Hey Everyone, welcome back to Stitch Along Sunday.

I’m still a week behind with my stitch along piece and there only 3 days left in June but I have high hopes that I will get it done by the 30th.

Last week’s rules can be found on Ruth’s blog – June Week 3 Rules. Also don’t forget to check out the Gallery and see what everyone else is up to.

This week’s words are “echo” and “sparkle”.

I’ve decided to echo quilt with a metallic thread to incorporate both words. But first I need to fuse down my shapes and stitch them in place.

The question is what type of thread should I use?

I could use a sparkly metallic thread, a cotton variegated thread, a high sheen polyester variegated thread or a single colour rayon thread for this stitching. I also need 5 different colours of thread to match or contrast with the five broken circles. I guess I had better visit my thread cupboard.

Now that I have decided on the thread I need to decide on what stitch to use. I have been using the satin stitch a lot lately so maybe I should mix it up a bit and use some thing different. I’m thinking that a blanket stitch would work well.

I went with the rayon thread from Sulky for the blanket stitch because it has a bit of sparkle and I had all the colours that I needed.

5 spools of fabric in colours to match applique pieces

A spool for each circle

First of all I added stabilizer to the back of the piece since I didn’t want to do the blanket stitch through all three layers of the quilt. I used a leave in stabilizer – fusible fleece from Pellon.

White fleece stabilizer on back of grey fabric

Stabilizer added to back of fabric

Then I decided to do a double blanket stitch so that the stitching would be nice and thick and stand out. I forgot how much longer it takes to stitch with a double blanket stitch and that you have to keep track of where the needle is especially when coming to a corner. I survived but I think it will be a bit before I do a double blanket stitch again. I do like the look though.

Blanket stitch around each shape in rayon threads to match the colour of the applique

Double blanket stitch complete

Echo Quilting

For the echo quilting I tried to use a metallic thread from Madira. It didn’t behave so well in my machine so I had to do some reverse sewing. I used a metallic needle and had the thread on a free standing spool stand but I think because it is raining out my machine just decided to be finicky and stubborn with the metallic thread. The rain really has nothing to do with it but I thought it sounded good.

And by the way ripping out free motion stitching isn’t much fun.

So I switched to plan B and went with another Sulky rayon thread in a variegated grey to match the background fabric. . Echo quilting around the circle shapes resulted in a bit of chaos in the middle but I think it looks cool. Everything is a tangled mess in the centre of the cosmos and regains order as it gets to the outside.