How to Build a Quilt From the Ground Up–Part II

As promised, here is how my World Heritage Site quilt featuring Chartres Cathedral is progressing. The first step was sampling threads and stitches in order to embroider the cathedral. From my stash, I chose a six-strand floss in the same shade of blue to match my blue fabric. I have done a lot of embroidery over the years and generally prefer the effect of two strands. One is good for fine detail work but a little wimpy for an outline and three is too heavy. I sampled three stitches: split stitch, back stitch, and stem stitch. Split stitch, when done with Persian wool, is beautiful. I thought perhaps it would work by “splitting” between the two strands of floss, but the effect was that of a chain stitch and that’s not what I wanted. I then tried a back stitch. Normally, embroidery is done on an even-weave fabric, and the stitches of a back stitch line up perfectly. I’m working with Kona cotton. Because it’s a quilting fabric and not even weave, the stitches wander visually. Not attractive for a building, whose lines should be straight. The back stitch is on the right-hand side of the tower roof below. I decided upon the stem stitch, which may not seem intuitive. I think many stitchers and sewists think of it for plants and flowers, but I’ve used it numerous times to good effect on a variety of motifs. The stem stitch appears on the left-hand side of the roof tower and the tower side. After choosing the stem stitch, I decided to use a single strand around the arched windows as shown below.

Stitch sample

I noticed in the five-step drawing lesson that shading was done with cross-hatching. I’ve done some in the drawing classes I’ve taken and thought I would experiment with penwork which would give some contrast to the stitching and enable me to execute finer detail. I had Pigma Micron pens in two blues and sampled both. As you can see, one matched the blue thread very well while the other was too green. I told my partner Mike that it’s obvious I own more tools and supplies than anyone needs when I had both the thread and pen color in the exact shade needed! After trying just a bit of penwork, I knew this was the way I wanted to go.

Ink Sample

Here is my completed embroidery. I’m not bragging, but I have to say I love it, although I’ve been told the one cross is crooked, which I will have to correct. The finished image exceeded my expectations. I’m just happy when it meets them.

Embroidery–Chartres