Paisley Power

Paisleys are wonderful. There is so much you can do with them.  One of my Zentangle friend's challenged a group of use to tangle some of them.  Since it was a loosely defined challenge, I thought I would try and stitch mine. I wrote about it on my other blog, Books and Quilts.  I'll also post the photos here.

Most postcards I start right in on the stitching, but this required some pre-planning and a couple of sketches.  Not all tangles can be done successfully on the sewing machine, but those continuous line ones work perfect.

 

Last year I cut fabrics for several floral quilt projects and had a bunch of equal size strips remaining.  I sewed them together and set them aside.  They worked perfect for the background for my first attempt.  The black stitching barely shows up.  I stitched on the fabric and the thick layer of interfacing.  Since it already had the fusible on the back, I found it a bit difficult to manipulate and move smoothly.  I'll have to try some other arrangements and see if I can an improve on that.

 

 

 

I was hoping that changing to pink thread would help with the visibility, but it didn't really work. A more drastic approach would be needed.

 

 

Pink fabric and black thread.  Now it really shows up.  This time I decided that I would use one tangle for the inside of the paisley.  I'm happy with how this turned out.

 

I thought the stitching might be more visible taking the picture on an angle. As you can see in the next two photos, it did help a bit.  A big advantage of these little projects is that if something doesn't work, I can still finish the project and quickly move along to the next variation.