Last week, I took a class on Thread Painting, taught by Carolyn Tabarini and sponsored by our local guild. She was our guest speaker at the morning meeting with an impressive trunk show of her work. These two pieces have light threads on black backgrounds, all free motion machine stitching.

A thread painted dragonfly was stitched over a background of thread painted fabric. The background is done in pastels to provide texture.

This flower is thread painted on pieced log cabin block.

Examining it closer, the color blending is apparent.

Thread coverage is denser in some areas and lighter in others allowing the print to show through.

The stamens are very densely stitched. Some of the green leaf areas are done in variegated threads.

Variegated threads were used on this tree as well. Simple circles overlap to give an impression of leaves. Note the color blending in the trunk.

This one had freehand stitching in black thread on a log cabin block.

I really liked this feather, with its bands of color, and rays in various colors overlapping.

A close up view shows how even the coverage is.

These leaves are made two layers of water soluable stabilizer with thread snippets from her machine between. She collects her threads in a jar and saves them. She then does a thread painted veining in black. Washing away the stabilizer, what is left is a translucent leaf. The edges can be left raw or trimmed.

This coral and fish were done the same way, then trimmed and mounted on the peach background for a three dimensional art piece. Both were done using the same technique as the leaves above.

Find Carolyn Tabarini on her Facebook page. She doesn’t have a book or patterns, but she is available for teaching classes for your local quilt shop or guild.

The afternoon of the guild meeting was a half-day workshop on beginning thread painting. I have experimented with this technique on my own, but just didn’t get the hang of it. Carolyn went over a lot of basics, covering stabilizers and threads, tension settings and more. Then, we were off. I began with some circles which are harder than they look! Then, I did some curlicues with backtracking.

Carolyn did a demonstration of using a zigzag stitch with moving the fabric side to side to show how the stitching became more prominent. A bit of practice using that technique with color blending on tree trunk was next. By now I was getting the hang of balancing the movement of the fabric and the speed of the machine.

The next day was the full day class. We went back over some basics, did a bit more practice, then were asked to chose a shape. I picked this hummingbird, and drew the shape from a template onto a piece of cream color fabric.

The outline of the bird and the feathers were done in black and a straight stitch. Then, I began to fill the back of the bird with a variegated thread using the zigzag technique.

I did some color blending on the beak, with the darker at the tip and some gold at the base. Next was to change colors over to red.

That is as far as I got during the class on the bird. Towards the end of the class, she demonstrated the leaf technique that used her thread snips, and showed us a final technique of trapunto with free motion stitching to outline and create definition in floral shapes. We got to try that too, but I didn’t get a photo of it. Overall, the class was very informative, and gave all of us the basics to do some creations on our own. It does take practice, though!

Have you ever tried thread painting?