Creative Quilting with Thread Painting and Free Motion Techniques

Welcome fiber artist and quilter Karen Ponischil, owner of Karen Ponischil Design. Karen teaches thread painting and free-motion quilting at Mary Jo’s Cloth Store. To learn more about Karen, and to see examples of her work visit www.KarenPonischil.com. 

I have always loved creating with fabric and began sewing when I was a youngster. At first I made clothes for my dolls and as I gained more experience I began making my own clothes. I was given my first sewing machine for Christmas when I was twelve years old, and this began a life long love of sewing.  In 2001, I discovered art quilting which was my hobby until 2003 when I decided pursue it as a career. I create quilts using whole-cloth painting or raw edge appliqué. I then thread paint the quilt to bring it to life!

What is thread painting?

Thread is used on fabric like an artist uses pencil on paper, to add shadows, mid-tones and highlights. Thread “painting” makes an object look 3-dimensional by using different thread colors.  Below is an example of a ginkgo leaf design with and without thread painting. This is what you will learn in the introductory thread painting class that I teach at Mary Jo’s.  You can see how the stitching and threads create depth and texture to the fabric.

After mastering the basic techniques, you can take it to the next level by learning how multiple fabrics and greater detail in the advanced thread painting class where students learn to create the poppy flower design below.  Thread painting really brings the quilt to life, making it look more real and lifelike.

What is free-motion quilting?

Quilting also uses thread but the purpose is to hold 3 layers (top, batting and backing) together where thread painting is purely decorative. Quilting can be done by hand, on a domestic sewing machine or a long arm machine. Free-motion quilting is a technique where the feed dogs on the machine are set in the down position, so the quilt can be moved in any direction under the needle, and not just forward and backward.  This allows for greater creativity!

I love sharing my tricks, tips and techniques for sewing, quilting and thread painting with students.  It is such a fun and creative art that combines fabric, thread and design.  Join the fun and sign up for one of my classes today, by clicking here.

Wow! Look What I Found at Mary Jo’s

Mary Jo’s is known as a fabric mecca for quilting, home decor and apparel sewing. But if you look a little closer, you will discover a few surprises, special purpose materials and unique finds. Here are our top ten favorite specialty products that you might be surprised to find at Mary Jo’s Cloth Store.

1. Billiard Cloth, also know as “pool table fabric”, 66 inches wide, 75% wool, 25% nylon with backing.  This is a heavy, 21-ounce cloth, available in four colors. Used to cover or restore billiard tables and other game tables.

2. Automobile Headliner fabric, a foam back material most commonly used to restore car headliners but it is also a great product for lining shipping and storage cases, gun cases and drawers. Headliner fabric is also a popular material for making dolls and puppets.

3. Heat Resistant fabric is coated with aluminum and available in plain or quilted cloth. It is used for ironing boards, sewing tables, oven mitts and potholders. 
        

4. Cow hides also known as hair on hide. Full cow skins are used as area rugs or for upholstery or custom purses and bags. Each hide is unique. Some hides are natural while others are dyed or printed.

5. Silver Cloth is made specifically to prevent tarnishing of silver and silver plate items. Silver cloth is used to line chests or cabinets or sewn into jewelry pouches or bags for storing candlesticks and silver serving pieces.

6. Vinyl Mesh is a durable vinyl encased polyester material used for lawn and patio furniture, office chairs and shade structures and available in a wide range of colors. 
      

7. Cotton Art Canvas #10 a heavy cotton canvas, 60 inches wide and is stretched on frames by artists for paintings and also used for tarps, tents, upholstery, banners, theatrical backdrops and tote bags.
    

8. Clear Vinyl #30 is a heavy, rigid crystal clear vinyl used for windows in marine and tent windows, enclosures, table covers and crafts.

9. Ripstop Nylon fabric is light weight and water resistant. Used for making flags, kites, banners, windsocks, pennants, backpacks and outdoor apparel.

10. Rhinestone and crystal bandings are an elegant and glamorous embellishment for formal wear, costumes and decorative accessories. Available with plastic or metal mesh backing, rhinestone banding is a hot trend in wedding cake design.

Make Pompom Decorations with Knit Fabric

Decorate for your next party with pretty and cheerful pompoms! You can make a variety of sizes and colors to match the holiday or your event. Make an assortment of red, white and blue pompoms for patriotic holidays, pink and blue for a baby shower or white and cream colors for a wedding.

Hang pompoms outside from tree limbs to create a festive landscape; a beautiful backdrop for wedding pictures; or use pompoms indoors, hanging over buffet tables or grouped in clusters to make a simple centerpiece.

Making knit fabric pompoms is easy.  Just follow the instructions below.  We would love to see how you use pompom decorations.  Please share your photos with us on Facebook.com/MaryJosClothStore or by tagging us on Instagram at @MaryJosClothStore!

Easy knit pompoms step-by-step:

To make pompoms you will need cardboard and strips of knit fabric like t-shirt material.  We used Knits by Riley Blake in hot pink and ITY Jersey Knit in a soft blush color.

http://maryjos.com/fabrics/knit-solids-k100-70-hot-pink-riley-blake 

http://maryjos.com/fabrics/ity-jersey-knit-pink-spandex-house

1. Make a template from cardboard to the size you would like. We used a small plastic tub for the outer circle and an aerosol can for the inside circle.  Cut a small pie shaped piece from the circle. This will create a “C” shaped template. Cut two the exact same size.

2. Using scissors or a rotary cutter and mat, cut knit fabric into long strips. Cut ½-inch to 1-inch wide pieces. You do not need to worry about measuring and cutting accurately; the strips do not need to be perfect.

3. Stack the two cardboard templates together and start wrapping knit fabric strips around the template.  Wrap it with an even tension but not tight. When one piece ends, overlap and start a new piece.

4. Continue wrapping knit fabric strips around until you have at least 4 layers.

5. Place the wrapped template flat on the work surface and place the palm of one hand on top while cutting around the edges with scissors.

6. Cut one strip of fabric to use as a tie.

7. Carefully separate the cardboard pieces, slip the tie in-between and tie tightly, cinching all the fabric strips together.

8. After the pompom is tied, remove the two pieces of cardboard.

9. Fluff the fabric and trim to make an even shape.

10. Continue to make more pompoms! You can create different sizes and colors, or alternate colors when wrapping the template to make a multi-color pompom.

The Classic Little Girls Dress

Welcome Carmen Baugh, co-owner of Three Maria Designs, an on-line clothing boutique offering quality, hand sewn designs for children. Carmen is a sewing instructor at Mary Jo’sCloth Store and shares her favorite style dress for little girls; the A-Line dress.

I was fortunate to be the recipient of my mother-in-law’s vintage patterns.  They were neatly stored in a closet along with her fabric stash.  Inside the box were two patterns for an A-Line jumper that dated back to the 1950’s and 1960’s.  The patterns were priced 25 cents and 45 cents respectively.  I knew then that the A-Line jumper was a true classic.  I have sewn hundreds of them for my daughters, nieces, great nieces, granddaughter, friends, and with students in sewing classes, and now for Three Maria Designs. 

My favorite pattern, which I have used for the past 5 years, is “Lucy” by Children’s Corner. I like this pattern because it is not stacked; with each size as a separate piece.  This means you do not have to trace the size you need.  The directions are clear and easy to follow and the pattern is true to size.

The A-Line dress is a simple and I look at it as a blank canvas.  It is perfect for monograms, appliqué, ric rac, lace, ruffles and piping. I have embellished A-Line dresses with a variety of themes such as birthday cakes, pumpkins, ghosts, Christmas trees, flowers, crabs, alligators, a jester hat and more.  You can be very creative! 

It is a fun dress that is easy to make and the fit is very forgiving.  It can be made as a summer jumper using seersucker fabric (my favorite) and for winter using corduroy and worn with a blouse or turtleneck.   I make my dresses fully lined with matching covered buttons and that is what students learn in my class.

If you are interested in learning how to make an A-Line dress, I will be teaching a class at Mary Jo’s Cloth Store on August 14 and August 21, 2014.  We will be making the A-Line Pumpkin Dress. I hope to see you there! Click here for more information.

Maria Carmen Baugh

Three Maria Designs

Visit Three Maria Designs to see more clothing for the best-dressed child at www.ThreeMariaDesigns.com and on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/ThreeMariaDesigns

A quick and easy patriotic DIY for the 4th of July

Banners and pennants make festive decorations for inside or outside your home. If you are planning a July 4th or Labor Day party, the red, white and blue banners are the perfect accent for a patriotic theme!

You can easily make banners using Riley Blake fabric panels available from Mary Jo’s Cloth Store. Each 24 x 44 inch panel is printed with seasonal colors and patterns on cotton fabric and is ready to cut and sew. Complimentary fabrics are available for making tablecloths, napkins, placemats and other decorations.

Follow the steps below to make banners for your next celebration!

Each panel will make a banner that is about 60 inches long. Purchase additional panels for larger banners. You can tie them together, or make them as one long piece. Two panels were used for the banner shown here.

Using a rotary cutter and mat, or scissors, cut apart the pieces, cutting along the edge of the printed triangles, and the long strips. You will have matching front and back pieces.

Attach medium weight fusible interfacing to the back of half of the triangle pieces using an iron. Make sure to keep the pieces in matching pairs, adding interfacing to one piece of each pair.

Place each matching triangle piece face to face and sew around the long edges using a ¼-inch seam allowance.  Turn right sides out and press the edges.

Sew together the long strips and sew the top edge of each banner to the strip, using a ¼-inch seam allowance. Leave a tail at each end, and sew all the banners in a row, alternating the colors and patterns.

Press the strip from the front, fold over and topstitch. Your banner is finished and ready to hang. Welcome to the party!

To purchase your own banners, or for more information click here.

Quilting Basics: Selecting Fabrics

Are you new to quilting?  You are probably very excited about starting a quilt project, but do you feel confused by all the different colors and styles of fabric?  How do you know what to choose and where to start?  You are not alone, even experienced quilters can be overwhelmed by the enormous selection of quilting fabrics at our store!

We asked Aimee Griffin, owner of Overall Quilter and Sewing Director at Mary Jo’s Cloth Store to share some tips for selecting fabrics for quilts. Aimee has been quilting, and teaching for many years and has easily picked out hundreds of fabric collections for quilts. Here are Aimee’s tips for narrowing down the choices.

Our first example is a quilt made in one of the beginning quilting classes at Mary Jo’s; the Window Boxes pattern. This quilt has large blocks, medium sized blocks and vertical and horizontal lines.

1. Begin by selecting a “focus print”. This will be the fabric used for the biggest areas and largest pieces in the quilt. In the quilt below, the white background fabric with the red motif is the focus print, used in the 12 ½- inch squares and around the border. This is also where you can use a large scale print: larger blocks = larger prints.

2. Next, select “secondary fabrics” for the next largest sized blocks to tie in with the focus print. On this quilt, the 6 ½-inch blocks are where the secondary fabric will be used. Note that the scale of the print is not as large of a pattern motif but still a pretty design.  For this quilt Aimee chose a gray background fabric that is not “matchy” and is a little unexpected – this makes it pop or float over the other colors.

3. Last are the tertiary fabrics, used for the horizontal and vertical lines. This is a place for the eye to rest. Aimee recommends using small-scale prints and tone-on-tone fabrics for this part of the quilt. 

Aimee put together a collection of fabrics to illustrate the three rules above. Primary fabric = large floral print

Secondary fabric = coral swirl print

Tertiary fabrics = small blue floral and lime green tone-on-tone

Here is an example of the same quilt in different fabrics, shared by students in a recent class.  The same three steps were used but with eye-catching red and green fabrics. 

Can you identify the primary, secondary and tertiary fabrics in this quilt?

To learn more about how you can join us for beginning quilting classes, click here: http://maryjos.com/sewing-class-schedule

Another popular style of quilt is a monochromatic design, where fabrics from one color family are combined together.  An example is the “Twilight Stars” pattern from Wilmington Prints.  This design comes in a kit with the fabrics included so you are ready to go!  But you can use the same idea with other quilt patterns. 

To replicate this monochromatic look, select fabrics that are all the same scale and colors.  Batik fabrics work great for this because they are subtle and blended, and often have hints of other colors within the design.  For monochromatic quilts choose fabrics from color families such as purple, blue and green or red, orange and yellow or create a quilt with neutral fabrics such as tan, cream, and ivory.  Many of our quilting fabrics are grouped together by color, this makes selecting fabrics for monochromatic quilts easy! 

We have discussed the fronts of quilts, but what about the back? Aimee suggests having fun with the backing material, “it doesn’t need to match the front”. For new quilters she recommends choosing a busy, all over pattern for the back, which doesn’t require precise stitches – the stitches will be hidden in the pattern. Aimee’s last piece of advice for choosing fabrics, “of course there are not rules”!