too! The best part is that you don't need some kind of fancy embroidery machine to do thread calligraphy -- Just a sewing machine that can do a zig-zag stitch and drop feed dogs. Nancy K. recommends a free motion foot. My open-toed stippling foot was not happy about the wide zig-zag , or even a not so wide zig-zag. I had much better results (with my machine and set-up) once I switched to an open-toe zig-zag foot and dropped the presser foot pressure down to 0. I do need to get a closed-toe quilting foot ...

As for prospective projects with this technique, dog tombstones. For about 6 years, I've been meaning to make broken glass mosaic stepping stones for my dad to commemorate all his faithful dogs he's had over the years. I did get so far as to design the tops--I've never gotten around to pouring the QuickCrete cement to finish these projects. I think Nancy's Thread Calligraphy technique will help me to get the job done. Each "block" will contain the dog's name and their years. Becasue it's cloth, I should be able to easily "add on" block through the years as he continues to outlive his faithful companions.