May 2010 Lesson of the Month

Using Heavy Thread to Decorate a Garment or Quilt

If you want to decorate a garment or quilt with a thread or cord that is too heavy to go through the eye of the sewing machine needle, two easy choices are bobbin work and couching.

Bobbin Work – Hand wind your heavy thread or yarn on your machine bobbin. Do not run it through the tension control on the bobbin case. Instead let it come out of the bobbin at the large opening on the side of the bobbin case. Put a matching color of all purpose thread in the top of the sewing machine. Stitch from the back of the fabric. Sometimes an interfacing or stabilizer helps to give enough body to the fabric to stitch it without distorting or puckering it.

Couching – Another solution for heavy threads or cords is to couch them to the fabric. This means using a different thread to sew the heavy threads to the surface. You can do this by hand or by machine. Most machines have several feet that guide the cord, braid or heavy thread in place while the threads in your machine stitches it down. Check your machine feet and reference guides to see if you have one and don’t know about it. Or visit your machine dealer to find out which feet can couch heavy threads on your fabric. One of my favorite Bernina feet is the #43 foot. This is a free motion couching foot for heavy cord. For this foot, drop the feed dogs and thread the heavy cord through a hole guide on the side of the foot and then down through the center hole. Put matching thread in your machine and precede to move your fabric freely as you wish while the machine thread straight stitches through it.

Lesson of the Month

February 2010 Lesson

Visual Unity

All art forms need unity. In visual art we need visual unity: parts that look the same or similar. Repetition is one of the most common devices for achieving unity. Repeating an image, a shape, a color, or a fabric, for example, gives it more importance, creates a relationship, provides unity. We know that parts belong together if we see similarities among them. Most often, repeated elements are more interesting if they are used with some variation. The simple pieced blocks below are the same Attic Windows design. We see them as a unified whole because they are identical. They become more interesting when something in each block varies, in this case, the color

To create unity through repetition, repeat a shape, but in different sizes or colors; repeat a pattern but in different fabrics; repeat a color, but in different values, intensities or shapes.*

*This, and more about Visual Unity can be found in Design Essentials: The Quilter’s Guide by Lorraine Torrence. Click here to find this book.

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December 2009 Lesson

The way you use value placement in a garment can create flattering illusions or draw attention to your worst figure flaws. Using lighter and brighter colors in the vertical center of a garment and darker values at the sides will create a narrower focus that slims and flatters you. Or you might try putting darker values at the bottom of a garment and gradually make them lighter and right as they approach the neck and shoulder area.
If a pattern has a hip band, such as the coat and jacket views of the Lorraine Torrence Designs pattern, City Wraps, choosing a value for the hip area that is not a great contrast from the top of the garment will not create a horizontal split that draws attention to the hips. Often the same color in a differ texture or pattern will differentiate the parts without creating contrast.
If you are tall and slim, perhaps you can get away with a big, high contrast pattern in a dress, but most of us benefit from a little less drama in our clothes. Remember that attention will be drawn to places where there is high contrast. Where do you want attention drawn? …or not drawn!?!

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November Lesson

Scale: An Important Design Consideration
When making a garment or a quilt, keep in mind how visually satisfying it is to perceive a change in scale in the parts of your creation. Most of you already know how successful it is to change the scale - or size of the patterning - in the printed fabric, when you use a combination of prints in your piece. But don’t forget to include a change in the sizes of the pieces in your design. Think: big spaces, medium spaces and small spaces.
In the examples above, notice that the squares in the little design on the left are all the same size. How interesting is this design? Most of you would say, “Not very.” In the second design, I have added a border in the same fabrics, but in much smaller pieces. Is this more interesting? To most people, it is. In the example on the right, the smaller pieces have been added to the interior of the design instead of the border. This makes our little design considerably more interesting too, don’t you think?
When evaluating your work, ask yourself if the piece would benefit from different sized pieces. If that variety is missing in your work, the answer is almost always, “YES!”