Craft is Art

A while back Urban Threads (my favorite source for fabulous machine embroidery designs) capitalized on the current trend of adult coloring books by issuing a coloring contest for one of their embroideries.  They released the Craft is Art pattern free and challenged people to stitch it up and color it in.

The contest call came right as I was about to start painting in the quilting on my large illuminated manuscript quilt, and give the weird fabric that quilt is made out of, I had planned to do some paint/ink/marker tests before nearing my quilt. It seemed like this was the perfect opportunity, so I made a quilt sandwich out of the same fabric as my quilt top, stitched out the design and started coloring in.

I'm so glad I did because the surface of this fabric is really weird-  it's a think polyester fabric with a suede like finish, and come to find out, many of the things I was considering using on the quilt bled outside the lines.  The bleeding was so bad that I wound up adding more color outside the lines on purpose to give a sort of watercolor-wash effect.

Things I tried that did not stay inside their lines-  cheap acrylic paint cut with water, good acrylic fabric paint cut with water (like setacolor), fabrico markers (so sad about this), inktense pencils (likewise sad about this), sharpie, latex paint cut with water.  I usually really like diluting my paint a little with water just to make it easier to get down in crevices around the quilting, but I really found that I had to use the paints completely undiluted  if I wanted them to stay put on this particular fabric.  I also used some oil based enamel since it gives better metallic, and the color on it stays put fairly well, but occasionally the solvent separates and bleeds out giving a weird halo sort of effect.

It was pretty fun to color in though, and after coloring it, I quilted the background with multiple colors of silk thread using motifs to echo the embroidery pattern and bound it using organza.  From a practical standpoint, organza is a pretty dumb thing to bind with (hard to iron, very ravely, doesn't crease well), but I really wanted a light, glowy edge and I think this accomplished it.

So now I have a new little mini to hang on my wall!

Have you guys ever painted/colored in embroidery or quilting?  If so, what media did you use? I find it fairly tedious, but have used it now a couple of times, including in my Gloria Patri quilt.