Thread Painting New Work

I've been working on this new piece for several months. I've been way-laid several times by things I've either wanted or needed to do. This week I've finally had time to work on it again.

After talking with my friend Diana Pickens, who is a wonderful quilter, I decided that the piece would best be served by thread-painting the piece and then quilting with a mono filament thread.

The main reason to thread-paint and then quilt is the face that appears in the piece. The face has four layers of fabric as well as three layers of Steam-A-Seam. It is very thick while the rest of the quilt is only one layer.

I wanted to quilt very small meandering stitches in the black area around the face but I didn't want to quilt the face that much. Diana recommended that I thread-paint and then quilt.

I started working today on the thread-painting/quilting, not my favorite process when making an art quilt. I consulted two more of my quilt friends because I was trying to decide if I should use the meandering stitch on the face as well as the black background. I want the face to be there but not be real obvious. We all decided that I should use the meandering stitch on the face but have the meander go in the same direction as the contours of the face.

Well, when I started on the face it kept telling me to make contour lines, so I did. I was really nervous about working on the face because I knew I could not take out any mistakes. It would have left major holes in the face. I'm OK with the way it turned out, it's my first time quilting a face. Stay tuned for the finish.