Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Tea Towel Take 4

I have been playing with text for my tea towel quilt today; just trying out how light letters will look against the stripes and how to arrange the words.

The fabric is from a thrifted duvet cover from my ancient stash from when I first started quilting and it’s ever so soft and wonderful and has a light, light washed out green colour with an even lighter printed pattern. I did not want stark white as there’s already a lot of white in the towel. I was able to center the words as planned although I could not fit as many letters on each line as expected.

I decided to appliqué the letters instead of quilting them down as I normally would do. Usually I would add some kind of stabilizer on the back, but my towel is rather thick and tightly woven, so I skipped this step. To avoid lots of twisting and turning, I decided to free motion stitch each letter twice. It worked out ok, I only got a little puckering but that will probably iron out, or at least quilt out.
I was anxious to see how my vision worked out, and I absolutely love the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t-effect. The text breaks up the stripes really nicely and quiets them down, which is what I wanted, and the soft text is like a whisper. “I am great, and yet… I am humble” (from the TV show Shark).

Looking at it now, I can hear that it wants to be rectangular. Does your work speak to you? Whisper? Scream? Am I going mad from all those stripes breaking up?

I am wondering what the jagged border will say when I start slashing tomorrow. Ouch??

5 comments:

Helen said...

CLEVER! Can't wait to see Take 5....

Anonymous said...

Perfect addition!

Terry said...

Great! I like how your mind works so subtle. The letters add so much to the quilt.
Awaiting the results of the slashing.

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

Slash away, my friend, slash away!

Unknown said...

It's looking fabulous and love the whispering letters!