Felice Dahlhausen, of Felice Quilt Designs, is an extremely talented teacher who creates beautiful pieces that bring together hand embroidery, big stitch quilting, and fabric dyeing in a unique way. Her love of colour and texture has inspired her work, as well as her love of handwork! How did she discover her love for handwork techniques? In this exciting Off The Spool interview we chat with Felice about her love of handwork, how she discovered it, and why she continues to include it in her pieces to this day!

Felice began her journey as a fibre artist after she retired from her previous job as a high school art teacher in 2011. As an art teacher she had to be well versed in many artistic mediums. Following her retirement, she became set on one medium in particular . . . fibre arts! Felice had always loved quilting and embroidery and wondered where this medium could take her when she was able to dedicate her full attention to it. Handwork had always been a technique she loved to do, recalling that in high school she would cover her clothes in hand embroidered designs. This is why she decided to incorporate handwork, in the form of embroidery and big stitch quilting, into her signature style.

Felice’s Work

Felice’s work brings together hand embroidery and big stitch quilting to create stunning, textured quilts and wall hangings; drawing inspiration from things like flowers, nature, and architecture! The combining of these two techniques is done to add extra dimension to her pieces. Bringing forward certain shapes, colours, and textures. She said that her aim is to “make the surface of quilts more interesting”! She is always looking for new ways to use these techniques and expand upon her work. Handwork is crucial to the pieces Felice creates as it allows her to use thicker threads, and work in small areas of the quilts more easily. Building up hand embroidery stitches with these thick threads is one of the easiest ways to add additional depth. Eleganza™, our long staple Perlè cotton thread, is one of her favourites for this use. It comes in 8, 5, and 3 wt making it extremely thick and bold. Felice tends to use 8wt, and occasionally 5wt in her hand stitching. These are perfect for adding 3D details in the centre of flowers, along the edge of wool appliqués, and in the background of quilts. Felice also uses big stitch quilting to add more subtle texture in and around her designs. These stitches are easy to add throughout the background of a piece, or around certain featured shapes to make them pop more. For this Felice often uses variegated Eleganza™, which adds natural variation to the colour. Colour, and sheen are the factors she pays the most attention to when picking a thread for her embroidery. She likes thread that has a bit more of a shine to it, rather than a matte finish. Again, always thinking about adding depth, texture, and dimensions.

Felice Quilt Designs Eleganza™ Pack

Recently Felice has begun to work with hand dyed fabrics as another way to add depth to her work. She is experimenting with Shibori, and ice dyeing. Shibori is sort of like tie-dye, as it is done by binding fabrics in certain ways and dropping them into dye to create patterns. There are many different forms of the technique that differ in name depending on how the fabric is bound before dying. Ice dyeing is done by adding pieces of ice on the top of fabric, then sprinkling dye powder over it. As the ice melts, organic dye patterns are left on the fabric. Felice uses these techniques to create interesting, and natural looking patterns on her fabrics. She can then add stitching along the dye patterns to accentuate them, for further dimension. These are techniques she is currently experimenting with but looks forward to incorporating more often, as they have allowed her to add an extra unique stamp on her handwork!

Tips For Hand Embroidery

Felice’s dedicated focus on practicing and teaching handwork means she’s learned a thing or two about how to best approach the technique. So, what her are her top tips for anyone wanting to learn more? Well number one she recommends taking a class, or as many classes as you can! “I find some students will say they aren’t able to do a particular stitch, but when they do it with me, I can see how they’re doing it and catch if they’re doing something wrong”. Watching videos is a good alternative if you can’t access in person classes, but having a teacher there to guide you can make all the difference.

View Her available classes

Using the correct needles in hand embroidery is so important. Felice highlighted this by saying “I think the needle is the most important thing”. Needles make a big difference, especially when doing more intricate hand embroidery designs, with complex stitches. For decorative stitches like French knots, Felice recommends using Millner needles which have an extremely long shank. This makes it easier to wrap your thread around the needle for tighter, neater decorative stitches. She also recommends having a chenille needle for more basic stitching! Chenilles have a wider eye and sharp tip, great for all-around hand stitching.

Where To Find Her!

Felice teaches all over at guilds, quilt shows, and sewing shops! If you’re hoping to take a class from her in the coming months, be sure to visit her website to see when and where she will be teaching! Going to the International Quilt Festival this October? Be sure to sign up for Felice’s wool appliqué workshop which will be running Tuesday and Wednesday during the show. Learn the process of wool appliqué, and how to do beautiful decorative hand embroidery stitches as you create a one-of-a-kind wool vase full of flowers. Take your creation home, along with one of her thread packs! If you want to try out our Eleganza™ thread, in 8wt and 5wt, check out Felice’s thread pack which comes with five 8wt spools and four 5wt spools in solid and variegated colours. And be sure to follow Felice Quilt Designs on Instagram and Facebook to follow along with Felice’s work!