Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Susan Cleveland and WonderFil Spagetti

Susan Cleveland is one of the happiest quilters I have ever meet. She exudes bubbly. Susan has shared with us some of her latest tips for using WonderFil Spagetti thread. I KNOW you will enjoy this.
One of the projects in my newest book, Precision & Panache, includes bright, hand-dyed fabric and stitching with 12wt cotton thread (WonderFil Spagetti  12wt cotton) by hand and by machine.

  • Hippie Daisies by Susan K Cleveland, 2010, 11”x20”; This piece was made with hand-dyed fabric and it gives a groovy vibe to the piece. This little quilt makes me smile.
HippieDaisy_web_full4incheswide

  • Glowing applique... First, to keep the white flowers white with no background showing through, I used Pellon Décor-Bond rather than traditional fusible web. This product is a heavy non-woven interfacing and it masks color under the flowers. I then stitched machine applique with WonderFil Spagetti 12wt cotton thread to give a bold blanket stitch around appliques. For a glow, I quilted around the daisies by machine also with WonderFil Spagetti 12wt cotton thread but in another color. Trippy, huh?
HippieDaisy_web_glowingapplique_3inches

  • The white background piece is linen gauze. I starched it to keep its shape, frayed the edges and pinned it to the hand-dyed background before appliqueing daisies. Since I couldn’t think of how to quilt the linen section, I sprinkled square sequins throughout stitching through all layers. It seems just right.
HippieDaisy_web_linengauzesequins_3inches

  • I love hand quilting and especially with heavy thread. This technique was a new idea for me! With 2 strands of WonderFil Spagetti 12wt cotton thread and a 7 or 8 between needle, I hand quilted with large stitches and intermittently inserted French knots into the lines of quilting! fyi ... there is no message.
HippieDaisy_web_morsecode_3inches

  • Life is too short for plain bindings. Large white ric rac seemed like the logical choice for me.
HippieDaisy_web_ricrac3inches

Quilt on!
Susan
Susan K Cleveland
www.PiecesBeWithYou.com

4 comments:

Gill said...

Fabulous! and thank you for the tips!

Jean said...

The daisies are beautiful! I love using heavy threads for embellishing, but I'm confused...I thought Wonderfil and YLI were 2 separate thread companies??? Are they really the same company?

PJs Lapperier said...

I LOVE this little quilt!

Vesuviusmama said...

I was searching for images of BIG STITCH quilting, and came across this happy little quilt. What a gem! And you used french knots, which was exactly what I was hoping to put on my current project - my first attempt at big stitch quilting. You inspire me! I love the idea of the big ric rac in the border, too.

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