How to Quilt a Thread Painted Surface

Check out my finished thread painting!

I had so much fun playing with my Konfetti and Tutti threads, embellishing my book cover with thread painting. It’s equally important now to know how to quilt this thread painted surface!

I love how the threads make the fabric designs stand out more – check out the before and after photo of the large flower:

Time to rip out the interfacing

The next thing to do before we get quilting, is to rip out the excess interfacing from the back of the fabric. Depending on the type of interfacing you use, you may not need to do this, but mine is “tear-away” interfacing, so it is quite easy to remove. Just follow the manufacturer’s instructions for the type of interfacing that you are using.

Layering our quilt sandwich

First of all, let’s press the embellished fabric as it has shrunk in some spots due to the thread painting. Now we need to cut a piece of batting and backing fabric the same size. When I am quilting small pieces like this I love to use 505 Spray.

To use it, first spray your backing fabric with a light coating of the adhesive spray then place your batting on top. Next, spray your batting with the adhesive then place your top fabric on top. Smooth it out with your hands, flip it over and smooth the back and then flip AGAIN and smooth the front one more time. Next we are going to quilt!

Quilt as desired

Are you one of those people who just hate it when your instructions say “quilt as desired”? As a pattern designer, I’m guilty of using that phrase, but have no fear!!

For this project I’m just going to meander all over the fabric, avoiding the pieces that I embellished with the thread painting. If you would like some other ideas for quilting then you should check out my blog posts from last month in which I showed LOTS of different quilting ideas. I’m going to use the pale pink Konfetti thread to do my quilting as it will blend in nicely with the white background.

Trim the book cover to size

Once you’ve finished quilting, you need to trim up your book cover to the size of your binder. Lay the binder open on top of your quilted cover. Place your book on top of your quilted sandwich and mark a line that is ½” away from each side of the book. Remove the book and using your rotary cutter trim your rectangle to this size (making sure that the corners are squared up).

A girl can never have too many pockets

The inside flaps of the book cover hold the cover on the binder but they also end up being great pockets for tucking loose pages in. To make the inner flaps, you’ll measure the height of the cover and cut two rectangles that are that high and at least 6” wide. 

Fold these in half with the wrong sides together and press. Align the raw edges of these two rectangles with the edges of the quilted rectangle and sew along the four sides of the book cover using a basting stitch ⅛” from the edge.

Next up –binding our book cover

Join me tomorrow – we’ll finish up our quilted and thread paint embellished book cover by adding binding to the edge. Finish up your quilting tonight so you can finish your book cover with me tomorrow.

Let me know if how to quilt a thread painted surface was not as hard as you might have thought…