Study in Green

As I'm on the topic of changing gears, I thought I would experiment a bit with thread painting.
Thread painting as defined by the Queen of thread painting, Nancy Prince is "free-motion machine embroidery, a unique way of embellishing your quilts by "painting" the image on your quilt top...The  quilt is your canvas and the thread is your paint."
In a previous post dated June 7, 2011, titled Layer Upon Layer Upon...I stated that the more layers you have, the more dimension and depth your piece will have."  So, I thought why not create the first layer with paint.  I then painted PFD (prepared for dyeing) a tightly woven, white fabric with Pebeo, Setacolor Transparent paints.

Once dried, it was heat set with a hot iron and I pulled a few of the threads I intend to use in this exercise.  I'm thinking the piece is going to be both free motion machine embroidered and hand embroidered.

While pulling the threads for the piece, I thought it would be a good idea if I practiced a little before attempting the main act...

and so now I present my Study in Green, not the main act. In this trial run I used Superior Thread, Nature Colors, Trilobal Polyester and King Tut, also by Superior.

After hooping the fabric, threading the machine with the darkest green first, lowered the feed dogs, adjusted the tension, forgot to change the bobbin case, I placed the hoop under the open-toe darning foot of my Janome 6260 and off I went.  It takes concentration and a light touch on the hoop to move it at just the right speed.  There were lots of thread changes as I needed to see how the colors worked together...or not. The tension is not quite right but that is probably due to the fact that I did not change the bobbin case, which in my Janome, can be removed.

Here's my separate bobbin case just for thread painting. I'm allowed to play with the tiny screw (Phillips head screw) in the designated thread painting bobbin case! By turning the screw, one quarter turn at a time, I can adjust the bobbin thread tension.

I'm glad I did the trial run. I will have to do another with the adjusted bobbin case and see if there is any improvement.

If you would like to leave a comment and I hope you do, please click on the post title...Study in Green and the Comment dialogue box will open.  Thank you and Enjoy!