Art Quilt - quilting the hair

 First let me say it is very very difficult to photograph the quilting when it matches that fabric and the quilt is still on the frame, but I've done my best. Hopefully if you click on the images you will get the idea.

As I think I mentioned in my last post about this quilt I had some problems finding the right colours of thread. After turning the house (and van) upside down I did find a few more. I found far more that were the wrong purples though. Of course all the threads I really wanted to use didn't want to play ball. Some of them I have never managed to get to run on my machine and I really should get around to either chucking them out or rehoming them before I waste more time playing with them. I did try them and I did fail.

After a lot of fiddling I did persuade masterpiece to run provided I kept the speed right down, which for me, quilting hair just wasn't going to work. I think hair is my favourite part of quilting people. It's the easiest for me so work out what I am doing and it tends to flow better than other areas of the quilt. I can also be more flexible with my thread colours as I want to blend the fabric shades more in the hair than anywhere else.

I started with the darkest thread to start getting the direction of the hair in place. The dark thread was the one happiest running at speed which made it easier for me to get the flow right.  From there I could work on the mid shades. These had to be stitched slower, which I found hard, but possible once I had the dark lines in place to keep me going in the right direction. I was also looking to secure as many of the raw edges as possible at this stage, it makes the quilting easier later.

As you can see in the firs picture as soon as I start quilting the hair it draws in the quilt. This can leave me with a lot of fabric to ease in in the background. I deal with this by doing a bit of background quilting every so often. It not only keeps everything in place and behaving but it gives me a rest too. The background is quicker more flowing quilting that I don't need to think too much about. Yes, I often do a bit of it when I get stuck on something on the main image, or indeed when the threads annoy me too much.

I build up the quilting on the hair in stages. I want it to be ver clearly hair but I can't quilt it too densely or it will distort the quilt even with the uber wadding in it. I worked on the hair until it read OK and I will come back to it when I have finished the rest of the quilting. If I think I can add a little more quilting I will. It is one area that really benefits from heavy quilting.