Another Kantha Stitching

Do you remember this little piece that I made a few years ago?

I decided to try to make another one, a bit larger. For both of them I made a quilt sandwich and then quilted a grid on it. Some of the design elements go through the grid, but most designs are kept inside of the grid.

When I looked at this older one from a distance, I could see that the lighter lines provided some kind of design element. So I decided to do that more purposefully on the new piece. I filled in all the lighter lines first, and then put in the brighter, darker designs. Finally, I got out my darker thread to fill in the backgrounds.

Its funny, with most anything I do, there comes a time when I am bored with it. I usually don’t put it away, but I just won’t pick it up and stitch on it for quite a while. And then one day, I pick it up again, and just keep stitching until it is finished.

To finish it, I cut one edge off at a time at about 1/4 inch, and satin stitched it with #5 perle cotton thread. (I cut one edge at a time because I didn’t want it to get frayed as I worked.)

Here is the new piece:

And some close-ups:

Here is a picture of the back of the piece. I hope you can see the grid that I quilted before starting the embroidery. This piece is about 14″ X 11.” The grid is just a series of squares and rectangles.

This is a fun project. I recommend trying it. It is already quilted by the grid. So the running stitches just go through the top and the batting for the most part.

Me and Kantha Stitching

A nice commenter asked a couple of good questions about my “kantha stitching.” Traditional kantha was done in India by using old saris, and other thin cloth, and using the simple running stitch in a variety of patterns to stitch the layers together. ( Anna Hergert has written an excellent article about kantha here.) Although I have the “big book” of Kantha now, my original inspiration was not antique kantha embroidery. The beautiful work of Marianne Burr was my original inspiration, and her work was originally inspired, I believe, by kantha. But her work has gone on beyond kantha, with her painting on silk, and her beautiful thread and color work.

The way I stitched the background of this quilt is similar to traditional kantha.

So the way I do my kantha-style quilting and embroidery is this: I either piece together a top, or use a single piece and put together a quilt sandwich. The reason I do this is because the sandwich acts as a stabilizer for the embroidery. I have never ever liked using a hoop or a frame in any fiber craft. With the three layers of the quilt sandwich, I can stitch away and not have any distortion from the embroidery.

I have added french knots and lazy daisy stitches to the traditional running stitch of kantha.

Sometimes I embroider through all three layers of the sandwich. This is usually around the outside edge of a motif (like a circle,)when I want to emphasize a shape, or to actually act as the quilting. But most of the stitches, especially the simple running stitches, are done only through the top and the batting. The reason for this is simply ease of work. Its much more enjoyable to stitch through one and a half layers than through all three layers.

I also use blanket stitch to raw-edge appliqué motifs to a top.

My batting of choice is Quilter’s Dream Request Loft Batting. I started using this particular batting after a quilt teacher, Judy Danes, recommended it. That is where I learned to put my quilt sandwich together simply by steaming the layers together.  After I started the kantha embroidery, I tried various batts, but this same batt seems to work the best. It is easy to stitch through, and it does not generally “beard,” (where the batting will come through the needle holes to the surface of the quilt.) This is the thinnest of the Quilter’s Dream batts. I love the light weight of it, and the way it hangs.

I hope this is helpful. Just make yourself a little quilt sandwich and begin to play!

 

A Tapestry turned into a Quilt

Last fall, when I went to New Mexico to learn tapestry weaving, I drew a very complex pattern. Then when I got home, I decided that I had enough hobbies, and decided not to follow up on the tapestry weaving. But I kept looking at that picture that I had drawn, and decided that it would make a great quilt.

So I ordered almost all of Jennifer Sampou’s sky fabric, and turned it into this quilt. After I did all the circles, I decided that I would put outlines of leaves in the square spaces. Here is the quilt:

And here are a few close-ups:

This was a fun quilt to work on. I decided that I would kantha stitch all the backgrounds, using thread that was similar to the color of the fabric.

Two Finished Quilts

Here is a quilt that I worked on for a very long time. It is basically one piece of fabric with a large pattern. I decided to use the kantha stitching for the motifs, and then use cross stitch to fill in the blank spaces.

Close-ups:

And here is the finished wool appliqué quilt that I worked on during the Covid 19.

All the little pink squares are cut out of the big print around the border. On purpose I did not quilt it heavily. I did that on one quilt and it wasn’t that pleasant to sleep under. I will look forward to sleeping under this quilt next winter!

Close-ups. I made this daffodil myself.

Two More Finishes

Do you remember the series that I did about God’s characteristics that man could also try to emulate? (Gentle and Humble, Loving, etc?) Anyway, I made another quilt with just God’s characteristics on it.

And a close-up of the embroidery:

And then one day I was bored, and I remembered that I had this picture of a bird on my computer, and decided to embroider it.

Right now I am working on a large quilt that has very large flowers, etc. on it. I am doing kantha stitching and some cross-stitch in the background colors. Its going to take forever! And I am knitting 🙂

A New Art Form?

Recently I took a trip to New Mexico to take tapestry weaving lessons. I found this woman on the internet a few years ago and loved her work. So I decided that I would go to learn how to do tapestry weaving. She teaches one on one.

Okay, I’m not going to lie about it. It was HARD!! This little sampler looks so simple, but on the diagonals, I had to have the teacher check me on EVERY line. I’m still thinking about whether or not I want to continue. On the same trip, my brother and sister-in-law came over from the Texas panhandle, and we had a few days of fun just exploring the town and visiting.

Today I just finished another rug “The Parable of the Lost Sheep.” I am enjoying doing these small rugs. I have four parables and about 10 of Jesus’ ministry. So far I’ve done three. There are a few things I want to fix on the rug (the hat on the shepherd’s head is too similar to the background color.) And of course it needs to be steamed and finished.

I looked up Sycamore-Fig trees on the internet (that’s what they are called in the Bible) and found some interesting trees to put in my rug. Interestingly, the figs on these trees are golden and grow everywhere–right out of the trunks. But the golden color did not work because it was too similar to the background color, so I made them American purple figs 🙂

And I don’t think I showed this yet. I finished this small quilted embroidery. It was very fun to do. And time consuming.

And one last thing. I entered three rugs into Quilting in the Garden, and I was very pleased with where my big PEACE rug was placed. My little Kantha quilt was in the front but the wind was whipping the quilts around so much I didn’t even try to get a picture of it.

Something New

I spent a little time on Pinterest exploring Kantha Embroidery. I saw several things that were interesting. I saw some raw edge simple kantha embroidery that interested me. It looked like the strips had been torn. I didn’t want to do that, because when you tear cotton, it can get really distorted. Talking with my BF, she suggested cutting the strips and then washing them. So that’s what I did. I free-cut a lot of strips of mostly neutral fabrics. And then I put them in lingerie bags and washed them. I was surprised at how frayed they got even in the lingerie bags! Then I prepared a quilt sandwich with muslin on both sides and a cotton batting in the middle. I hand basted it, and then started. And here is the finished product. It was very fun to do.

When I looked back on Pinterest, I noticed that something like this was called Japanese Boro quilting…

Here’s a close-up so you can see how I did it. On each piece, I quilted all the way through on each side so it would be quilted. On the stitching in between, I just went through the top and batting.

Then I saw on Pinterest a very complex Kantha Embroidery. I kept that on my iPad for a long time. It was more complex than I really wanted to do, but it intrigued me. So finally I drew something and put that on cloth with the blue marker and started my own embroidery. I am enjoying working on this.

Here’s the blue drawing. As usual, I will add more as I go along:

And here is what I’ve done so far:

Close-up:

Also, I finished that “Parable of the Seeds” rug. It is about 24″ X 26″. This is the fastest I’ve ever finished a rug. It was simple and very fun to work on.

And here is a shot of my garden for those of you who don’t read my other blog:

Its time to clean up the studio! And organize my rug wool. Its getting out of hand!

Christmas is a Time to Finish Things!

I notice I have this pattern at Christmas. I like to finish things. So far I have knit four scarves from my handspun yarn for gifts. Not just knit them, but I blocked them too! And then I decided I had delayed finishing this Christmas quilt for too long. so I just went out there and finished the quilting. I put a binding on it, and then it needed a lot of blocking because of the embroidery in the middle. I’m not 100% sure that I accomplished what I was trying to achieve with this quilt.

If you remember, the embroidery was done with the Cottage Threads perle cotton from Australia.

Here are some close-ups:

The lettering:

Embroidered motifs:

I added a little embroidery to the trees and “rocks”:

And, I finished my Kantha blanket! The running stitches are about 1/2 inch apart. I also put two lines of turquoise thread 1/4 inch apart about every six inches, just to add some interest. The rest of the quilt was stitched with some variegated silk thread that I bought at a weaver’s convention!

Oh, and most importantly, at Christmas time I always feel pressured to try to finish my rug that I started this past February. I would like to share it FINISHED when I go to my rug hooking thing this February, but I’m afraid there is a lot that is still unfinished. I wrote “make a cow” for three or four weeks on my weekly to-do list. Somehow I get afraid of rug hooking when I don’t do it consistently. But finally, I DID make a cow :))

I also hooked the entire hillside behind her. It took several mornings to finish that.

If I don’t write again before Christmas, I hope everyone has a very merry and blessed Christmas.

 

I Can’t Help Myself

One day, (before finishing the churn dash quilt or doing that darn quilt photography) I looked at a picture on my photo board. It was a pretty quilt with large swatches of fabrics, and I had written–“be more adventurous in my quilting.” I just liked that idea of using big pieces of fabric.

And…I had an ulterior motive. I needed a new kantha blanket to work on in the evenings!

So I chose some fabrics that I loved, and I started putting this quilt together. Surprise, it only took me one day to piece these big pieces of fabric together.

I made a quilt sandwich, using Dharma Trading Company’s “harem cloth” which was a cotton gauze, and muslin for the backing.

I had bought a skein of hand dyed silk at the weaver’s convention, a similar size to #8 perle cotton. I marked lines about 6″ apart on the quilt, and kantha stitched those lines to stabilize the quilt. I don’t know if you can see it, but I decided to add two lines of perle cotton in a turquoise just for something different to do.

Of course, I have other embroidery to get back to. But when I don’t want to think any more, a kantha blanket is the perfect project to work on!

Teaching and Catching Up

I will be teaching Quilted Embroidery in a couple of places in the next few weeks. I will be teaching a 3 hour Intro to Quilted Embroidery at Oak Hills Church (scroll down for Art Immersion Week) on Thursday July 26. And I will be teaching a 6 hour class at The Cotton Patch on Saturday August 4, also on Quilted Embroidery.

I got an email from one of my students in a previous class. I am always thrilled to see that some students enjoyed the class and finish their project! Jackie got creative and added a small panel to the bottom of her piece so it would fit in her wire frame. I love it!

Jackie’s work:

And catching up on what I’ve been working on–I finished this kantha blanket. I used all 12 gauge perle cotton (and a few Sulky blendables in 12 weight) to embroider this blanket.

I went to Convergence (Spinners and Weavers Guild) in Reno last weekend. I can’t stop spinning some of the fiber I got there!

And finally, sometimes things don’t work out quite the way you want them to. This is the word PEACE on my big PEACE quilt. Those letters are about 8-10 inches high. It took a long time to embroider the uprights on each letter. But because I used white thread on white fabric to outline the letters, it is basically unreadable. I will use the ecru thread to outline stitch along the white thread. I do mean for the writing on this quilt to be subtle. But I still want it to be readable 🙂

There are 12 verses scattered around this quilt, all about PEACE. I have started the quilting, and hope to finish it in the next month or so.

More is happening here in the woods, but that will have to wait for another post!