If you remember the beautiful hand dyed fabric that I ended up with last week after my fun dye-day, for a few days they lay on my worktable taunting me until I finally gave in and decided to work with them.
Here is what’s happening so far:
I took one of the fat quarters with mostly purple color, cut it in half and made a quilt sandwich with some cotton batting in between. I added some free motion quilting for background texture, and then cut some lime green/yellow squares and frayed the edges and pinned in place.
I then cut out a simple flower shape and fused it to the green/yellow square.
I began by adding some free motion embroidery – doodling mostly – and because the stitching is so tiny, I used a hand embroidery hoop to help guide the stitching as well as a spring needle for better visibility.
Sidenote: My favorite hoop is a 7″ hand embroidery spring hoop. It’s very easy to use and the spring insert holds fabric as well as thin quilts, nice and tautly in place. Plus it’s easy to reposition as you’re stitching.
Sidenote: A spring needle is simply a needle with a special wrap-around spring, and a small stopper on the bottom. You use it without a machine foot, and with a hand embroidery hoop and it gives great visibility when you’re working small. You can sometimes find them in your local quilt store, or search online for “spring needle”. They are inexpensive but when the needle dulls, you simply swap it out and refit the spring contraption around the new needle.
More free motion embroidery to fill in the design.
Along the way I added a few simple shapes to represent a stalk and stems for the flowers, and added some simple machine embroidery designs to fill in the space. I’m really liking it so far and think the design would look great on a much larger quilt. I think I’ll add a little more machine embroidery to finish this piece and maybe even make a few more similar size panels using the rest of the fat quarters. I’ll post the finished piece when I’m done.
I'm Linda Matthews and welcome to my website. My current passion is creating digital collage and then printing my artwork onto fabric. You'll find lots of information here about printing on fabric as well as other textile and art quilting techniques. Enjoy!
Newsletter Signup 
Looking at the first pictures I would never imagine you would get such a wonderful result.
wow, the end result is incredible! You are great with the machine embroidery techniques. This is a good example of how an art piece develops as you go, thanks for sharing it.
Chris Predd
How very inspiring!!!! I just love the embroidery – the overall design. MMMMM… my creative juices have gotten a boost. Thank you
I really like what you did, I would probably bind or face the edges, just because I am a bit annul:-) I will be taking a dye class next month and this has inspired me. Thanks
Thanks ladies. I’ve done a little more work on it today and it’s “evolving”. My very favorite technique of course is free motion quilting and embroidery. And sorry Joan, no bound edges on this one – wait till you see what the edges will be like! I’ll probably post an update next week sometime.
This has turned out really nice,Linda. Love the machine design. Is that stitching on the stem? Or drawing?
OMG, that’s stitching….you stoppped on each one of those little curls! I’m in awe.
Kathy, that’s continuous line stitching. I stitched the curl; backstitched over the top and then stitched the next curl. The “spring needle” gives you very good visibility when working with this type of small intricate stitching.
Kathy, everything is stitched. The thread makes all the difference; for that particular section I used Oliver twist hand dyed cotton variegated thread – just beautiful to work with.
The process for the finished piece will on the blog tomorrow.