Progress

I had a very productive weekend -- and that's not even counting the mountains of stuff we cleared out of the kids' rooms. I got two small birthday gifts completed and mailed off. I paid for and printed out a labels using "click and ship" on the US post office website. So slick! I didn't even have to go to the Post Office. A very good thing. I also finished up the twin baby girl commissions. You'll see pictures of all of those items soon.

And then I had to work on Long Skinny.

You remember my local art quilt group issued a challenge to flood the "large applique" catagory at the upcoming Dallas Quilt Show by making quilts that are at least 72 inches long and not wider than 18 inches. Vertical! I must say, I would have been much more motivated if we were working horizontal. Then I could have done a landscape, but I'm playing by the "rules" instead.

Here is a (terrible) shot of the in progress work. This was taken after I unsewed the awful stems I had put on the flowers.

For the (now-trashed) stems, I used purchased bias binding and I did some hand writing and rubber stamping on them. I debated about ripping them off, but eventually they had to go. Mostly, they were the wrong color. And I also knew they would be a bitch to quilt over.

For me this is a struggle I often deal with on pieces which are being created for a specific purpose. Do I make compromises about the creative vision or do I just move forward? Which is more important: perfection or completion? Of course, it's always somewhere in between.

Then I figured it was time to start quilting. I haven't done much heavy free-motion quilting lately. So, this seemed the time. I needed new motifs so I checked out a couple of Klimt books from the library and did some sketching. Many of Klimt's works utilize "long skinny" composition elements.

You can see some of the quilting above. I like that oval shape with the parralell lines down the middle.

More sketching. More quilting.
More quilting.
I'm moving forward. I am not confident about the order in which I'm putting the whole thing together. I plan to do some more surface embellishment, so it seems a bit odd to do that AFTER the quilting. I have four organza flower shapes ready to fuse. You might be able to see the yellowish one on the bottom of the top picture. It's hanging off the edge right by the chair leg. We'll see.

I am confident that I don't like working this big. Too much to stuff under the machine. Too big too fit on the design wall. Shapes too large to accomodate small details like hand embroidery or small embellishments. (I know lots of people do big stuff with wonderful small details... but I don't.)

I'm also not feeling the color scheme or the subject matter. How did I get myself into this? On the other hand, I do feel motivated to finish it. And I think I mostly like it --- even if I can't put my finger on why.