Gilded Quilt Edging as an Embellishment

When I finish a piece and I look down at it and say oh, I like it but it's missing a little something. My usual go-to is, you know, how are we gonna embellish this puppy? Bring it, you know, to it's full glory. And often that means some beading or adding something else and some hand stitching and all that. But every once in a while I don't have a lot of time and I want to just put something on it that's gonna doll it up real quickly. And sometimes that answer is paint. In this case we're going to be a Lumiere, which is a fabric paint that is very metallic. And so it's got this wonderful glow, or glistening to it. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna gild the edges of some of the things on this piece. Starting with the flowers. Gilding simply means that, that you're topping something with gold or any type of shiny metallic. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna take these little petals that are raw edged pieces of fabric and lift them up a bit so that they're not sitting on the surface there. And so I can get to them, basically. And I'm gonna take a brush that's got a flat edge to it and put some paint in it. Use another piece of paper to kind of get off any big chunks of that paint. And I'm gonna come in and just touch the edges of these petals with that paint. And I'm just gonna gild those edges. Add a little bit of sheen. On some of them, it's just gonna be on the tips of already fraying thread. And it's just gonna doll them up enough to add that extra little bit of oomph. The other thing it's going to do is that if one petal is touching another and it's got paint on it, as it dries, it'll make them stick together in this raised position. Which I kind of like, too, because the paint has a polymer in it that acts like a glue so it will stick them together which is kind of cool too. And already I am really digging how that looks. That is very, very, cool. A wonderful embellishment technique. That's also very, very quick. I always start with less paint than I think I might need. I can always add more, but it's pretty darn hard to take it off. I think that looks fabulous, very cool. So we'll come over here and do this flower also. It's also kind of sealing those edges too, so if that was something that we were worried about, you could use paint in the same way. In fact, that's what I'm gonna do along the edge of this quilt. Is I'm gonna gild those edges too and it will seal, like a binding sort of. I'm worried about the way these look or concerned about the way they look and how they're laying because, again like I said, if the paint touches each other they will stick in that position. So I want to make sure I like that position before I lay the paint down. And I don't have to do every single petal if I don't want to. Whoops. I think that's gonna be good right there and now I'm gonna move to the edge. I'm gonna push these down just a bit. There we go. And for the edge of the quilt, I'm gonna do basically the same thing I'm gonna come around this outside edge and I'm gonna put this gold paint on it which will seal up this kind of rough, raw edge that we have going. And will repeat the gold that I have in the flowers. And I'm just gilding the edge. If you wanted to do actual gilding, you could do this with gold foil and adhesive but it would take you probably, I don't know, ten times longer. And doesn't that edge look fabulous? Plus it's adding some darkness to that edge which gives it a really good finish. So gilding these edges is turning out very, very well. You don't have to have a perfect edge, it doesn't have to be the same amount of gold all the way around. You want it to be kind of whatever happens, happens. Happen stance. I just have a napkin down here to protect my table surface cause I know I'm not gonna get a lot of paint on it. But you could cover your table with plastic. So I'm gonna leave it here so that you can compare and contrast the two sides that are gilded with the two sides that are not. And so you can see we have a much darker edge here which gives the piece a nicer edge. And you can also see that it links the eye from the edge with that gold to the gold that you can see peeking off of those flowers. It's pretty darn cool. So the next time you need to add just a little bit to something, think about gilding some of the edges