Debby Brown at The Cotton Patch Studio

We have had the pleasure of having Debby Brown teach at The Cotton Patch Studio for the past four days and it has been a wonderful experience. If you have the opportunity to learn from Debby I really recommend you take her class. Her easy and clear teaching style and knowledge of quilting is exceptional. Everyone has thoroughly enjoyed her very accessible classes that enable you to quilt - Like You!

She can do depth if you want to but doesn't overwhelm when teaching and matches the pace well to the students. These are my observations and I've seen quite a few American teachers having worked on Cabot Conferences with Christine Porter over a number of years and visited Quilt market in the States on more occasions than I want to be reminded of right now.

So, here are a few photos from Day 4 - Mark My Words using the Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen but many of her classes can be taken by people who are using regular domestic sewing machines. The techniques, methods and ideas are going to be the same on the whole.

So we took some Golden Threads paper and traced our words or phrase onto the paper. We had a few choice ones but we picked the printable ones...all except Roxy but hers is code so you have to know what it means. 

Mine was "gone sailing" as I've just been on a lovely sailing holiday and it will remind me of that.

So we put that on our fabric (one layer of fabric and wadding).

Then we put THREE THREADS THROUGH ONE NEEDLE!!!!

Yes, you read that right. Here I am demonstrating the knot that is taking the third thread on the horizontal spool pin. We used a Size 20 needle with 50/3 Wonderfil Thread.  Lovely, Egyptian Long Staple 100% Cotton.

Then we sewed around the outside of our words. 

One down, one to go... 

Then we removed the Golden Threads paper - TIP - keep your Machingers gloves on - they rubberised tips help to remove the paper.

Tra - La

The outline of the words.

Then we filled in the words with free motion embroidery, layering it up. The thread had to be adjusted for the three threads initially and slow down when sewing but otherwise it performed really well.

Then added some lines to my "picture" which is hopefully fairly obvious. I decided to do some Clarice Cliff Sunburst style design using the Line Tamer. It makes it much easier to do Stitch in the Ditch because you can't wobble off the line - the 1/2" foot sits within the groove. Markings make it easy to follow and create sunburst effects. 

We put a layer of wadding behind the first layer of wadding and then backing fabric. So, basically an extra layer of wadding than normal so that we cover over some of the stiches of the very thick three thread work.

Then we filled in the sunburst sections using micro stitching. DEFINITION OF MICRO STITCHING - stitching which is smaller than you are comfortable with. Quote - Debby Brown.

Don't forget that all that thread going through one needle creates LOTS of lint so clean out the bobbin case area. Here is a small furry creature with a blue coat masquerading as fluff. 

Debby made us stop sewing because it was time to go home but... I might sneak back and do some more later this evening. No one will know.

Had a fun fun day with Debby and the rest of the gang. Here are the other pieces -

Olenda has come on leaps and bounds from Jamie's classes to this and is justifiably proud of what she sewed today. Brilliant! 

Only Roxy knows what this means!

Joy did the spires of Oxford and Morse Code with dots and dashes within her quilting. Love the creative way you can play with thread and words in this class.

Tony proving it is indeed never too late.  Some lovely thread painting and he's all set up for the rest of the quilt. 

Time to go home....