Friday, June 28, 2013

Test Run

I've been testing out the Celtic Bubbles quilting design on a batting sample today. The machine was threaded with black thread, so black thread is what I used, making it easy to see what I was doing.  My initial try is on the right, and once done, I realized the spirals are much larger than in the example from my directions. They really make a statement and are the wrong proportion to act as background for my hands. Even if done in matching thread, I think they would overwhelm the hands. I tried again on the other half of the sample, better I think, but I was surprised at how difficult it was to keep the spirals small.


I took a break for lunch, and upon entering the studio again, I saw my sample from this direction. I had been thinking about how those large and small areas could compliment each other, making a really exciting wholecloth background, and when seen from this orientation, it started looking like a landscape - big hills on the bottom, cloud-filled sky on top. As if I didn't have enough options to consider just with thread choice, now I am wondering if I should quilt my narrow background a bit like this. It will be a little narrower than the batting sample and about 20 inches long. Yeah, I love that there are so many ways a pattern can be used, hate having to decide which would be best for this one (not to mention how many other ideas for different quilts are being generated). And here I thought my hardest decision would be choosing between one or the other of blue thread or just going with invisible thread. Argh! Comments welcome.

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