Finish up some quilting projects

Time to finish some UFOs

Like many other quilters, I’ve a “few” unfinished objects (UFOs) kicking around my quilting studio. Some are big projects and some are small, and some will never be finished! But, the ones I really wanted to work on were the samples that I made in Elaine Quehl’s Surface Design course last month. For three Fridays in a row, my friend Nellie and I traveled to Ottawa to spend the day learning how to use many different surface design products. My class samples were just begging to be finished with thread painting and quilting. I figured what better way to highlight the many uses of DecoBob thread from WonderFil than to finish up some quilting projects?

Tons of surface design techniques

Each day in our class we learned two different techniques and got to play with different products. The first class had us working with Shiva Paintstiks and foils. The second class we used Prismacolor Artist Pencils and Caran d’Ache Neocolor 2 Water Soluble Wax Pastels (yes, that sure is a mouthful!). The third class, was my absolute favorite and Elaine taught us the ins and outs of using Tsukineko Inks and Inktense Pencils.

Although I had a set of the Tsukineko Inks that I’d bought over a year ago, none of the little bottles had even been opened! Elaine showed us how to dilute the ink with aloe vera gel to get different shades of one color in order to paint a flower on fabric.

Then, we got to try out the Inktense pencils to shade in a free-motion thread painted sketch. These amazing pencils look and feel like pencil crayons, but when you spray the fabric with water the colors pop and get brighter and more intense! Immediately after the class, Nellie and I headed to the closest art supply store to buy our own sets of Inktense pencils!

Here are pictures of some of my class samples.

A class of high achievers

Everyone in our class was so creative; it was amazing to see what everyone did with the same products. Elaine has pictures of all of the class samples up on her blog. Her website also lists her future classes and lectures. I encourage you to check out everything that she has to offer!

What to stitch first?

After looking through all my samples again, I decided the tulip I made using the d’Ache Neocolor 2 Water Soluble Wax Pastels was my first order of business. Once I got out the WonderFil threads that I had on hand, I couldn’t believe how well they matched my tulip – it’s like it was meant to be!!

Thread painting or quilting?

I’m not sure yet if I want to try quilting or thread painting my tulip, but I think I’ll sleep on it and tomorrow I’m sure that I’ll have made a decision! Now that I’ve seen how well my threads match my tulip, I can’t wait to get started! I just love that I’m already finishing these class samples. I just hate to take a class and have yet another unfinished project added to my pile of UFOs. So, tomorrow I’ll start to finish up some quilting projects using my WonderFil threads!