Today on Auribuzz we have Aurifil Artisan Blair Stocker of Wise Craft Handmade sharing her love of stitching with Aurifil Lana Wool thread. <3 Take it away Blair!
Hi everyone! I am Blair Stocker, of Wise Craft Handmade. So excited to be sharing what I’m working on AURibuzz today! I am located in Seattle, Washington and I am a quilt designer, author or two books, a teacher, and quilting tool designer.
Recently I got the chance to play with Bari J’s newest line for Art Gallery Fabrics, called Indigo & Aster, shipping to stores any day now. As always, it features Bari’s beautiful florals, but this line has a special print in it featuring a menagerie of her animal portraits. So cute! I’ve already sewn a few things out of this fabric, and in each one of them, I couldn’t resist featuring one of the animal portrait as the central focal point.
And because I can’t leave well enough alone, I started playing around with embellishing these cute little critters with some handwork.
Those that follow my work know how much I love handwork these days. It’s the perfect sort of work to do during the drippy, chilly Pacific Northwest Winter season. Anytime, really.
I sandwiched the pillow top with batting and backing, then did simple ditch stitching along the nine-patch seams with 50 wt Cotton Aurifil thread color #2000 (the white areas in most of these are not white white, and more of an off-white). 50 wt thread disappears perfectly into the seams. From there, using the same color thread, I did some simple curvy free motion quilting shapes in the triangles and rectangles. The pillow didn’t need much more than this, and the 50 wt again blends in perfectly and lets the fabric prints shine through.
I wanted to hand embellish the elephant portrait in the center with a little texture and added some french knots using a double strand of Aurifil’s beautiful Wool/Acrylic Blend thread. (I sewed these by hand, but this thread also works for machine stitching too!). I love this thread! I used a rosy pink #8402 and a mossy green #8950 to fill in the flowers around the cute little elephant’s head and add some surface texture to the fabric. I finished the center square by stitching a round circle of #2220 50 wt around his head to frame him up.
If you are interested in learning more about how I use Aurifil 12 wt Wool/Acrylic, join us for our free #wisecraftstitchalong in the Wise Craft Quilts Facebook group. Complete details are on the blog. Want to make this pillow? Sign up here for my newsletter and get a link to the pattern!
ABOUT BLAIR
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Blair Stocker of Wise Craft Handmade makes modern quilts and home accessories inspired by and often using vintage textiles. She has written two books, and teaches inspired creative reuse, upcycling, and quilt making both in person and online. She can be found at wisecrafthandmade.com
Very pretty!! Have a great day!!
I know I would love using this thread. It was fun to read a little about Blair, she lives in my part of the country.
I always enjoy reading about how to use Aurifil thread . Quilting, sewing, handwork.
Lovely. I hope #AuriKids can share some kid friendly projects for Lana Wool, in the future.
Great post Blair! I have a couple spools of this but have not used it in a project yet and now I am inspired 🙂
Thanks for sharing these beautiful embroideries. It was really interesting and inspiring. I’m a textile design and I love to embellish my prints with embroidery.”Jade”