Here is a quick post of the progress, or lack of it on a piece I have been working on since my QSDS class in June. It has spent more time being stared at than anything else, and I have taken more photos of this while working on it than any other piece I have ever done. My camera and laptop ended up being a great design tools during the process of this piece. In case you haven’t noticed, I love flowers, and have lots of photos I have taken that I want to work into my quilts after I print them onto fabric.

Things Changed

The piece in question is in the upper left of this photo…. an attempt at getting my work out of the box, or frame, etc…. It was pointed out to me that I tend to most always frame or box in parts of my quilts. This has been a huge challenge, to use mainly my flowers without boxing them in!

I took this home as it was, and put it on my design wall, but something really seemed off…. I loved the colors and the flowers, but it just seemed like a “jumble of stuff”…

Testlayout2B&W

I then took a photo of the piece and changed it to black and white in the computer…. It still looked like a jumble to me…. The colors that looked strong to me, fade out when just looking at the values, not colors. The white and pale pink flowers seemed to jump out. The flowers are printed onto cotton fabric that I have backed with Wonder Under. The piece is being arranged on a large piece of backing paper saved from a large piece of Wonder Under that was used earlier for anther project. I keep all of it… you never know when it will come in handy.

Testlayout4

Another idea was to add some bits of color with narrow strips of bright pink fabric, and I also draped some deep colored batik to see what would happen….. I changed this to B&W, and still had problems with values… the bright pink didn’t show at all, and the batik seemed to take over- too dark…. back to the design wall….

I had been tacking flower pieces onto the paper base with the iron, but ended up moving things so much, that I started pinning everything in place- easier to move around on my foam design wall.

Testlayout6

Besides flowers, I have been drawn to old architecture and have taken photos of quite a few old houses, sheds and barns. I printed a couple on fabric, and added them to the corners. I still had the bright pink pieces in the piece….

Testlayout7-8

In the left photo above, I changed one of the lower pink strips of fabric to white- Too much- yuck!… Right above- lots of moves later… The pink Peony flowers seemed too heavy for the center, so I moved them to the bottom. A bunch of others removed and moved…

Testlayout10-11

Filling in some of the holes with more flowers.. I began to remove the colored strips and experimented with more changes… The white Iris and Peony switched… Peony is bulkier… I also began cutting out the backgrounds from the flower prints. This makes things look more natural.

Testlayout12-14

Left above- lots removed, and the white schoolhouse cut into two pieces and moved- it seemed to make things top heavy…… Right above- I thought about having Morning Glory flowers, so I took some new photos one morning while they were still in bloom, and printed them to add. Getting closer to having the space filled…

Testlayout15-17

Now what to do with the upper left corner….. Sky?? Too stark… Took my Water Road house photo into Photoshop and changed the sky to blue and some added green tree leaves to the photo, printed it onto fabric…might work… Those pink Daisies stick out… the Hydrangeas upper left aren’t working….

Testlayout24-25

Hmmmm… Daisies at the base of the old shed…. few more holes filled…. Peony flowers don’t grow sideways… cut the flowers apart and repositioned them… added a couple more small ones… Hydrangeas still stick out….

Testlayout26

Hydrangeas kicked out…. Maybe ready for fusing?.?.?  If you look close, you can see lots of yellow headed pins. I now let it sit over night and looked at it the next morning, still looks OK…. later in the day… Time to fuse….

Look MA No Pins

All fused to the backing paper!! No more pins! I had to do a bit of cutting out of fabric pieces under light colored flowers. Now I have to figure out what I am going to do as far as quilting and stitching on it…. Probably clear thread to hide the stitching and not take away from the flowers.

Testlayout30

Still deciding whether I will border this a little or not… A narrow black border photoshopped in. I am running out of time for finishing this… I have entered it into my local quilt guild’s quilt show coming up the last weekend of this month…. just less than two weeks and counting…. hopefully the worst is over…. One problem…. fairly minor, I thought this would end up bigger than it is, but adding more than a tiny border just didn’t seem to look right. I guess I’ll just let the gals in charge of the show know what the final size will be…. I’m not the only one who enters unfinished quilts Having the deadline, gives me a reason to keep working on this and not cover it up and forget about it.

Flower Garden Finished

Well, here it is…. The finished quilt.  Bordered with a narrow black border and quilted with clear thread. The photo here may not show the quilting really well, but there is a lot of it!