An Evening of Inspiration...

Last night was our monthly quilt guild meeting and we were fortunate to have a sales rep from Sulky® as our featured guest. Eric actually lives right down the road from where we meet in Port Charlotte!

If you're a quilter or seamstress, I'm sure you've heard of Sulky® for their great thread selections and huge assortment of stabilizers for machine embroidery. Eric gave each one of us a folder containing flyers and samples of all the types and sizes of thread (including a huge color chart!).

What really got my attention was when he pulled out his samples created using some of the stabilizers, and explaining how their products might be used in non-conventional ways.

These openwork leaves were created on a regular sewing machine by stitching completely on a wash away stabilizer!

Erik also used stabilizer as his template for the waves on one of his underwater-themed quilts. He just drew his pattern on a piece of paper and then traced it (multiple times) onto one of Sulky's water soluble lightweight stabilizers. Then he used a quilters spray adhesive to hold the stabilizer in place while he stitched the pattern onto the block.

When he was finished with all the quilting, he just put the quilt into the washer and all the stabilizer disappeared.

He did the same thing here. The actual quilt has a Serengeti scene with dark fabric elephant appliques in the main block. Again, he traced the outline of a row of elephants with all their trunks joining onto stabilizer and used the same spray adhesive to affix the outline all the way around the outside border. Stitch and then soak. The design is left behind and the stabilizer is gone. I love this!

This scarf was created using Sulky's Ultra Solvy Washaway Stabilizer™. First, follow the grid lines as you sew down the length of the scarf, and then do the same for the width.

After that's finished, create your design over the top of the grid - including the fringe! - using a free motion setting on your sewing machine. When you're finished stitching to your heart's content, just wash away the stabilizer and you're left with a truly funky scarf. Eric told us that the woman who created this piece uses the large spools of thread on her long-arm machine, but it can easily be made on anyone's home sewing machine.

Finally, if you love English paper piecing, can you even imagine how much easier it would be to use Paper Solvy Wash Away Stabilizer™ for your projects? When everything is assembled, wash the piece and all the stabilizer disappears. No paper pieces to tear away!

Paper Solvy™ can even be run through a copy machine, ink jet or bubble jet printer avoiding all the tracing steps! It does use a lot of water to dissolve the paper, but what a great idea!

Well, you can see that I was inundated with mountains of inspiration last night, but it's time for me to get back to focusing on Farmer's Wife blocks and the Wedding Peacocks quilt. No time to play with stabilizers and threads right now. I'll have to save that for another time.

When I got home from the meeting, I found out that our refrigerator had died - but not before giving Handsome cause for concern over some serious smoke smells. Lucky someone was home because it was getting worse until he finally shut down the electricity to it. Looks like we're in for a change. I'll tell you all about it soon. (I hate that fridge!)

Happy Stitching, y'all. Do something fun today, ok?