WORK IN PROGRESS

The troublesome design I've been struggling with over the last month is now on its way to completion.  I always tell my students to be flexible, let the quilt tell you where it wants to go....easier said than done.

I saw the delightful phrase below in a magazine and immediately knew it'd be a fun quilt to make featuring a margarita glass with 'bead' salt on the rim.

My problem started because I didn't have enough background fabric.  I intended to make 4 Mexican style paper cutouts with fabric to hang on a string above the center design.  Of course I knew the piece should have more height, but I just didn't have any more of this fabric so I decided to worry about that later. 

And worry it was.....I swear I stuck every piece of fabric I own onto my design wall, trying to come up with a clever border treatment.  My PTA group gave me some suggestions....all good, but I couldn't quite make them work with the fabrics I have.  I realize there ARE fabric stores....but since I was snowbound these last two days.....I plugged along trying to find a solution NOW.

As you can see, I opted for a pieced border of brightly colored fabrics.

Now I felt the border nearly overpowered the central design so I fused fabric circles in the center and border to integrate them.  (If I'd have had fabric paint in the appropriate colors, I would have stenciled the circles instead.....ya there are craft stores too that carry this merchandise....I was into the NOW mode.)  My feet were sore as I took for what seemed like hours, moving these stupid little circles (which took ages to cut out too) around on my design wall. 

Once I was satisfied it dawned on me that moving the piece to the ironing board & keeping the circles in place for fusing would be a problem.  Yippie.....out of the depths of one of my drawers I pulled out this Clover mini iron.  It worked like a charm to secure them while the project was still on the wall.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to quilt it.  I love to hand quilt....but not through batiks....so I'll have to come up with a plan that doesn't require free-motion machine quilting...since I haven't mastered that yet.  The border is actually not lopsided as shown in this cropped photo....I got too enthusiastic with Photoshop.