Challenges – I Did Another One, Part 2

Last week I told you about designing my challenge block for this year’s local Quilt Show.  When I received the fabric packet, I didn’t realize there were two fabrics I was required to use and I had designed my block with only one challenge fabric.  After considering some different ways to change my original star, I came up with a smaller 4 pointed star in the center of the bigger eight pointed star.

Having figured out what to do with the fabric for my challenge block, I now found I had another design problem, I wanted to use silver metallic thread for my buttonhole appliqué but the accent fabric actually had gold metallic designs in it. Do I change the thread to gold or do I keep it silver?  I didn’t want to start stitching and find I didn’t like the thread color so I laid some of each thread against the accent color to see how it looked. 

I found I really couldn’t see much difference of the silver or gold metallic thread on the accent fabric.  Since I like the look of silver more so than gold I decided to use the silver metallic thread on both the white and the accent fabric. I mentioned last week that th tricky part of using metallic thread especially with hand stitching is that it unravels the more you pull it through the fabric. 

The second tricky part I learned as I stitched is that in gets little kinks in it so it is hard to pull it through the fabric especially since I was using double thread so you could see the stitches clearly. .  But I found if I went slow, I could un-kink it and finish my stitching. 

One other thing with metallic thread, if you are making something you will touch a lot or maybe lay your face on like a pillow, I wouldn’t use it.  It tends to feel rough against the skin.  But boy does it sparkle.  I like how it looks. 

When I finished stitching the star down on the background fabric, I felt that the block needed something else.  It was so stark with the bright star on the dark back ground.  So I decided to try some French knots around the star.  I wanted these to sparkle so I used some tatting thread with my silver metallic thread.  I also stitched slowly with these stitches because I was worried that twisting the thread around the needle would kink up the silver thread.   But it didn’t.  What did happen was that since the tatting thread was thicker than the metallic thread, stitching the French knots used up more of the metallic thread.  I would start out with the same length of each but after doing about 4 knots, I would have a lot more tatting thread left.

One other thing I noticed was since the metallic thread was so thin; it really is hard to see it in the French knots.  Yet I found every once in a while I could see a little glimmer from the knots and that made a nice little surprise.  I like doing challenges.  It gives me a chance to experiment with new techniques or materials and you never know what you will end up with.  Take my advice, give a challenge a try.

©2020  Cheryl Fillion