Originally blogged on Wednesday, 13 April 2005
Last night my answer to Mary’s question about how I approach embellishing crazy quilts was that ‘It Just Happens’ …well I thought that it did just happen but talk about Live and Learn…Blogging my dress and explaining what I am thinking as I make it is teaching me more about how I think than I have learnt in 20 years of just stitching…Today my sister, Janice came over, she is not a crazy quilter but has a good design eye and is always happy to brainstorm any problems that I have and today there was several embellishments that I sought her opinion of….After Janice left and with Mary’s question in the back of my mind I realized that It Doesn’t just happen…When doing the embroidery I decide the detail as I go but my decisions are influenced by knowing the overall effect that I want to achieve and stitch, thread type, colour etc are chosen with that in mind…As the piece nears completion, I stand back from it and work out what it needs so that the finished piece will be balanced and work as a whole piece and I actually start to plan the embellishments, which is what I did with Janice this afternoon.
I didn’t get much stitched tonight so I will tell you the ‘plan’ and we will see how much it changes as I stitch it tomorrow….Firstly that dark fabric that I was covering the other night was still to big so I cut some of it off …what to replace it with? The whale fabric maybe but I wandered if I wanted to use it just to be contrary so I looked for something else, I found another plain fabric that would work but I kept looking at the whales, I needed an unbiased opinion which I got from my Son, he to has a good eye and has often helped me by giving another eyes view…I held it far enough away from him that he couldn’t see that it was whales on the fabric, I showed him the lighter coloured fabric first and he said ‘needs something darker’ I showed him the whale fabric and he said perfect colour, so the Whales are back…Janice’s opinion was biased, she likes whales…
Above the flower trail I have added a dark pink Lace heart because the pinkish lace at the top still needed more balancing.
Across the bottom 2 patches I will use a dark pink ribbon, tied in a bow with long tails stitched in place with colonial knots…as well as bringing a little more pink into the lower part of the block, the twisted tails add a feeling of movement and will lead the eye around from the bottom of the flower trail and back up towards the top of the block.
Yesterday I made this fan to cover and soften the square angular piecing just to the right of the centre of the block ….It is lovely and stand out Fancy and after discussing fancy embellishments last night I decided not to use it, it will look great on my Box Top…..When Janice was here we started trying different lace motifs on the spot, I call this auditioning embellishments and it is when the crazy piece will talk to you which is what it did when Janice put a couple of the little flowers there, a little cluster of them looks as good as the fan and work better than the fan because by repeating the flowers I am not adding a new fancy element and I can scatter them up over the lace and onto the dark patch which will break the solid area of the pink lace and add movement.
And I have a plan for the top left seam but you will have to wait until tomorrow for it because I am going to bed now…………..
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