Playing with Beautiful Threads

This month I’ve been working on a new collection of Isacord threads. What better way to test how the colors cooperate than by quilting them together in a little decorative block?

To make this, I first played with fonts in Word, then printed it onto Freezer Paper and stitched on the marked lines. Then I began playing with different free motion quilting designs, changing designs and thread colors at the same time.

What’s funny about this block is at any given time I would step back and decide I didn’t like it. Maybe that design wasn’t the right choice, but now I don’t want to rip it or start all over again.

I’ve stepped away from it many times, given it a day or two and come back and decided I liked it just fine! I think it’s easy to get obsessive about a specific choice, but ultimately a piece like this is the sum of all the designs plus the thread, and how can it not look amazing with all those beautiful colors?

Have you ever quilted something like this with just color and texture as the design? Do you like rainbow colors or does only a few colors appeal to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day

LeahDay

Leah Day has been teaching online since 2009. She's the creator of the Free Motion Quilting Project, a blog filled with thousands of quilting tutorial videos. Leah has written several books including 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs, Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day, and Mally the Maker and the Queen in the Quilt.

5 Responses

  1. Again, amazing work by you! I like that idea, so far I have only ventured into using two different threads on my quilting but to use a black background, hm, something to think about.

  2. It is really lovely Leah! I love the way you have stylised the rainbow and used your quilting to 'colour' it in!

  3. Pat Smith says:

    I love this, thanks for sharing the tip on how you did the lettering. This is something I would definitely like to try some day.

  4. Karin says:

    Yes, just recently had the same experience when quilting with different colours which were more of the blend in type, in contrast to the white thread I mostly use. Half way through I did not like it and started to feel quite discouraged, however then completed it. Stepping back and looking at it, I thought it looked great…maybe not what I originally had imagined but it had a nice 'completed' feeling to it.
    I like your rainbow, particularly the bright blue on the bottom and I think the total picture is just right.

  5. Andrea R says:

    This is SO FUNNY because I did the same sort of thing yesterday…

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BJA8herg9xy/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *