Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Stitch Samplers

There are big benefits to making thread/fabric quilt sandwich samples to help you kick the fear of using non matching threads on your quilt work. The picture is of two sample sets from a group exchange that I participated in in the past couple of years with our Wild Threads machine quilting group. The project coordinator started with a color wheel and paint sample chip cards. Picking colors opposite on the color wheel, members received two colors and then they were to use one of the colors as the thread and the other as the solid fabric. Most made two sets of stitched samples doing the opposite for the other set. We then cut the sandwich into 2 inch squares and swapped with the other members to get a healthy variety of color variations  It's great to see the different effects of the threads that we are so often afraid to use in our quilting. When I get that little tickle of fear, I glance at the sample and shake off the fear by grabbing the cone of thread that will push me out of my color box.