Quarantine Quilting – Week 3, scattered, organizing and playing

I started thinking I did not have much to say this week but a peek at my photos for the week showed otherwise. I have not completed anything but I have worked really hard all week in bits and pieces:

This drives me crazy! Working on several projects at a time gives me a mess. It didn’t stay this way for long, that’s just how I roll.

I started playing with screen material. You know I love me a good sheer fabric, been working with sheers for a long time. About 10 years ago I played with screening material but never got anywhere. I had a thought:

This was a start but of course, way too stark and plain. This is my accidental COVID quilt (did not intend it to be, started it before the virus went viral – pun intended). I want to express the contrast that I feel between the joy of having time to play, with the horror of the virus. I tried white screen:

Ewww! It seemed like such a good idea, but it was a no go.

Would fringe work, or snipping out a few rows and unraveling, almost like hardanger?

Interesting but I don’t see it on this project.

Free motion quilting?

It looks better than the photo, but for this project, I think it looks out of place in the border.

I tried different ideas in border:

I put some black fabric behind the experimental sections. If it were shown, it would hang atop black drape. The bottom “blue skies” does not work at all.

The left side is red orange bougainvillea printed on silk organza, sandwiched in between 2 layers of screen:

Kinda like this but not yet sure.

Or how about cutting screen like it was a quilt block (on the right)?

The thread on top is just to see how thread might look stitched on. Kind of like this too, still not sure. I need to think on this one.

There was lots of experimenting on the table cloth. First, which will be my background? This was my initial plan:

but I accidentally did this:

I prefer this. The color looks better with the tablecloth in real life. The colors in the tablecloth are not current colors so it is very difficult to match colors.

If I’m going to go with the darker color, I need to figure out how to make the rickrack pop:

I thought a line of stitching outside of the rickrack would define it and make it pop. Was I wrong:

The line of stitching actually deadens the rickrack. Who knew? I think by the time I quilt that border the rickrack will pop. I think I will need something linear with all that fluff in the center. I played with this possibility:

I’ve worked hours on those French Knots by machine and I’m still working on it here. I was too lazy to put the right bobbin thread in so those light colored bits would go away. I LOVE the dimension of these, sitting high atop the quilt, more so than a French Knot by hand.

And there was a little bit of reorganizing done too. I like to keep track of my UFO’s lest I forget them. My 8′ x 8′ design wall should be plenty big, but it’s not! I l keep my UFO’s pinned to a section of my design wall to remind me of all the wonderful things that I could play with. They began to take over my wall.

In the simplest of moves, I took the UFO’s that were current and put them at the very bottom of the wall. That way they are totally visible yet out of the way and I get more wall back. Perfect.

The rest of my UFO’s reside in their own little section, talking to me lest I forget them!

And silly as this sounds, this new little rolling cart rocks my world:

It’s sturdy but rolls super easily on the vinyl floor. It can rest in front of my design wall and when I need a full view, it just rolls aside. It adds a lot of function to that space and every bit of space in my studio counts.

Another week of lock down and creativity – I hope I have something close to completion by next week! I always link up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday so check it out.