More thread painting

on the red maple leaf quilt. 

At present I'm working on quilting down the dark portions of the background.  I started with black thread (Omni by Superior) in the darkest areas.  I started with tiny pebbles but branched out into a near scribble quilting.

After using the black I turned to a very dark forest green.  This was the first time I tried using #12 perle cotton (Valdani)  in my HQ Sweet Sixteen.  It worked very well with Omni in the bobbin.  



 Since some of the areas were graded from very dark to just dark, I overlapped the quilting in black and dark green.  The overlap allowed a smooth gradation in the quilting.
In the photo below you can see the difference in weight between the Omni 40 wt thread and the #12 perle. (Perle above, Omni below)





After working with the dark green perle, I switched to a slightly lighter green in Metler silk finished cotton 40 wt.  Again I overlapped some of the previous quilting.



I know that in the pictures it may be hard to tell all the different colors of the thread.  Such subtle color variations are what give the thread painting an almost photographic quality.

For the background, I am "quilting the snot out of it."  The purpose is to mash down the background areas so that the leaves stand out, physically.  That way the quilt takes on the look of relief, which makes the design more realistic.  The technique takes extra time but the results are worth it.

More of this quilt in the next post.

BJ  Queen of Remnants








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