Does your studio feel like a refuge or a war zone? I have to admit, mine can be either, but today, it was definitely a refuge, a place to escape to. The "itch to stitch" came back pretty strongly last night, and I worked on a redwork cross panel left over from a class I taught ages ago. Today I couldn't wait to turn my back on computer and lists and responsibilities and get back to work. Not that it went particularly smoothly. Yet that didn't seem to effect my overall feeling of well-being. I just plugged along doing what I needed to do next on Grid 3.
If you click on this picture, you may be able to see what I was playing with. After quilting in all those narrowly spaced lines, I didn't like the way the squares puffed up, so today was my chance to test how to fix that. The three squares show what I tried. The center one is stitched along the inside of the satin stitching only, the bottom one is stitched on the outside only and the top one is stitched on both sides.
I'm still uneasy about using the gold thread to do this. I'd be more comfortable using one of the teal or purple threads. But I am determined to spark this up a bit and have the gold in more than just the horizontal and vertical lines I'll be stitching next. Actually, when you step back, the thread isn't that obvious along the outside.
However, it does show up along the inside.
I liked these version least of all. It would have been ok probably in a thread that blended more, but not this.
So I opted for outside stitching only. I'm still getting some puff, but at least now the squares look more anchored to my eye. And in the end, the stitching may be more for me than for the piece. It sure is subtle at this point.
And then I think I thought way too hard about how to "pull this all together." I'm not planning any additional quilting in the areas that don't have a square appliqued to them, but should I go ahead and run a line of gold stitching as if there were? I'm thinking not, but what do you think?
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