Days of Fine Dining – Damask

How many of you remember a time when fine dining took place on a table set something like this? Okay, don’t answer that. I’d like us all to maintain our youthful appearances. I do remember that time – perhaps 30 or so years ago. Back then I went to the extent of buying crystal glassware. But the silverplate and the damask linens were given to me by the generation ahead of me. Every once in a while I get out the silver. The pale pink damask napkins you see in the photo were a gift from my mother-in-law. I’ve never found a use for them that fits my current lifestyle. They have been in the back of the linen closet, unused, for almost twenty years.

But that ended this week, thanks to Lola Jenkins and Thread Art. While stashing away some other fabric, one of the napkins fell out onto the floor. Timing is everything! It came to me that I could sew a portrait on this pale pink piece of fabric.

The subject I have in mind is my grand-daughter, from this photo taken at four weeks.

I decided to overlay this image onto one of a daylily. How about this one?

In the thread art process, the photographs are manipulated to size, and then the contour lines of the image parts are marked up. Here is the baby photo after marking.

I enlarged the flower until the baby could settle comfortably into the center of it. Oops, the baby is missing a foot. I manipulated one of the daylily petals to cover the place where the foot should be. After more fiddling, I came up with this.

Now to transfer the lines to the fabric. This proved a little trickier than I expected. I first tried the chalky transfer paper used in traditional embroidery transfers. The lines were way too faint and uneven. Then I found, in the deep recesses of my sewing cabinet, an Aunt Martha’s transfer pencil. Using this tool, you mark up the back side of the image, lay the marked side against the fabric and press with a hot iron.

You get bright pink marks that ARE PERMANENT. But I am living by Lola’s slogan today – and Going For It! I will be covering all the pink lines with black thread.

For the best results, the quilt sandwich should include interfacing fused to the quilt top. I did that and then I cut the batting and backing, pin basted and started quilting.

…………….And here is the image with all the contour lines stitched.

So far, making this fiber object has been challenging and fun! I’m so happy to have found a use for the damask napkins.

The next steps are to quilt the background and then add color to the subject. Lola Jenkins uses colored pencil. I will start with that medium, but I may experiment also with some fabric markers. After all, it’s time to go for it.