Another quilt top brought to the completed stage! I'm guessing this is a close to a monochrome color palette you'll ever see around here and I'm happy for the experience. It's very intriguing {in hindsight} to build a quilt completely around the applique too. Will have to think on more those possibilities for the future!
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| Blue Plumes a finished quilt top! |
In the end, I left off the applique pieces which would have overlapped the top border. No matter how I fussed with the pieces, they just always came off as awkward looking when viewing the entire quilt. As a compromise to coming up with a 'finished' look, I migrated some applique elements to the corners. It's not obvious, but those pieces are actually two or more seam allowances larger than the rest of the applique in the quilt.
Once I placed the lighter blue petal in the center of every corner 'flower', then it all just sort of clicked into place.*ahh.. Sometimes it feels like nothing will ever work and then you'll find me pulling the quilt top out for weeks, trying this, trying that. It's a tricky thing, playing with color in borders. You never want it to overshadow the rest of the quilt, but rather use it in order to draw the eye around the quilt and provide a sort of balance. I love using it as an extension as to where the energy is being directed in a quilt. Border work can definitely help change the dialog. In this case, it firmly takes the power away from the very lightest blocks--they were shining a little
too brightly--and says, 'No! Look at all of us, we're important too!'
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| Such a soft, different look for me.... |
I have a feeling this top will look better after some quilting. Don't they always? And I'd apologize for the rumpled looking effort on display, the bad pictures and the various bits of threads you always find in my pictures, but no. I won't.
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| So happy I didn't let this idea slide! |
The other night when I went to bed the headboard & foortboard caught my eye--wouldn't that look amazing painted? And I just laughed. If there's time to be painting the headboard, you can believe I'll be quilting instead! As it is, the time it takes for photo shoots, no matter how lame, is generally just flat out annoying. Wait till the kids are out of the house, wait till the light is good, make sure stuff is out of the way in the background, etc. etc. etc. My heart isn't in that part of the process, which is oh-so obvious.*sigh Now you can understand why I'm not leaping over to Instagram. Lots of pictures and little writing? The comparison with other quilty accounts would be deadly....
