Sunday, May 5, 2013

bobbin drawing

Today I did a little bobbin drawing on one of my small landscape collages.
This collage has been sitting on my table for a while.  It has a little free motion on it, but I was sitting thinking about putting grass on and thinking it would be more textural to handstitch, when I thought about bobbin drawing.  Mostly, I don't do bobbin drawing because I hate winding the bobbins, but as I was winding some bobbinfil, I thought about a hand dyed green thread which I had wound on a spool and thought that I could use the bobbin winder with it.  So I did.
Here is the wound bobbin in the bobbin case (I actually took this picture after I had finished, so the bobbin is a little empty).
You will need to adjust the tension in the bobbin case by  loosening the screw.  Turning it left or clockwise will loosen it.  I had to go several turns, since I had previously had bobbin fil in the bobbin.
You need to loosen it so that if you hold it by the thread and jerk it, it will fall a little way, but not all the way to the tabletop.
Obviously, when you are bobbin drawing, you are free machining from the back, so you need a reference to tell you where to stitch.
I used the bottom of the work as a reference, so that the 'grass' would be at the bottom.  I just used a green rayon thread in the top.
I pulled the bobbin thread to the top (back) of the work at the start and the finish.  It is much easier to tidy it up that way.
And here's a close up of the finished 'grass'.  It is very thick and textural and I think it looks better than handstitching!

create every day!