Slow Progress is still Progress

The title is what I feel about my Phoenix quilt.  I finished the quilt base.  The finished bird had been cut from the original quilt when I saw I would have to do it over so it has thread painting on top, white batting in the middle and black backing on the back.  The problem is that the white batting won't be completely hidden when I sew the bird down to the quilt base.  Completely unacceptable!  I pondered the problem for three months as I was quilting the base, aka background, and decided that I would color the edges with Inktense pencils.

Awful white batting shows at the edges

TIP:  Got a problem?  Ponder, think, lay awake at night, talk to others.  Give it time and you will figure out what to do.  Try out some ideas.  Sometimes you may decide to throw it out, but I find that happens very rarely in my sewing room.  I did cut the bird out of the first quilt, but I saved the background pieces and used them as testers along the way.

Oh, major tedium to paint all those edges.  I figured it would take the rest of my life...not literally.  I put up a card table and got out all the equipment, started an audio book, and set to work.  I took a reasonably sharp pencil of the appropriate color, dipped it into fabric medium and painted over the edges where the batting shows with the dampened pencil.  Fantastic!  It looks wonderful and I am soooooo happy.  There are some cut threads, which was unavoidable, and the black backing shows a bit of fraying, but all that will be covered as I thread paint the bird to the background.  As I went along I used a hair dryer to heat-set the pencil paint to make it permanent, and to prevent my rubbing color onto the top of the piece as I worked.  It took about 4.5 hours, which is a pretty short lifetime.  Next, I put the bird between two silicone sheets and ironed it from the front and from the back for more heat setting.

Edges painted

TIP:  Anything you do in life has its times of tedium.  What can I say?  Suck it up and dive in.  Pretty soon it will be done and you will wonder why you dreaded it.

I noticed some water soluble thread that I had used for basting months ago so I sprayed water on it to get rid of it.  Three days now I have done the water treatment, but bits of the thread still show.  It is getting better, but I know now that the bird does not bleed color so I will be able to give the finished quilt a good soak when it is all done and ready to block.  The wash-away thread should disappear, but if not a Micron pen will hide it.

I was not able to work on the quilt while the bird was wet, so I started drawing out some ideas for a whole cloth quilt.  This was very relaxing, and though I am not yet completely happy with it, I can let it sit and come back to it later with new eyes.

TIP:  I find that letting ideas percolate for awhile leads to a better finished product.  I rarely rush into a new project, and it is fun to know that something is ready when the current project is complete.

Now I have three projects ready to start and many more in my brain.

Sew a happy seam this week.

Opportunities

Have you ever looked at your quilt and said, "I wish I had done that differently.  I have such a good idea, but it didn't come to me soon enough.  I wish...., but not enough to take it out and do it over."  Every now and then you might have that opportunity for improvement, but I guarantee you will not be happy at first.

I have been quilting along on my Phoenix bird, but I looked at it differently when I laid it out and showed it to my daughter.  The bird is beautiful by itself.  The rest of the quilt looks and feels like warped cardboard.  Oh dear!  This is not going to be good enough to show and none of my photos show how bad it is.  I can't imagine it blocking out.  It won't even be good enough to give to my sweet granddaughter who drew the design.  Realization.  Devastation.  Destruction of denial.

I have been going through past issues of Machine Quilting Unlimited, and serendipitously came across an article by Jayne Bentley Gaskins, "Taking Trapunto to the Limit." I looked at it months ago, but forgot it completely because it didn't apply to my quilting plans at that moment.  She made a beautiful parrot, but she thread painted it separately then appliquéd it to the background by thread painting the edges down so they melded with the previous work on the bird.  She also stuffed the bird heavily (trapunto) with polyfill so it sticks out significantly from the quilt.  One of her points was that the heavy thread painting dramatically shrinks the fabric, which is exactly what happened to me.  I knew that would happen, but thought I had prepared for it adequately with two layers of stabilizer.  Instead, I was left with an unmanageable volume of fabric around the edges so I quilted the background heavily, which took up the excess, but the whole thing ripples like a bad storm at sea.  On the sewing machine it looked ok.  Laid out on a flat surface it is hopeless.

TIP:  Sometimes there is only so much you can do before it is time to throw in the towel, but what a great opportunity to rectify mistakes and make a truly magnificent quilt.  Wipe away the tears and start planning.  Maybe you'll feel better if you move on to a new project, but do move on.  None of us is perfect.

I had to accept that I now have an opportunity to fine tune the quilt and try some new methods.  My cup is quickly moving from half empty to half full and I am ready with new plans.  I thought I could cut out the bird (batting and all) and thread paint the edges down to a new, fully quilted background, so I tried it on one of the old testers that I had laying around.  The bared edges flaunted the layer of white batting.  Ick!

Cut out feathers

OK, how about painting the edges with Inktense pencils?  Great idea.  So I tried it out:

Painted edges.

Better, but not great.  Next I tried stitching the feathers (with painted edges) to another tester piece, which was layered for quilting, and fooled around with some stitching.  Ah, that looks pretty good with just a straight stitch run back an forth along the edges.

Stitched down

Not bad.  DH liked it and so did I.  So...I sat down and cut out the whole bird trying to avoid cutting stitches on the outside edges.  I did cut a few, but figured I could fix that when I stitched the bird down, but then I found another problem.  The back neck of the bird looked like he had been slammed by a rock and had a major bump.  The black backing was also badly frayed after being handled so much.  That's when I threw in the towel.

I ordered light weight canvas and Misty Fuse and I am ready to start completely over.  I will fuse fabric pieces for the feathers to the canvas and thread paint the bird.  I still have to work out the potential of heavy fraying with canvas and how to handle it.  I will do all the quilting for the background separately from the thread painting.  I will then cut out the bird and appliqué it onto the "finished" quilt.  I am already excited about it.  I kept all my pattern pieces and guides so I am ready to go.  With all that done, plus many hours of practice at thread painting I am optimistic that all will go well and faster than first time around.  I've got my mother's bulldog gene!

TIP:  Practice may not make perfect, but it will make better.  I am counting on that.

An apropos quote from "Art and Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland:"

"The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars....even the failed pieces are essential"

Sew a happy seam this week.