Creating Texture

Have you discovered Texture Magic yet?

This week I have been quilting with a layer of shrink fabric interfacing and then using the steam from a steam iron to cause it to shrink and create an interesting texture on my silk Autumnal fabric. This is the real colour of the fabric, I'm not sure what happened to the colour on the other photos which went very pink!

Sew texture magic to the back of your fabric, apply steam and the fabric shrinks approximately 30% in all directions creating a beautiful textured effect. The result is permanent, washer and dryer safe.

I made a sandwich by placing my fabric face down, adding batting and then a piece of the polyester Texture Magic interfacing. The instructions tell you not to worry about any wrinkles in the Texture Magic as they will disappear after steaming, which is indeed the case. I smoothed it outwards as I pinned from the middle of my piece.

Quilting

My fabric has three-inch stripes so I chose to use these as a guide for my first quilting of straight lines to form a 3” grid.

 The instructions say you get more texture the closer together your stitch lines are, so I think this distance is the maximum to get any texture.

Inspired by all the berries around, I chose to free motion quilt round(ish) shapes with a variegated thread with blues, plum, berry pink (Mettler silk finish “Berry rich” 9816). I free-motion quilted alternate squares of my grid.

In the remaining squares I hand quilted a cross in the centre using bright orange (Aurifil 50wt 1133). I measured and marked the centre of the grid with the air erasable pen. I then added a bead to the centre of each cross from the red mix of Indian beads.

Steaming

I laid the fabric on my ironing board with the Texture Magic side up and set the steam iron to a hot steam setting. Similar to the hover technique for the Tyvek Autumn leaves I made earlier this month, you need to hold the iron close to but not touching the interfacing in order to get the texture and dimension effect (rather than pressing it flat).

As it is steamed it puckers and pulls in until it reaches the point it doesn’t pull in any more.

My hand slightly quilted squares puffed up more than the more heavily machine quilted squares.

Sewing

I’m planning to make a bag with my piece of textured quilt, but I'm tempted to make a cushion cover as the fabric would go well in the Ecclesall Textile School sewing lounge!

This will have to wait though as I have three customers sewing projects to complete and several workshops to lead in the next couple of weeks.

I will post my finished project on my Instagram feed for you to see.

I would love to hear about your adventures with Texture Magic

Helen x