A Friend Loves at All Times

I made this wall hanging for a friend of mine as a Christmas gift. It was fun and fast, especially since to finish it, I stretched and stapled it over a cheap painter's canvas.

Friends love at all times free motion quilting wall art

I have several cardboard heart templates on hand, so I traced around one for the heart. I wasn't thinking ahead and centered the heart in the middle of the piece and found myself running out of space. I marked a base line for the word 'friends' after marking the heart and freehand wrote it with my air-erase marker.


I did the stitching with Filtec's Affinity thread in Rainbow coloration. It's the variegated version of glide thread. Smooth stitching! I used white sewing thread in the bobbin.


I took a few short videos with my new camera too. But I don't know if I'll share them as they download differently than what I've done before. The pics shown here are also from the new camera. I still haven't ventured off of the automatic settings yet. It's not a Christmas present as it was a planned purchase from my quilting income, but it feels like one.

I stitched on white Kona cotton over a layer of batting, no backing. It worked ok, but it was a little harder to move the piece under my needle. It felt a little floppy and I had to be very careful to keep my hands centered around the needle so the fabric didn't bunch up. To finish the piece I just stapled it around a cheap painter's canvas from the hobby store, AC Moore. Since the piece was stretched around the stretched canvas and wood frame, it didn't matter that there was no back. But I worry that the single layer of fabric might not hold up well to the staples.

We had a lovely Christmas and I hope you did too!

5 comments:

  1. Lovely, great idea to staple it on canvas.
    Best wishes for 2015 with lots of great ideas.

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  2. You are so clever! Love the "dot" on the i!

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  3. It is so beautiful. The variegated thread adds so much depth and complexity. Can you please explain why you stitched it without a backing fabric? I do not understand that part.

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    1. Thank you Denise. Two reasons why:
      1)The back won’t show since the stretcher bars are covered with canvas already and the canvas will help the batting pop the unquilted areas up. Otherwise I would use a backing fabric as the quilting loses its dimensional quality without it.
      2) I do my best to be frugal and since the backing won’t show and the canvas helps pop the dimensional quality of the quilting, I skipped it.

      Given that I was concerned with the fabric holding up to the staples, I don’t know that I’ll skip it next time. I also had just enough batting to cover the front side of the canvas. If I had used more, I could have stapled through the fabric and batting which would have been more supportive. But by eliminating the excess batting and backing, I did reduce the bulk at the corners, which folded up much more smoothly without the bulk of batting. It’s a toss up.

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  4. Without any type of "stress"/pressing on the piece and the canvas reinforcement, the pulling on the staples should be pretty minimal and hold ok. I have done very small projects without a backing but have found that I don't like the instability of the piece while doing the fmq and wouldn't go w/o on a larger one. I really love the effect you got with that thread! I'm not familiar with it and will have to check it out! A very sweet gift and your fmq is awesome!!!! Hugs......

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