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"Peppered Feather" 18" x 24"
Made with Peppered Cottons by Pepper Cory
for StudioE Fabrics. |
Hey there, Quilters! Have you tried
Peppered Cottons? This is a line of shot cottons, designed by quilting icon,
Pepper Cory, for
StudioE Fabrics. It's one of the new fabric lines I'm representing and I wanted to get my hands on some yardage to try free-motion quilting with it. I used a few Peppered Cottons in my guild Challenge piece,
Blue Rhino Moon, and was pleased with the result. Now here is my free-motion foray with them.
The dark green is Jungle 29 and the red violet square is Magenta 42. The other fabrics are from
Blank Quilting Corp's Splash and Crushed blender lines with a piece of
Watermark from StudioE. The red binding is Fusion Illusion [Blank Quilting]. See how they all play well together?
If you're not familiar with the term, shot cottons are 100% cotton fabrics that are woven with 2 different colors of threads—one color for the warp, and another color for the weft. The weft thread is on the shuttle with is "shot" through the shed [the opening between the threads on the loom] as the textile is woven.
These fabrics have a chambray, somewhat iridescent look to them. From a distance, they look like solids, but up close they have more richness and spice and aren't flat like solids. Here is a
blog post by Pepper, the designer, with info and tips. A PDF for download provided by StudioE is
here.
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| Detail of free-motion quilting. |
The 50 wt. cotton thread [Aurifil] used for the free-motoin background fills melds beautifully with the shot cottons.
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| Detail of free-motion quilting. |
The aqua thread used for the feather is a new (to me) cotton thread by Floriani. It is a variegated 40 wt 3-ply cotton (color Oceanic). I needed something to contrast the dark green background. The Peppered Cottons provided a luscious background to set off the contrasting color of the thread.
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Floriani 40 wt cotton (aqua) and
Aurifil 50 wt cotton quilting threads. |
The backing fabric is a small piece of Candy Dots 108" [Blank Quilting Corp.] and Botton Line [Superior Threads] 60 wt. thread is what I used in the bobbin. Yes, I did change the bobbin thread colors.
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| View of quilting on the back. |
You may be familiar with other shot cottons on the market. Westminster makes a line designed by the ever-talented Kaffe Fassett—and we all know Kaffe's fabulous color sense! Quilters will notice that the Peppered Cottons have an equivalent weight to the quilting cottons which they are used to. The Westminster shots have slightly more drape and a finer/thinner hand.
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"Peppered Feather"
18" x 24" |
I'm working on another piece that combines
Peppered Cottons and a black/white charm square collection from Blank Quilting. All the fabrics have the same weight and drape. This makes piecing easy and very manageable.
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| In-progress: quilting cottons and Peppered Cottons combined. |
The
Peppered Cottons collection has
50 basic colors and a whole line of "fancies" that include stripes, a small check and a jumbo plaid in lush color combinations. If you want a geometric, modern or masculine vibe for a quilt or home dec project, give these a try!
Saturday, January 24, is Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day. Will you be visiting yours? I do hope so!
