January reveal "Three Frogs"

This will be the first time I'm uploading pictures, so I hope everything goes well. Allthough I admire some very personal aproaches in the journal quilts, I've choosen improving and exploring techniques as main goal, rather than expressing myself. To have something that will bind this monthly challenges together I've decided to focus on 'stitches' as theme.

For this month I decided to explore a bit more applique and intensive quilting. In my December Artimage Challenge I had a hard time with the raw edge applique of some frogs with satin stitch. I was relieved when it was done and decided to leave it alone so it wouldn't get spoiled. Since I had some spare frogs I decided to try another approach. This time I sewed the frogs on without the batting and backing which was slightly
easier. I didn't use fusible web (Steam a seam?) but basting spray which was a nice short cut but made the fabric fray more. I used invisible thread, that wasn't as invisible as I hoped, and I zigzagged instead of the satin stitch. It was better but I was still not that happy with the result (if this gets boring please skip, just would to like to write it down somewhere so I won't make the same mistakes over and over LOL).






In my challenge the frogs were just silhouettes, now I wanted to give them more detail by quilting/thread painting. I have very little experiences with differeent threads and there aren't many availbale where I live. I used Madeira Embroidery Thread which I alsways use for quilting. I didn't have a plan, but just started to free motion quilt (that might explain a bit why they have this Olily-look). I discovered that it really doesn't matter how neat or close to the edge you sew, it's like sketches with multiple lines, so that was a freeing experience for me. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I'm happy for a start.

The quilting in the background I kept simple by meandering and imitating ripples in the blue to give the impression of water. The fabrics are hand dyed by me.