Visiting the Country Crossroads Quilters (Modesto) and stalled out on my silk flowers
I spent an enormous amount of time on my blue silk flower project this week. All I have left to do is background fills, bind and sleeve! I was so excited! I am loving this project and the direction it has gone. I felt the taste of victory coming….
I had a plan, thought it was a good one. I’ve got a lot of curve going on there; a grid “always” works well next to curves. But I didn’t want the usual suspects for my grid, I wanted something a little different.
My plan was to pumpkin seed a triangle grid, occasionally leaving a line out to make a diamond. It held such promise! I quilted the design on several practice sandwiches to get the scale right and figure out how to mark triangles. I did hours of homework before committing to the design.
Ahhhh, but this is what 8 hrs of work got me:
See the fill in the upper right? Nope, nope, nope. It competes with the design, does not enhance it. And it is a bear to mark triangles on an already quilted piece (it puffs up and makes it hard to get straight lines). I thought for about 2 seconds of adding tiny beads or an occasional sparkle, but that would be lipstick on a pig.
Soooo, now I need to rip all that out, several hours of work.
Here’s the deal though, I frequently say in class that my motto is “Onward”. By that I mean, most times, when I have some less-than-fabulous quilting, fabric choices, piecing, or design, I will typically take my loss on that piece and leave it in. I’ll fix that problem on the next piece. I will go “Onward” rather than rip out. BUT, if my whole trajectory is wrong, I will rip. This is one of those times. To continue with that abysmal fill would kill the piece. I gotta rip.
In more positive news, I had a wonderful visit to the Country Crossroads Quilters in Modesto, CA. I gave my “Beauty of the Imperfect” lecture, which is always well received and carries an important and encouraging message. Attendance was very good! Ursula handled all my arrangements and I felt so coddled:-)
It took my walk a little later than normal (usually before sunrise) and I caught some beauty. All these photos are of weeds and grasses randomly growing in fallow land. Such beauty there is in weeds:
My “Start With a Square” workshop was fabulous! Get this – all 20 students were present and set up 9 minutes before class! I have never had that happen before – all students showed and were there early. It was a great start to the day.
I get caught up in teaching and do a lousy job of taking photos. We had a wonderful, spacious room at a bowling alley (!). Bowlers have their own culture that seemed in a way parallel to quilters. I parked next to “7PINTIM”.
I’m embarrassed that I took more photos of weeds than my class. Here are a few random shots:
It was a delightful trip to a welcoming guild. I was delighted with the work of the students in class; many were brand new free motion quilters.
Next week it is very likely that I will report in on my comparison of air erasable markers; I am doing testing this week. I’ll be linking up this week’s post:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
Jenny, what about leaving the already quilted area of diamonds and triangles and doing a mix of different background fills on this piece instead of ripping out what you’ve already quilted? I’m thinking of the promotional samples and examples of student work I’ve seen from Bethanne Nemesh’s Breaking Boundaries background fill class: https://bethanne-nemesh.teachable.com/p/breaking-boundaries-with-blended-quilts11. I know that wherever you end up with this piece, it will be fantastic. Oh, and one more suggestion — would a stencil and perhaps chalk facilitate marking that kind of design on a partially quilted piece like this? I feel like I’ve seen triangle grid stencils, not sure which manufacturer though.
Hi Rebecca Grace; thank you for thoughtful suggestions! Chalk anything doesn’t work on this particular project as the chalk will not hold long enough for domestic sit down free motion work. I have done several projects with a mix of grids but even at that, I don’t know that this design will work successfully into the mix. I love Bethanne’s work! I do have a triangle stencil and I find stencils annoying; they don’t mark the actual intersection, the dot where all 3 lines meet. I have to go back and mark that and if I have to do that, I might as well mark on my own. It’s not that bad, parallel lines, with the spacing offset on every other line. I am still pondering what to do with it. It’s taken me 20 yrs to get this far so what is a few more weeks, lol!
I was pretty interested to read about your experience teaching at the Modesto quilt guild, as Modesto is my DH’s hometown and we take a road trip there every summer. For such a large city I’m always surprised how they don’t have a quilt shop anymore. But it sounds like the quilt guild is alive and thriving!
As for your quilted piece, it looks beautiful to me! I’m with Rebecca–leave it in and switch to other background fillers. Just my thoughts…
Funny you should write to go on with the fillers…I got it in better light and decided I liked it and I am continuing with other grid based fillers. Yes, the guild is vibrant!