Battle Plan

Cathy commented on my last post about my "battle plan."  Unfortunately, I had been been battling with emotions rather than plans.  Struggling with testers. Figuring out how to do it.  Jayne Bentley Gaskins responded to my email about the thread painting problem even though she was busy setting up a second home in VA.  She kindly shared her expertise and encouraged me to stay with it and try to use the bird that is already thread painted.  So I sat down and did some more testing.  I am going to go for it.  I am so glad to have my decision made.  After two weeks of waffling I am ready to move forward with a true battle plan.

TIP:  When you have a fail and want to move on it helps to walk away for awhile, do something else and let the ideas percolate.  In time it all settles into place and your brain adapts to new possibilities.  Mistakes often evolve into new techniques.

TIP:  Don't be afraid to contact other quilters even if they are well-known and published.  If they don't answer, no loss, but quilters are some of the nicest people with whom I have ever associated.  In my experience they are kind and willing to share.

I have begun the tedious job of drawing the background design on a new piece of fabric.  I say tedious, because it involves drawing precise lines with Micron pens, which are very permanent.  These lines must be measured as exactly as I can manage so I spent two-plus hours working very carefully. Measure twice, check it out, measure again, say a prayer, and draw the line.  I made two slight errors:  one will be painted over and I hope the bird will cover the other.  If not, I will figure out something on the fly, an extra feather or something.  There is a lot more to do, but the areas with the 1/2 inch grid are finished > sigh of relief.  Fatigue reared its ugly head so it was time to quit for the day.

Grid with freezer paper to guide the extent of design so I don't waste
my Inktense pencils.

What did I do differently and better?  I planned out the lines of the background design better.  I will no longer have the bird eating a golf ball.

From the trashed quilt.

I will no longer have a black line of pieced fabric lining up with a black line of background.  I thought that looked a little funny, but I couldn't do anything about it first time around and was just glad I could line them up exactly rather than slightly off.  Now I don't have to worry about that as the point will be in a section of grid rather than on the edge.

From the trashed quilt.

I painted the crosswise, dividing lines with Inktense pencils and got a deeper, more vibrant color this time.  I masked each line with masking tape and was able to pencil harder and darker because I didn't have to worry about going out of the lines.  I used a popsicle stick to rub the tape down tight so no color could escape.  Same thing when I applied the fabric medium over the pencil.  Much easier.  I don't know if it saved time or not, but I am pleased with the results.  Compare the painted black lines in the above photo with the new ones below.

Lines done and masking tape in place for the next one.

I have a lot more painting to do while the bird just relaxes behind my sewing machine waiting for its resurrection.  Actually, it kind of looks dead doesn't it?  Spooky!  Just wait....

Sew a happy seam this week.

Learning Curve Continues

Learning thread painting is throwing me some curves.  It is not the stitching that is the challenge, but rather the planning and not knowing precisely what awaits beyond the next corner.  Last week you read about the things I was learning from my tester piece.  See "Looking Ahead, Stuck Behind"  Now I will write about some other things that have popped up.

Here is the very messed up tester.  Be aware that some experimentation remains as I do not have any thread yet.  With two quilts to block and bind, my pretty bird sits grounded for a short time.   You can refer to this photo as you read the rest of my ramblings.

Phoenix Tester

Layering

Layering the fabric properly on this project is counterintuitive.  It is best to lay down the light colored fabrics first and place dark fabrics over them to avoid a shadow under the light fabric, but the dark feathers on my bird look like they should be behind the lighter fabrics.   This scrambles my brain!  In order to counteract reality I need to paint some shadows onto my fabric to make the darker fabric, which is on top, recede into the back.  Thread painting with darker thread in the shadows will add to the effect, but I didn't have any appropriate thread to play with.  I tried black, but it is way too harsh.  No surprise there.  Outline stitching appropriately laid down may help too.

Fabric Paint

*Tsukineko Ink.  I didn't try this because it comes on pretty strong and I have a limited number of colors.
*Copic Pen.  This bled onto the lighter fabric and didn't show up enough on the darker one.  I also have a limited number of colors.
*Inktense Pencil. I put a little fabric medium on a brush, picked up color from the end of the pencil, and scrubbed it into the fabric with a small brush.  I have 36 colors to choose from to coordinate with my fabrics.  Voila!  This is it.

Thread choice  

Should I use cotton or polyester?  I tried both from my thread stash.  Isacord polyester is the clear winner.  I love the sheen it gives the feathers of the bird.  I will use silk for the background quilting because it buries itself in the thickness of the quilt.   I will also try some variegated threads because my research indicates that they provide additional interest.  I ruled out rayon because it is not as sturdy as the polyester.

Quilting (doesn't appear to show up very well on the tester photo) 

Normally I don't worry much about my quilting ahead of time although it does bang around in my head as I work.  However, on this project I have thought a lot about how to quilt the painted background so I tried some of my ideas.  When I looked at the results I realized that there was way too much interest and texture.  The problem is that the bird will be very flat after all the thread painting and I don't want the background to cause visual interference.  My new decision is to do McTavishing with champagne-color, silk thread.  This will tame the beast and still look really nice, maybe a little like smoke from the fire below the bird.  It will allow the bird to fly.

Markers

I am painting the background first and wanted to see how the purple air marker and the blue water soluble markers work with the Intense pencils.  I colored with the pencils and fabric medium, heat set the color and marked with both kinds of markers.  No problem.  They disappeared as advertised.

Next, I laid down the blue marker and then colored over it with Inktense pencil and medium.  Wow, the blue marker disappeared.  The fabric medium is water soluble so that makes sense.  The next morning all had dried and the blue marker line was still gone.  I decided to see what happened when I heat set.  Oops!  The blue marker returned as a ghost line.

I used a Lumocolor permanent marker by Staedtler for the red triangular lines.  When I sprayed water on the blue marker lines (see above) they disappeared, but the red lines ran all over the place where they got wet.  How fortunate that I found this out now!  I then tried out a red Micron pen and it worked fine.  I soaked it with water and no bleeding.

I want the painted background to stop just barely under the bird and that is why the concern about markers.  I ended up marking the fabric 1/8 inch inside the borders of the bird lightly with regular pencil.  Those lines will ultimately be covered up by the bird.  Problem solved.  I hope I can see the pencil lines when the time comes, but if not, I will use a light box and the full-size pattern as a guide.

Enjoy your sewing this week.