Thread Play

The weather didn't stop me from driving into town for my monthly pedicure yesterday. When I went down just a few hundred feet, I found just wet pavement and rain. At our place, snow fell for a good part of the day, but we got some breaks of sunshine too. I had a few errands to run in town. By the time I got home, I was exhausted from two days out on the town and too many people. The afternoon was spent napping. 

Still, I had some time toward the end of the day to get serious about thread. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'd pulled about half a dozen spools in preparation for quilting the flamingos, but I hadn't made any clear-cut decisions yet. So I spent some time laying them out. Y'all really liked the lighter of the two variegated bobbin threads, and I had to agree it was the right choice.

There was only one pink variegated for the pink flamingo, and I still think that's the right choice. It could also be a solid pink, but with so many colors in the flamingo, I kind of like the variegated spool.

For the orange flamingo (whose body takes up a good percentage of the quilt), I wanted a nice bright orange. Variegated threads don't really work here because the variegation goes from orange to yellow...at least on the spools I have. So I'm looking at a solid orange. I think the one on the bottom is too bright and saturated, and so I like the top one better.

But then, what about this variegated? I think it's too dark.

There will be a lot of different thread colors on top. Going back and forth between purple and white, I kind of like this purple variegated for the eyes of the flamingos. Mainly, I'll just be adding some details in the eyes.

I'll use white for the background, although after taking this picture, I decided to switch out the YLI thread for a lighter-weight Aurifil.

Also, I'll be using black to add some details to the beaks. The orange flamingo also has a red tongue, and I might decide to use a matching thread there.

I haven't made any decisions about the border yet, but I might use the same variegated used in the bobbin...or maybe the orange...or maybe the white...or maybe the pink. As you can see, I'm completely undecided there, but something will come to me. I don't even know what to quilt there, but it might end up just being some zig-zaggy lines. (Zig-zaggy: technical quilting term.)

Any quilting endeavor always begins with the needs of the cat.

Some treats, if you don't mind.

From there, I grabbed a well-used practice piece and worked on setting the tension and just building some muscle memory. The flamingos will be quilted all in feathers. Feathers = birds, right?

So the top tension looks pretty good, but how does it look from the back? Not that good. I'll have to do a little more work there.

Also, I tested out a motif I'd like to use on the white background, mainly to see if I can draw it. And it looks pretty good. I'm kind of jazzed about that. It'll all be done in white for the background, but this makes me think of birds and clouds at the same time. Anything I can draw on the first try is a bonus.

So, then I gulped hard and did a small feather on a little sliver of the pink flamingo. That looks pretty good to me.

I'm still making tiny adjustments to get the tension right, but it's pretty close.

So, I'm hoping to get well along with this today. Once I get started (a big hurdle), then there's no stopping me. As with Hocuspocusville, I need to get it to machine sewing the binding, and I can do the hand-sewing on the road.

In yesterday's mail, I received the little 75-yard spool of #8 Perle cotton I ordered for the embroidery sampler. Pay no attention to the quilt in the background. It just happened to be lying there. It has no relationship to the thread whatsoever, although I heard them claiming to be cousins.

This project will be going south with us, but I wanted to be sure the thread would work, and that I had the right size needle, and so I gave it a little test on the quilt.

Well...I don't know about you, but I think that's going to be very cute. I'll probably start over with this because I'm not happy with how I knotted the beginning stitch. I'll only need about 10 yards of this thread to quilt the whole piece, and so I have plenty to work with. I'm thinking I'll bury the line of stitching right at the edge of the quilt so that the thread ends will be caught up in the binding when I sew that on. (I hope that makes sense.)

So it's a heavy quilting day. The flamingos should be well along by day's end. I missed my embroidery yesterday because I was sewing the binding on L is for Love. That's where I'm headed next. It's still snowing outside. It doesn't seem right that we're going to spring ahead in just a couple of days. The weather outside is stuck on December.