Stitching the Background

I'm going to use this post to show how I quilted the background on my Bird of the Night piece. This is a detail that shows a little bit of the stitching that I used near the interface of the lower leaf area and the upper flower head area. I used horizontal lines around the leaves and switched to stitches in different directions above the leaves. I wanted a separation between the two areas and used directional change to help with that.

I did the parallel lines using free-motion stitches. They are not perfectly aligned and straight, but that did not make a difference in the overall look I was going for.

Since I used a black fabric, it's difficult to see the stitches.  I used my photo editing software and lightened/increased contrast on a couple of photos to help with the visibility of the stitching. Here are some other background stitching areas that are a little easier to see:

     I'm not sure if you can tell, but I used a dark blue thread instead of black. It still reads as black on the fabric, but when you are stitching, that slight amount of color difference allowed me to see what I was doing a little more easily.



I parallel stitched in varying directions all over the background. I avoided any horizontal parallel lines in the flower area because that stitch direction was used on the bottom only.




That's all I have to say about that! Next time I'll talk about the trim I used between the leaves and flower.

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