Secret Garden: Fixing the Cat Block

As in life, as you quilt - you learn. Once again, my quilting adventure this year has taught me some important reminders. Lessons I already knew but didn't follow and new ways of thinking about colour usage. 

First up, my irritating mistake. I thread painted my cat piece for the block on a separate piece of fabric, as a motif shape, and then, when it was halfway done, I put it into position on my actual block background and continued the thread painting. Now, I knew when I did this that I should theoretically use a hoop to stabilize the fabric stretch. But I was so wrapped up in the creative flow, that I just 'winged' it. Oh boy, big mistake. 

The fabric, bunched buckled and threatened to wreck the whole block - a whole day's work! And it's not just the 'day' that's lost, the original creative spark is hard to recapture on the 're-make'. So I was determined to 'fix' it. I unpicked a tiny bit, coaxed it with some re- stretching and finally stabilized the back.

It's acceptable now. Just. But boy am I mad with myself. Such a careless and inexperienced thing to do. Yes, even seasoned quilter's like me need to follow their own advice. This pic below shows the back of the block, stabilized. 

My second learning experience was the use of an introduced pink fabric beyond my chosen pallette for the flower heads. It's much too bright for the quilt and throws out the soft low contrast colour balance. It completely interrupts the flow. 

And when the blocks came together, it was too obvious. 

Something had to be done to tone it down a notch. 

So I'm 'washing' over the bright pink with a white milky wash in thin layers to bring to tone down.

These crayons are Caran D'Ache and this particular series of NeoColour 11 Aquarelle is colour permanent once heat set. You can find a link to these specific crayons on my sidebar if you're interested in playing around with permanent crayon colours.