feline fanatic

Thanks so much quiltingshorttimer. The silk background fabric reminded me mostly of fabric treated with a heavyweight fusible. It was stiff like that and once the needle punched a hole it stayed. But it also did not like to get wet! It kind of blistered and bubbled on the test piece. After it dried that blistering went flat again but I felt wetting it would definitely compromise the integrity of it. I knew I couldn't use a super fine thread as it wouldn't fill up the needle hole like a 40 wt would. But the lion's share of my quilting thread stash is 40 wt poly, like glide. There was no fraying because this stuff wasn't woven. The silk fibers Gail used were like roving and were already dyed, she got a variety of golds and earth tones. Gail would peel off some of the roving fibers and lay them down with the glue stuff. I didn't see the whole process she just gave me a quick "how I did it" explanation when she started.

I had never heard of Rheingold thread either. My good quilting buddy uses mostly specialty threads and Invisifil so she sold me her stash of Glide. She included a cone of this because it was such a rich, lustrous gold color and she knew my love of Asian fabrics and thought I could use it as she never would. The color was perfect for this so that is why I used it. If I didn't have it, I probably would have used Glide in a gold color.