Translate

Friday, March 7, 2014

Working on the Pond

The ducks, cattails and water lilies were all floating on the pond in my last blog. I was happy with its appearance.
I fused everything in place, while still pinned to my design wall covered with white flannel.  Then decided, I needed a little more green to spill out into the border.  So I added two leaves in the lower right corner, you'll see that they are still pinned in place.

This last addition will be fused and the composition will be complete.

I've been thinking about a title for this quilt, and so far nothing great has come to mind.  Then it came to me:  On Ginkgo Pond.  The ducks will be Ethel and Norman, the main characters from the movie On Golden Pond.  I loved that movie. 

If I complete my thread work well, Ethel and her buddy should float around in their beautiful pond forever.  Now what should I quilt, embroider or applique?  After I have spent my entire career writing and teaching machine embroidery and quilting, I am over saturated with heavy thread work. I'm going to leave more open spaces so there will be texture changes across the surface of the finished quilt.

Ann's opinion:  I just visited a small show of art quilts, and we are over stitching everything.  Why?  I guess because we can; and historically the judges have always awarded more prizes to those quilts that are heavily quilted.  From my point of view, we're not allowing the batting to add dimension to the surface because everything is quilted too closely. Or maybe I'm just tired and grouchy!

Next time I'll show you some closeups of the thread work.

Ann Fahl

3 comments:

Bev Longford said...

I think it began with the advent of long arm quilting and I too am not a fan of overquilting.
Bev Longford

Barb H said...

I like the name for your quilt because I also loved "On Golden Pond." And while I love the look of over-quilting on the quilt show pieces, I prefer less quilting on my own projects.

annieQ said...

Bev and Barb, I agree with you both.