I wanted the stitching to be quite fine so I used Aurifil 50wt cotton thread in both the bobbin and needle so that I could build up detail without adding too much bulk. For the large tree in one of the sunsets I needed to use an embroidery hoop to stop the fabric distorting, but I found this wasn’t necessary for the smaller trees.

The completed thread painted tree.

I planned to use a black batik border for each design but first needed to find something suitable for an accent. Going through my stash I found a perfect batik print which picked up the light purple in the sunsets as well as some of the orange.

These are the sunsets with the borders added.

I drew out a pattern in EQ7 and then I decided I would try out the design in a small format as fabric post cards.

For the small design I had some bright green batik fabric which I’d had a while and not used because it was less tightly woven than normal batik and I’d always thought it  a bit flimsy, but it worked fine for this project. For the larger piece I used some beautiful hand dyed fabric by Heide Stoll-Weber which I’d bought at the Festival of Quilts this year. I was a little reluctant to cut into it so soon but the fabric was so perfect, with all  the subtle colour variations, I had to use it.

I assembled the ferns using a non stick pressing sheet before fusing them to the background fabric. I then used a fine satin stitch round all the edges.

Detail of the stitching and quilting

This quilt “Summer Meadow” by Jane Davies features a lovely hand dyed background with  hand stitched details.

Detail of the stitching.

Of course I am drawn towards anything featuring  jungle so I liked this quilt by Stephanie Redfern called “The Secret Jungle”

Detail of “The Secret Jungle”

This quilt  by Cherry Vernon-Harcourt was the winner of the Quilters Guild Challenge with the theme of ‘Summer in the City’.

This quilt, ‘Blackberry Jam ,Jelly and Juice’,  made by Sheena Hughs, won second prize in the Art Quilt category

And this one ‘Pay the Ferryman’ by Annette Morgan was the winner in the Art Quilts category.

This quilt made by Grietje van der Veen reminded me of the beautiful olive groves in Spain. It was featured in the European Art Quilt exhibit.

I start with a freezer paper template which I iron onto the right side of my gecko fabric. My favourite fabrics are batiks because they are tightly woven and fray less and also because of their  gorgeous colours and patterns.

freezer paper template

I draw round the template using a white fabric marker pen which disappears with heat or water or if I’m using a pale fabric I’ll use permanent fabric marker. I leave the template in place while I cut out roughly round the design. I prefer to leave it there until after I’ve cut it out because it’s easier to handle and you’re less likely to snip into the design by mistake.

I next pin the gecko in place on my background fabric, using fine or short pins. Short pins are good because the thread doesn’t get caught up on them so much.

applique shape pinned to background fabric

I use YLI silk thread and a #11 ‘sharp’ needle to hand stitch the gecko, the silk thread is so fine that it is much easier to make small and almost invisible stitches. I cut a piece of thread 16 – 18 inches long and make a knot in one end. People often want to use too long a piece of thread to avoid having to thread the needle so often, but this isn’t a good idea because the thread gets tangled and tends to shred. I trim the seams as I go along and because I am using a firmly woven fabric I can use very narrow ones without fear of them fraying. I usually trim them to less than a ¼ inch, especially around the toes of the gecko.

Getting started. The knot is buried in the seam and folded edge held in place with thumb.

To start, insert the needle from the back of the appliqué shape and bring it up on the right side at the point where you want to start sewing. It’s easiest to start on a straight edge so with my geckos I always start on the body part.

Wooden toothpick used to turn under edge

Fold over the edge of the appliqué along the seam line, my favourite tool for this is an ordinary wooden toothpick because the slightly rough edge catches the fabric and makes it much easier to turn under. Use the toothpick to smooth the turned under edge and then I use my thumb to hold it in place. I make a straight stitch into the background fabric at the point where I brought the needle out of the appliqué, and then make a very short stitch bringing the needle up through the folded edge. Continue in this way all round the edge of the appliqué shape.

 For sharp inner curves, such as where the body meets the legs, or the gecko toes, I clip right to the seam line, but on a gentle inner curve like the tail I just make small snips within the seam allowance. I never clip outside curves.

This is how the stitching looks from the wrong side.

Another finished gecko wall hanging

Just over a month ago we acquired a tiny black kitten as a companion to Millie our one year old ginger cat that my husband rescued from the side of the road last June. Our other cat Hector is sixteen years old and takes a dim view of being pounced on and generally  treated with disrespect so we felt that Millie needed someone nearer her own age to play with. My friend Karen just happened to mention on Facebook that one of her sons had just brought home another rescued kitten; I know that she doesn’t normally part with any of her rescued cats but I thought I’d ask anyway and was delighted when she said I could have the kitten if I wanted, so Molly came home.

She was very tiny when we first got her, and  a little bit weak, but it didn’t take very long at all for her to find her feet and for Millie, the ginger cat, to accept her as a playmate. Millie seems huge in comparison but nothing deters little Molly, and she seems to have incredibly long spider like legs, all the better for kicking and grabbing.

It has transformed Millie’s life and she seems to be so contented now.

She loves her fluffy mice, and this tunnel arrangement keeps them amused for hours.

It didn’t take her long to make herself at home on one of my patchwork quilts.

Or another! This is one that never got finished as I wasn’t happy with the quilting on it, but the cats don’t seem to mind the unbound edges.

Of course, it didn’t take her long to find her way into my sewing room.

The pattern drawn out in EQ6

With the pattern made, my next decision was how I was going to create the design. ? My preference would have been to do it by hand or to use invisible machine appliqué, but because I had chosen to make it quite small, 12 inches by 15 inches, some of the pieces were really tiny. It might just have been possible to do it by hand, but in the end I opted to use fusible webbing and raw edge appliqué, embellished with machine thread painting.  

making the first butterfly wing

Fabrics and threads play such an important part in a design and for this one I had a lovely piece of hand dyed fabric which I had bought from Foltvilág Patchwork Studio at The Festival of Quilts which I knew straight away would be perfect for the background.  I didn’t even buy it with this project in mind as I’m always drawn to greens as I use them in so many of my pieces but I’m so glad I did as looking through the rest of my stash I would have had a struggle to find something that was as good. For the butterfly wings and flower I used mostly commercial batiks although again for the actual base of the wing I used another hand dyed fabric from the quilt festival which had good gradations from brown to black which again were just perfect for what I wanted.

assembling the butterfly wings and flower

It took me several days to put the whole thing together and the cats didn’t help today by lounging all over my cutting table, or propping themselves up against the sewing machine.

Millie keeping an eye on things

Yesterday afternoon I finally finished assembling all the pieces of the design and then my next decision was how to embellish it. Whether to do the thread painting before I added the batting or after?  In the end I decided to do the thread painting first, with a stabilizer underneath as I am more familiar with that method. This method also has several advantages. The piece can be trimmed and squared up after the stitching and also it gives me a bit longer to think while I’m stitching, about what fabrics I’ll use for the outer borders.

The completed design ready for thread painting and embellishment

I traveled up from Southsea by train and as I arrived in Birmingham I was surprised by suddenly being surrounded by loads of women with small suitcases on wheels all heading purposefully in one direction. I guessed they were all going to the show, but what I didn’t realize at the time was that all the cases were empty, ready to be crammed with all the wonderful goodies available for sale at the show.

I arrived a little too early to check in to my hotel, so I dumped all my stuff, grabbed a bag and headed off myself. What struck me first was the size of the place and then the quality of the workmanship in the quilts and the wide variety of different styles on display. Everything from the latest techniques and materials to the most traditional, there must have been something to suit every taste. For the shoppers there was a marvelous variety of fabrics, threads, notions and everything else you could possibly wish for.

As I hadn’t been before and because I don’t normally have access to classes other than online, I wanted to take full advantage of the workshops being offered, so had signed up for two full day and one half day workshop. In retrospect, this was too much and didn’t leave me enough time to really look at all the quilts and trade stands properly. Two of the workshops I chose were on techniques and styles that are different to the way I normally work and although they were fun to do, and the teachers were good I don’t think I’d incorporate these things into future work.

 For me, the class that I got the most out of was the one conducted by the Australian teacher Pam Holland called Monet’s Garden, based on flower s she’d photographed whilst in France. Her method of working is similar to how I like to work, and the subject matter was also one that appealed to me. She introduced us to methods of creating shading and depth using thread painting and fabric pens, the pens were also used to add fine details. These are some techniques that I’d like to apply to my own quilts, and actually the pens would have come in handy for my last hornbill design that I was creating where I wanted to add some very fine palm fronds. Jan brought along a selection of her own work to inspire us including her award winning reproduction quilt and the full size copy of the Bayeux tapestry that she is currently working on. The attention to detail and workmanship in all the quilts is amazing.

The four days went all too quickly and I was very sorry when it was all over, but I left feeling inspired and keen to get to work on my own projects again and hopefully next year I’ll be able to enter something of my own. Here are a few photos from the exhibition……

The winner of the Art Quilts category

Winner of contemporary quilt category

A detail of quilt by Judy Bowker from Australia

The photoshows the work in progress on my original wall hanging with Aicha keeping a close eye on it. The sky was hand painted and I decided to do the same for my recent piece. I haven’t done any fabric painting for a while so it was fun to get my paints out again.

This was the fabric I painted for the tropical sunset sky.

My recent design was a little different from the original one as there were to be two cats on the wall, one of them a tabby. The tabby was quite a challenge as the people who wanted the quilt were going to bring me a photo but then were too busy so I had to just use my judgement and hope that I would get it right. I chose a grey subtly striped fabric and then used a fabric marker pen to draw the stripes.

The two cats on the wall, everything pinned in place and ready to stitch. I used invisible machine applique to stitch the design as I didn’t want raw edges.

The finished design, two cats beside each other on the wall, dense vegetation and the tropical Brunei sunset in the background. I used a narrow accent border of deep red print batik to create contrast with the outer dark green border and to pick up some of the colours of the sunset sky.

design with leaves added

I have done some more work on my rain forest design, adding leaves in the form of small snippets of fabric. I have just added to the trees in the background and this helps blend them in and make them look more realistic. I have also added fallen leaves in shades of brown overlapping into the lower border.  I added some machine embroidery to the leaves in the background and then the next step will be to add more undergrowth and plants.

The picture on the right shows some of the leaves and the machine embroidery.

I have taken a break from this quilt for a few days now to get on with some other projects. I belong to an Internet sewing group linked to my sewing machine and they also have a partner group for challenges which I have just joined. The challenge this month was to make a small, simple quilt and practice free motion quilting, with the resulting quilt to be donated to an animal shelter in Florida.

I thought it was a good cause and I was also keen to practice some free motion quilting on my new sewing machine so I decided to participate and raided my stash of fabrics for a plain piece to use for this quilt. I used an all over meandering design of loops and hearts from Patsy Thompson’s DVD: Free Motion Fun Volume 1.

close up of loops and hearts design

I also took this opportunity to practice sewing on the binding by machine. Normally for my art quilt wall hangings I prefer to hand sew the binding because it gives a good finish. Occasionally if I am pushed for time and it is a simple design I will machine sew the binding using invisible thread and a straight stitch on the top side, with a thread to match the binding on the reverse side. As this was to be a utilitarian quilt and withstand wash and wear I thought a machine sewn binding would be appropriate and I wanted to try out a method that I had learnt about in my quilting group. I used the same variegated cotton thread that I had used on the quilt top and a shallow zig zag stitch. It worked well and looks attractive for this sort of quilt but isn’t something I would use on an art quilt or wall hanging.

machine stitched binding