Greetings Aurifil family – as Master Educator and Aurifilosophy Program Coordinator, I’m excited to host fellow Aurifilosopher Krista Hennebury @poppyprint for the September Thread Matters. Krista is a wonderfully skilled, award winning quilter from British Columbia that joined our thread education team in 2020. Her traditionally inspired modern quilting aesthetic is fresh and fun! We know you’ll love Krista’s informed and welcoming teaching style. In today’s post Krista shares insights on choosing thread weight and colors in support of a very uniquely designed quilt top. Thanks so much for sharing your creativity and tips with us Krista!
Is your shop, group or guild looking for insightful, inspiring and educational information on thread? Consider booking a virtual or in-person program with one of our skilled Aurifilosophers. Learn more about Aurifilosophy and find your favorite Aurifilosopher here.
Happy Stitching!
Karen L. Miller ~ Redbird Quilt Co.
This summer, I decided to prepare an applique project that I could work on while sitting outside on our covered deck. For a couple of years now, I’ve been making simple garments for myself using indie patterns. Many of the fabrics I’ve used are quite lovely and I’ve saved the leftover pieces separately from my quilting scraps in the hopes that one day I’d be inspired to use them in a special project. In the process of sharing this project online, I learned a new word for these leftovers. Carbage is defined as the shreds and patches of cloth cut off by a tailor when cutting out clothes.
One of the garments that I made was the simple Array top designed by Sonja Phillip. I did some intentionally placed stitch resist and indigo dyeing of a yard of white linen especially for this shirt project. I planned ahead and used Aurifil 2021 12wt to tie my resist pattern, hoping to save the indigo-dyed thread to use for stitching one day.
Using the two leftover pieces of indigo dyed linen plus one yard of natural linen for the background I got to work creating the Positives and Negatives of Garment Sewing quilt. I really like this dual-purpose name for the work as the leftover negative pieces now become the positive space of this composition and the background becomes the negative space. Riffing on the theme, my plan was to quilt this project with cursive words taken from several of my Instagram posts where I discuss my feelings (both positive and negative) on the garments I’ve made, the hacks or adjustments required and how the clothes made me feel.
I thread-basted the large indigo pieces to the background linen fabric, marked a ¼” seam allowance with a white wax pen and set to work completing the needle turn applique. Luckily, I had the perfect Aurifil 80wt in my stash! Color 2783 from Carolyn Friedlander’s Applique Favorites collection [Appliqué Favorites by Carolyn Friedlander – Shop Aurifil – Official] perfectly matched my indigo dyed fabric. I used Richard Hemming & Son Milliners size 10 needles and conditioned my thread with Sew Fine thread gloss.
I always recommend Aurifil 80wt for needle turn applique. I am not an applique specialist, so I rely on this incredibly fine and strong thread to hide my stitches in the weave of the applique fabric. It truly is like magic! Tips that I’ve picked up along the way that are very helpful when working with 80wt are to:
- Cut fairly short lengths (say, a forearm’s worth)
- Condition your thread
- Rather than leave a long tail when sewing, tie a single knot of short tail to the eye of your needle. This will prevent your needle from coming unthreaded while you work.
I prepared my piece for quilting by marking 1” horizontal lines with a hera marker. Then I had to decide on what color and weight of thread to use for the quilting. All along, I thought I would use 50wt Aurifil in color 4655, which is a variegated white to navy. I put color 2314 50wt in my bobbin to both match the natural linen and show up as a neutral on my quilt back. Using a small placemat sized piece of leftover linen, I made a quilt sandwich to practice my cursive free motion quilting and see how the thread variegation would look on the quilt.
I really liked the diagonal flow of color pooling that emerged in the test and I was also pleased with my choice of thread weight. Normally, I like a bold quilting thread, so I mostly quilt with Aurifil 40wt. With cursive writing, there are many places where the thread is overstitched on itself (like when making the circle shapes in letters a, o, b, d or crossing letter t’s…etc) and I wanted to avoid a thick build-up of thread, but also make sure the 50wt stood out enough to be legible. I decided that in this case, the weight was perfect, but the variegation coloring was sort of distracting from the text.
I decided to switch gears and audition some blue 50wt options: to do this, I often just swirl some thread across my quilts to see how it shows on the fabric. From top to bottom, I tried colors 2784, 1158, 2720. I decided the darkest navy would contrast too starkly on the background and completely disappear on the indigo, while the lightest color 2720 would do the opposite. In the end, I chose 1158 which is a lovely steel blue color. I would never have selected this color from my stash for this project had I not auditioned the threads.
Here is a detail shot of part of the completed quilt. I’m very happy with my thread color and weight choice. The 50wt thread quilted perfectly through my Juki with an 80/12 topstitch needle. Now, remember that tie-dyed 12wt thread that I saved after untying my stitch resist? I’m using it to dot all of my i’s with French knots! It’s taking forever!
I hope that this has explained my decision-making process when it came to thread choices for applique, quilting and embroidery on this project. I’m very excited about this quilt and look forward to completing it soon with a facing and sleeve. Thanks for reading all about my Positives and Negatives of Garment Sewing quilt.
ABOUT KRISTA
Krista Hennebury is a geologist by training and quilter by choice. She’s been quilting since 2000 in her home studio, currently located on Bowen Island, B.C. A semi-retired blogger, Krista mostly shares her work on Instagram @poppyprint now. She describes her work as traditionally-informed modern quilting and these days mostly sews with solids, linen and retired clothing. Krista published a book of retreat-inspired projects called Make It, Take It in 2015. She’s taught coast to coast in Canada and internationally, had 15 quilts juried into QuiltCon and Quilt Canada since 2014 and been featured in several books and magazines. Krista has sewn with Aurifil thread for 20 years and loves educating quilters in workshops and lectures as a certified Aurifilosopher.
Thoroughly enjoyed this post – both the project itself as well as the thread choices. Thank for sharing!
Most interesting post. Thanks to @aquilterstable for flagging it up on her newsletter!