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!

fly stitch and some running water

today's ATC is about two challenges in the one task.  I decided to combine TAST (Take a stitch tuesday) on Pintangle with my ATCs and here is my first result.

Just a little fly stitch swirl.  TAST is a weekly chellenge run by Sharon B at Pintangle.  I'm pretty sure she has near a thousand participants, as there were over a hundered a month ago when she stopped adding to the list
I sketched out my design for this as I was getting confused

And I also drew a little spiral on my fabric as a guide with an iron off pen.

And now, a little peek at a fused collage a' la  Laura Wasilowski (Quilting arts TV episode 401)

Here is the basic fused picture.  This one I am going to embroider by hand in the evenings.

I have begun with some swirly water (close up on right).  Mostly, I will use straight, running stitch, lazy daisy, seeding. blanket stitch, but of course, now I will have TAST to inspire me as well!

happy stitching!