Last Daff

I wanted to try one more colour combination before I moved on to a new project. This daffodil is one of my favourites because the colour is so unusual. It begins a pale orange but fades to this beautiful salmon colour.


To capture the colour I used one of the new tone on tone colours from the King Tut range #908 Valley of the Kings. For the pale petals I used #214 Sandy Beach from the LAVA range. Click on the photo above for a good close up of the threads. For the thread painting I used a Topstitch 100/16 needle because the eye is twice as big. This meant that all the different threads from King Tut all the way down to Bottom Line had plenty of room to move around in the eye of the needle so I didn't have any trouble with thread breakage. I used pre-wound bobbins with Bottom Line. I'm hooked on these bobbins because they're so convenient but they also kept the flowers from getting too stiff.

Thread Painting

I had so much fun today! I started in the morning between shifts. My big kids are out of the door by 7:45 and my little guys don't need to get up til 8:05. That 's my morning breather, when I check my emails or get a second cup of tea.

Today I started doing some line drawings of my daffodils. I'm not a proper artist. I've no training but flowers aren't all that difficult, are they? And when things go wrong there's always the eraser! I began with a view from the front. Six shield shaped overlapping petals, with a circular frilly bit and six stamens in the centre.

So far so good. Now I tried some alternate views. I found these more challenging to get the perspective right. 

I enjoyed doing the still life drawing. I often use pencil and paper to draw line designs as a warm up activity before I start free motion quilting on the frame. But this morning as I drew the daffodils, it was very satisfying to get a design directly from nature.

Then after some displacement activities, like really cleaning the kitchen sink, I loaded fabric and fleece on the frame and started free motion quilting various line designs with the different threads I'd chosen for the project. I wanted to see how the various threads showed up against the fabric. All these threads look gorgeous sparkling in the sunlight, but some will show up much better than others against the fabric. I've got some great photos but as this post is getting long, I'll follow on with the rest tomorrow.