Kaleidoscope Quilt finished

[anniemueller]

A truly lovely quilting job and I love your colours!

I'm interested in learning more about choosing thread colours. Some of yours look metallic? Would you mind sharing which Glide colours you used and your thought process on your choices?

Still learning, Anne

 

 

Hi Anne-

 

The glides I used were rust, teal, light olive, bronze, and mulberry.  I used glide for the feathers and any of the quilting that I wanted to show.  I switched to invisifil for the quilting that was for texture, mostly straight lines and pebbling for fillers.  With pebbling, I do a lot of backtracking and don't want that thread to build up and show, so that's why I choose invisifil.  It's 100 weight, very fine, blends in nicely.

 

When I first started quilting, I did a lot of practice stitching on scraps from the quilts that I made, so I could really see what the threads look like.  I still do that when in doubt.  For instance, on this quilt, I "auditioned" a lot of color combinations for the outer border before I decided on the trio of rust, bronze and light olive.  By audition, I mean that I stitched a feather motif on a scrap of the cream outer border fabric.  I recently threw that scrap out, it had at least 20 different combinations.  I knew from quilting the small border on the cream fabric, that the colors were going to show and really change the look of the outer border.  

 

I let the fabrics guide me as far as using the colors.  I only used mulberry in the small cream border next to the floral fabric that has mulberry in it.  I love that color and would love to have used it more, but it would have jumped out if it was too far away from that one fabric.  

 

I didn't want to stitch around the skinny feathers in the Jinny Beyer fabric, that's got the black background with green and red plumes printed on it.  It's the butts and wedgies of the design (really, those are Ricky Tims terms, not mine.  I'd call them setting triangles, but they aren't really triangles, are they). I wanted to emphasize the flourishing design that the plumes made in the fabric, and ended up using black invisifil to stitch around those stinkin plumes.  The good thing about doing that was it taught me how make skinny feathers.  And I incorporated them into the outer border.

 

No metallic threads were used here.  I do see now that I didn't have my tension tight enough when I started, so there are some loose stitches in the center.  That may be what you are seeing. 

 

[Ruthy67]

Very nice use of Patsy Thompson's feathers.  I have her DVDs also.  Great job.  The whole quilt is beautifully quilted.

[Busy Quilting]

I love it.

[LibbyG]

I'm going to have to get my Patsy Thompson DVD out and look at it again, because your work is gorgeous.

[mamu]

I don't know how you managed to come up with all of those different design elements and threads to go with them!  I love all of the colored threads, texture and designs.... one of my fav's for sure 

[mestuart]

awsome quilt,  love everything about it.

[anniemueller]

To all you Patsy Thompson fans out there.....I just discovered that she has a class on Craftsy.  I downloaded and watched the first lesson today.  Fantastic!

[connieb]

Wow,  It's beautiful.  What a lot of work you have in that one.  Love it

[whitepinesquilter]

Absolutely beautiful! And thank you for sharing your thought processes in choosing your threads.  I now understand the use of the 100 wt invisifil much better and look forward to getting some and trying it out.   Just pure beauty, thanks for sharing!

[RoseCity Quilter]

Fabulous!