Is it September?

Then it is thread tension month!

Every month is thread tension month in the life of a fiber artist.  Raise your hand if have you been happily sewing along only to catch sight of the back and the gappy, loopy stitching?    Raise your other hand if you have sewn a straight line and you look at it and it looks like it has slightly gathered.  Raise your leg if you have seen lots of the bobbin thread on the top of your quilt.  OK now touch your hands to your toes and squeeze your stomach muscles.

Welcome to quiltercize!

Rosemary gave a presentation on thread tension last meeting.  How you know it is right and how to fix it if it is not.  In the hot pink writing is a short video on how machines make a stitch.  It should help you understand how a stitch is made by the machine.  Knowing how the stitch is made should help you figure out what the problem is when you encounter tension problems.

Meeting Minutes (Thank you Cindy Oxley) can be found here Meeting Minutes

During August's meeting Carroll Lee brought in a few pieces to demo trapunto. "Pele's River" which appeared on page 32 of Quilting Arts Mag in their June/July 20191 issue.  How do I know you ask?  I stumbled onto it while on vacation. "Hey I know her!!"

One more thing before we show and tell.  I forgot to mention last month that Rosemary has issued a pillow challenge. Due date undetermined.  I am setting mine for the first of the year because if I don't, it will be done... never.  You can do whatever you want to the pillow and you can make it whatever size suits your fancy.  


OK Show and Tell!  I know the layout for the photos seems odd, but Blogger is fighting me and I will not win.😡 

 Annette Williamson's Needlepoint

                 Janey Argyle Embroidery on a quilt

Sue Swinyard did some fabric painting and used some of it to make a gorgeous pillow

  

Cindy Oxley did some rust dying and according to Rosemary... "some sort of hooking!"  Haha.  Laughed so hard when I read that.

Chris Baker did some embroidery

                and an octopus button art

Nickie Heying did some more ice dying.

And finally Carroll Lee Stolz brought in a nicely quilted framed red work piece.

She will text me later to tell me what these next two are.  Until then, there will be a guessing/remembering game.  If you know or have a guess as to what she did here, leave it in the comments.  There may be a prize for you at October's meeting if you guess correctishly!

OK that's it!  Not sure what we have planned for October's meeting, but you know it will be fun and interesting!  See you then!

August Meeting - All Things Trapunto

Sue Gilgen's Aspen Red

In this month's meeting we discussed the use and various methods of trapunto.

What is trapunto and why employ this technique in our art quilts?  Trapunto is essentially the clever use of batting either on top or below the top layer of your fiber art project to create dimension and/or design to your piece. Sue, Nickie and Carroll Lee were our presenters of this technique and they brought in their own work as examples.  Above is one of Sue's using regular trapunto (where you stitch extra batting behind the quilt top to enhance items on the front of the piece.  Here she did the trees and cut away all the batting not behind the trees.  Makes it really pop off her piece.  Here is another example of that method:

Geta Grama

Nickie brought in several pieces showing shadow trapunto.  None of us took a picture.  That is how it goes sometimes.  So I snagged some of the net.   This is where you sandwich batting between organza, sew, cut away the batting leaving the organza top, add background and quilt (shadow trapunto).  I think Nickie may have done it slightly differently.  If she did, she can add a comment and I will correct it.  Nickie also dyed the batting in some pieces and used it to great effect in reverse applique.

Geta Grama - click to go to her site

 You can also do trapunto with raw edge applique.  Here is an example.

Getasquiltingstudio.com

There are tutorials for all three methods at the bottom of the post. 


More examples from our artists plus a bit of show and tell:

Sue

close up

Nickie - Trapunto plus dying

Nickie - resident rogue rust artist

Nickie experiments in rust.

Side note: if you see fabric on a manhole cover around town you know who has been there.  Drive around it.😄

Our ladies also made creative use of their dyed fabrics.  Here is a fine example by Melanie Wilson:

Darling blouse from dyed fabric class

 Hope Jan brings her quilt top in after she has quilted it.  Gorgeous.

Jan Kalian

Next month Rosemary is going to be discussing thread tension.  Looking forward to seeing you there.  Bring what you have been working on.  Meanwhile, happy creating!

Trapunto tutorials:
Applique and Trapunto - Geta Grama
Trapunto and Shadow Trapunto - Geta Grama