Thready

I'm going to take a break from quilting for a bit. I have to stay off the knee, so piecing is out. I could work on quilting "Noel" but that doesn't have to be done until Thanksgiving (the official beginning of Christmas decorating in our house), so I'm working on a Halloween thready project.

Up above there's a picture of an early thready (circa 2002) just to give you an example of what I am talking about. It's not what I'm working on now. I tried to move the photo to elsewhere in my post but Blogger and my brain weren't cooperating today, so the picture stays where it wants to.

Thready is my name for a piece that is all threads or yarns stitched or couched down onto a piece of fabric or lightweight canvas. The thready in the photo started with a base of reddish pink fabric that I couched down some tiny bits of red batik fabric to before beginning the running stitch, which I did in embrodiery flosses, rayons, perles, metallics... The silver frame is 8" by 9" ish.

I started the piece I am actually going to work on last Halloween and worked on it for awhile after that. I even took it on our Nile cruise and stitched on it while drinking tea under the shade of an umbrella, watching the banks of the Nile glide by. That was last November and it's been in hiding since then. See, I get bored and put projects away, but generally I do pick them back up again. If I still like them.

The one I'm working on now (again) is a piece of white canvas that I drew a spiderweb on. I stem-stitched that with a black perle cotton royal (it's shiny and pretty - you can quilt with it, but boy does it fray). Now I'm doing running stitch with various colors (lots of oranges with bits of yellow, lime green, purple and red) of embroidery floss. I just keep going and going and going until all the white is gone. All of it. That's how I know when it's done. Kinda psycho? Maybe, but still soothing, in a different way than the quilting stitch.

This Web thready is almost done - only several more hours to go. I haven't actually counted how many hours it takes - that's one of those things I just don't want to know. I would show you a pic, but might as well wait until it's done. Then I'll have to decide if I'm going to do a fancy spider somehow with beads or just stitch down a plastic one that I bought at Walmart. The final step will be to frame it - because they just aren't large enough to stand on their own. Previous pieces I've framed with glass (it's dusty here) but I'm pondering leaving it off. Halloween stuff is in a box 10 months out of the year...