I had a set of four small (8 x 10") art quilts resurface in my mass of unfinished projects. I started them over a year ago in an attempt to have some small impulse-buy type pieces to sell at art fairs. They were cast aside as I wasn't happy with the way that I had assembled them.
Image and designs copyright RPS
I had pillowcase bound these two after doing some, but not all of the intended embellishing. I keep running into problems with embellishing before quilting through all three layers. I don't always like putting a heavy quilting design on my work, as I want the fabric itself to be the focus. I will quilt some pieces of fabric in these collages, and I'll add hand stitching in others, but I want some pieces of fabric left unadorned. I'll sew along the seams to quilt, but here I've put thick trims in many places where I didn't want to quilt inside the fabric pieces. It won't be a good idea to sew over the trims again in the quilting process.
Image and designs copyright RPS
The piece on the left in the above image has some hand stitching on it, and then I pillowcase bound it. I should have added some trims along the seams before binding, so that the trims along the outer edged would have been neatly tucked in the binding seams. The one on the right is just a pieced top with no quilting or embellishing yet. I still have a chance to get it right on that one.
I am stuck on these small pieces, should I pitch the ones that I have embellished but could have assembled better? How much time should I give to fixing them before giving up? Finally, I 'm still uncertain as to how to combine all the different techniques that I want to use in a sequence that results in good craftsmanship. I am going to think about this for another week, then I must decide to fix them or move on.
