Several years ago, a friend of mine went to Italy and sent me some photos that she took while she was there. I loved the photos and thought that someday I might try painting some of them. As fate would have it, I found them the other day and decided to use one of them as the basis of a thread painting. I had never done a thread painting, but I thought; "why not?" Of course, I read a few articles on the process and most artists used silk fabric as the base and they were quite small, e.g., 3' x 6". I didn't want anything that small so my picture ended up 10" x 7". I also wanted to make out of cotton so I mixed art quilting with thread painting. While it sounded good, it did present some issues. First the thickness of the fabric quilt "sandwich" coupled with pieced layers made it difficult to free motion embroider. I "muscled" through it but I do have to say it was frustrating at times. In the future, I would paint or dye the cotton in areas and then free motion embroider. This this would eliminate the seams and extra thickness. The first photo below is the reference photo and the second is the edges photo. As you can see from the final project, I eliminated some of the elements in my project. All that said; I do like the end product.
Have you tried thread painting? If so, let me know about your experience.
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