Leni Wiener

Now that I am only a week away from the silent auction donation to benefit the United Way, I decided to finish the two thread painted pillows.  The first you saw in development in this blog:

You can see what the right fabric can do to complement and complete the thread painting,  here is a detail:

The second pillow I made is from a beautiful fabric I used for a pillow in my thread painting book:

By thread painting one of the motifs and then fussy cutting it and doing a machine applique onto the pillow, I get a nice effect.  Here is a detail of the thread painting:

I am moving on from this thread painted pillow project, the next entry will be about ART quilts again.

You can see the close-up of the thread painting and how the result is the look of embroidery.  I am happy with the thread painting, and now want to give the design the look of trapunto.

Trapunto is an old technique, the name means “stuffed work.”  Often seen in antique quilts, the traditional method was to put batting and backing on the quilt, make a small incision behind the area to be stuffed, and to gently push batting into the area–giving the motif a raised look.  The cut on the back would then need to be stiched and another backing applied.

My cheater method for trapunto is faster and easier.  I start with two layers of traditional batting on the back of the motif.  From the front, with a clear (in this case smoke clear) monofiliment thread on top and a color that will contrast the batting color in the bobbin, I trace around the outside of the design.

Now that I can clearly see the outline on the back, I carefully snip any batting that is outside the design and remove it:

The batting only remains in the area behind my design, which will give me the desired trapunto effect on the front.

I will post a picture of the finished pillow when I get back to it.  Now, on to my next art project–a stylized fabric collage of trees.

Leni

Since the weather in the Northeast today is cool and raining, I decided to begin my thread painted pillows with the fall fabric from my stash.  The fabric is beautiful, but on closer inspection, did not have a clearly discernable design that I could use.

So I decided to employ a “broderie perse” method to begin.  Broderie Perse is a fancy term for fussy cutting–that is, I cut out certain elements from the fabric and rearranged them to my liking on a black background.  I like this design, and think it will look great when threaded–like embroidery.

Not my most aesthetic challenge, I need to make something for a charity auction and have decided that thread painted pillows might be the most appropriate choice.  I plan to start with an existing fabric and “thread paint it in” so that it looks like amazing embroidery.  These are the three fabrics I pulled out of my stash as a starting point.  I will probably cut pieces out from each design and apply them to a background so that I control the look of the pillow.  Watch for their development.

fabrics for thread painting