Thread Painting with Aurifil – Meet William’s Garden

I hope you have been enjoying all the great thread painting posts from my fellow Island Batik Ambassadors. There are so many great thread painting projects, I hope you check out their web sites and see all the beautiful projects being shared. It has been a great month to create and play with the wonderful threads we were given by our generous sponsor Aurifil Threads. I thought this month I would incorporate applique and thread painting together in a colorful wall hanging. Here is William’s Garden. It is 37″ x 37″.

First before I go into how I made my thread painted wall hanging I have to share with you a fun little back story. Yes that is snow, lots and lots of it. I took a little trip out to Colorado and got snowed in by a snow storm that dumped 17″ of snow where I am at. Certain parts of Colorado received more, but any way you look at it, it is a lot of snow. I was planning on posting my blog on Sunday night but was not able to, due to no internet. The snow storm started Sunday afternoon. It really snowed a lot all night long. When I woke I was completely snowed in. Literally, I was buried in lots of snow.

I had internet on Monday but the signal was so weak I could not upload my blog. Finally this afternoon I have internet. Yeah!!!!! The whole snow storm has made this trip a fun adventure. It was so pretty this morning too.

Now to get back to thread painting using the wonderful Aurifil thread I was given to make this botanical quilt.

Fabric and Thread selections

My inspiration for this thread painting project was from the Island Batik fabric collection, William’s Garden. I am a big fan of William Morris. I love the way he created his designs around nature.

These are the fabrics I used along with the corresponding Aurifil 50wt. thread colors. These are the the batiks from the collection I used for my flowers.

The leaves and grassy areas of the project were created with these batiks from the collection.

And here are the Island Batik Foundation fabrics I used for the stone wall in my William’s Garden wall handing, along with the corresponding Aurifil threads. I thread painted the fabrics with these threads to give it depth and texture, and to give it the appearance of a stone wall in the background.

I also used Island Batiks Foundations to create my dirt that the flowers were growing out from. As you can see Aurifil has a wonderful selection of threads that pair very nicely with the Island Batik fabrics.

Setting up my sewing machine

The project was thread painted using a zig-zag stitch. I have a Bernina 790 sewing machine and these were my settings. I also used a open toe #24 foot and Schmetz Super Non Stick Needles in the 70/10 size. These needles sew beautifully through the multiple layers of batting, fabric, and fusible interfacing.

The flower and leaf appliques were fused using Steam-A-Seam 2 Lite. I like this product because it allowed me to reposition the applique pieces until I had them arranged in a way I thought looked natural and where portioned in the wall hanging appropriately.

As I mentioned previously, I have a Bernina 790. I used a #24 open toe foot and a zig-zag stitch. Below are pictures of my machine settings.

I created the stone background first, sewing the various Island Batik stone-like fabrics together using the zig-zag stitch.

Once I had all the background sewn together, I started working on creating my applique flowers using the Steam-A-Seam 2 Lite product.

Laying the project together with Hobbs batting

Once all the applique flowers were on, I started thread painting the quilt. I layer the top with an Island Batik fabric on the back and I used Hobbs Fusible in the middle. Using the fusible batting kept everything nice and positioned while I did my thread painting on the piece. Not only did the Hobbs Heirloom Fusible 80/20 Cotton Batting keep it nice and flat while I thread painted, it also gave it a nice loft and drape for a wall hanging.

This is a picture part way through with my thread painting.

This is a more detail picture, you can see how the fabric is texturized with the zig-zag stitch and the Aurifil threads.

For a wall handing thread painted project it took some time and lots of thread, but I love the way it turned out. It was fun to select the colors as I went.

After hours of thread painting here is the completed wall hanging. One reminder I would like to mention, make sure each time you change the bobbin to clean and oil the bobbin case area. I also changed my needle 3 times during the making of this project. There is a lot of thread work in this 37″ x 37″ piece. Doing general oiling and cleaning kept the stitches nice and even.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this post. This was a fun project to make and I hope you give thread painting a try. Let your creativity and imagination flow and explore new ways to make a beautiful quilt, give thread painting a try with fabulous Aurifil threads!

Happy Quilting!