Danger

What's the difference between a crusty and a thready? Holly asked me ages ago and I've been waiting for a day with enough sunlight to get some decent pics.

A thready is a piece of fabric or canvas that I completely (or almost completely) cover in threads of some kind. This is Halloween Thready. I finished it right as we were packing up our belongings to leave Cairo almost exactly a year ago. It measures 5.25" x 6"

I started with a piece of this printed fabric. I used it as a guide to keep areas of light and of dark. I've made some threadies that look so cool close up but when you get back from them a couple of feet they just blur into a big mess. This fabric doesn't look much like the final thready, but sometimes they do.

A close up. I began by couched all the yarn and then and stitched with embroidery floss and thick rayon thread to fill in all the gaps until the entire base fabric was covered.

The back of the piece. If I hadn't done so much couching there would be even more thread here. I don't use any knots, just thread the ends through the stitching.

A thready only has one layer of fabric which is then covered. It's an embroidery (I guess), not a quilt.

Now here's a crusty I made ages ago in 2002. It was the third or fourth one I made. This is Danger. It measures 11" x 12" at its widest points.

It's a typical crusty [the technique is based on the methods of Susan Shie - there's a link in the sidebar] which consists of a backing fabric, batting and a top fabric (a real quilt sandwich) which is first bound, then appliqued, stitched and embellished. Lots of encrustation = crusty.

Here's a closeup. You can see the holes I cut through all three layers, used floss stitches to "bind" the three layers again, and then added a Halloween spider web organza behind them. I added plastic spiders as well and that's a glow-in-the-dark ant caught in the web.

A view of the back:

The terms threadies and crusties are mine (as is beadies). 3 Jacks was a true mutant creation in that it was threaded like crazy, but onto a crusty quilt sandwich, and then embellished. More of a threcrusty. Cruthready? Neither term sounds attractive.

I make threadies differently every time I do them. So the only "rules" as far as I'm concerned is that it has a fabric base and is covered with lots and lots of thread. There can even be some snippets of fabric too.

On a danger theme, I just had to include these Parisian photos from the rail station:

I have really been struggling with the overcast weather. It rained a bunch yesterday and I even went out for a bit anyway, but then we were lucky enough to have an hour of sun.

I'm slowly working on another tutorial but all the photos I took yesterday turned out abysmally. I may end up using the diagrams I did on the computer when I first started working on "the book" several years ago.

I've been making steady progress on Blooming Horrors while listening to podcasts and watching Rescue Me Season 3 (watched Zombie last night - what an excellent episode with an homage to Shaun of the Dead) and rewatching the first season of Bones. I tried - twice - to watch the Sandra Bullock movie Premonition, but gack. Dull. I'm gonna skip it.

And now some links:

Tanya is in my class and is working on a quilt about Home. She improvisationally pieced the words for cat and dog - in Japanese. They are remarkable. And her blog is always marvelous about her life in Japan, go visit if you haven't before.

ComicBookLady is also in my class and free-pieced not only letters but black cats. She made it extra complicated with the tails forming parts of the letters. Very fun quilt in progress and I love looking at the fabrics she's used. Black cats to make black cats and eyeballs staring out.

The Halloween link is for ceramicist Sharon Bloom. I love the black cats and jack'o'lanterns, the candy corn and skull flowers. Wonderful. I get all sorts of inspiration looking at her pieces.