I've really fallen in love with thead painting and thread lace. If you've never tried it, I dare you - I think you'll fall in love too. One of the difficulites that arises when doing either technique is the issue of shading. Some designs might need five or more colors/threads to achieve the desired effect. However, the right thread can get the job done in half the time.





The photo shown here, uses just three threads - thanks to the beautiful variety of Oliver Twist's hand dyed machine embroidery threads. If you've never tried this amazing thread, give it a go. It's produced in England by Jeanne Oliver. Each coloration is dyed with nature in mind. She looks at a leaf, a flower, a bird and recreates the colors in delicious variegated cottons. The thread is a long staple, Egyptian cotton, however because of the hand dye process it is prone to break at high speeds. It's easy, and well worth the effort to take care of this problem, by applying some Sewer's Aid or Sewer's Ease (depending on the brand name) to all but eliminate the breakage. I use this thread for machine qulting all the time - it blends beautifully with just about any color combination.







The petals of the flowers in this small piece were created using one of the Oliver Twists in a mixture of red violets. The veins of the petals were added using a soilid, coordinating thread in a light pink tone. The leaves use just one Oliver Twist color in a mixture of greens and blue greens. All are made of thread lace.







If you are unsure of what machine thread lace is, it's simply designs stiched in thread using water soluble stabilizer and a hoop. Simply draw the desired design, using a fine tip Sharpie, on heavy gauge water soluble stabilizer like Super Solvy by Sulky, or Romeo or Badgemaster. Place the stabilizer in the proper size hoop (6"- 9" depening on the size of the design) and stitch the design using free motion stitching techniques. Once the design has reached the desired effect, cut away the excess stabilizer and disolve in water according to the manufactures instructions. Applique to the surface of your design as desired.







I will be offering classes in thread painting and thread lace here at my home studio. Our class schedule will be up on the web site by the end of next week. Of course we sell Oliver Twist threads, Sulky Solvy and the the perfect, Spring Action 7" hoop for machine thread work here on our site.