Colouring Inside The Lines

This month's Ambassador Challenge for Island Batik is sponsored by one of our industry partners, Aurifil thread. 

We were sent a selection of weights and colours in our Ambassador box back in January, and an additional packet of thread arrived later this spring.  It included these 3 spools of 40, 28, and 12 weight to be used in our challenge. 

Our instructions said, "Fabric is your canvas and Aurifil thread your paint! Create a one of a kind art quilt or project with Aurifil thread."

This project took a great deal of thinking.  Normally, we design to showcase the fabric but this time the thread needed to take centre stage. We had been sent cuts of solid colour batiks, and I decided to use the plain white as my background.

I printed some New York Beauty blocks from EQ8 on plain white paper and started colouring in doodles with a box of markers to see if I could make this work.

We all know if you can draw it, you can stitch it, so I pulled some of the same colours from my thread stash and set to work.

This is my working sketch from EQ8;  the blocks are drawn to 6". The only unappealing part of this project was tracing the block outlines onto my fabric.  I wanted to get stitching, and this was going to slow me down!!

My solution was to cut both freezer paper and the white batik into 9" x 12" pieces, and iron the freezer paper to the back of the fabric. It was then trimmed to 8-1/2" x 11" and fed through my printer. It was a super easy (lazy!) way to transfer the lines.

 I printed one block first as a test and did this much stitching before I decided it was going to work. (I'm not big on practicing!)

 The freezer paper was removed from the fabric and the blocks were joined with 1/4" seams as per regular patchwork.

I used my favourite Hobbs wool batting for the middle, and another layer of white batik on the back. My bobbin was loaded with 50 weight Aurifil in 2024 white.

To say this was fun is an understatement! I changed my needle as often as my thread, opting for a size 12/80 for my 50 weight, a 14/90 topstitch for the 40 and 28 weights, and a 16/100 topstitch for the 12 weight.

 The 12 weight thread fills in beautifully, even with just rows of straight stitching.

 The project took about 2 weeks to stitch, and I loved adding new bits every day.

Below you can see how fine the 50 weight (purple) used in the swirl inside the spike, appears next to the 12 weight (black).

 For the white background bits, I simply stitched feathers in white 50 weight.

 I toss my emptied Aurifil spools into a container, so I fetched two to use as finials.

 They slid onto each end of a 3/8" dowel for the perfect finishing touch.

 

 

 In all, I used 26 different colours and 4 different weights of cotton thread.

Thank you to Aurifil thread, Island Batik, and Hobbs Batting for supplying the products used in this challenge.