Piquant Progress
Piquant:
1. agreeably pungent or sharp in taste or flavor; pleasantly biting or tart
2. agreeably stimulating, interesting, or attractive
Doesn’t that word just make your mouth feel a little strange, but good? I’m working on my projects this weekend and am faced with a little sense of this odd flavor treat as I work on my “Onion” for the Salsa series. I did something a little different from my Tomato and Tomatillos on this piece. Rather than having everything be freehand machine applique, I put a layer of organza for the sliced face of the onion and just sewed in the lines of the layers of the onion. This gives it a translucent, shiny appearance, like a real onion.
Now that I have the onion finished, I need to make the background on which to applique it. I’m a little unsure how I’m going to do the trapunto on this one, as it has a real sense of depth with each onion behind the other. I’ll have to think on that. I should have it finished in the next couple days and will post the rest of the pictures from the process of making it.
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I’m also finally starting to get my Waterfall quilt UFO pieced together. I’m planning to try our a quilt-as-you-go method, per Leah Day from her Freemotion Quilting Project. I’ve put together these two rows and plan to quilt 2 rows together at a time. I’ve been thinking I’d use Leah’s “Mesh Curtain” design to quilt this, but I’m a little worried that it will be too busy or will dominate the quilt, making the color shifts and curved pieces less noticeable. Any thoughts or suggestions on how I should quilt it?
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Oh, I like the onion! So you sew it on one piece of fabric, cut it out and then sew the applique onto another one. Would it not work if you made it on its background? And if not, why not?
And the Waterfall quilt is coming along beautifully.
working with those fabrics looks so difficult but amazing. I've had a waterfall motif tossing around in my head ever since my son visited the Igauzu Falls in Argentina last month. I like where yours is headed.
Beautiful work!
I don't have any ideas but that waterfall quilt is just amazing!
I think that mesh curtain design would be good if done in a blending thread (instead of contrasting) to make the squares look more sinuous instead of square. Not at all as close as Leah quilts, though, but larger and farther apart. Just MHO, and seeing the actual quilt may make me change my mind. It is looking fabulous!
ohmigosh – I LOVE the onion! beautiful work and using the organza to add shine is a great idea~
I love all the way you've built up texture in the onion and I think your waterfall is wonderful. I think the mesh curtain fmq might flatten out the sense of movement, though, and make the colour shifts and curved pieces less noticeable, as you suggest, so I'd incline towards more simple organic wavy lines. Having said that, I'm a complete beginner at this so that's not a response based on any knowledge or experience. I'm looking forward to seeing what you decide to do with it 🙂
I actually start with printing a picture on fabric, which helps me with gradations of shading in the thread painting. Also, when you do such extreme threadwork/embroidery, even in an embroidery hoop, it causes the fabric to shrink up a bit (or even a lot, depending on the completed size of the embroidery.) Therefore, you would likely get wrinkling and unevenness in the background fabric, if you did the piece directly on the background. Thanks!
Thank-you. The fabrics do some of the work for you. I'd love to see your waterfall ideas as well as your son's photos you use for inspiration!
I'm thinking I'll make a few practice squares and piece them together, then practice different quilting designs on them, before I get started. Sometimes the best thing is to test it out before you start on the actual piece. Thanks for your thoughts!
I like where you're going with this. The question I would have is how to get a thread to blend when I'm doing vertical rows. Or perhaps I should use numerous thread colors to match through the many different colors/values. I'm going to try doing some testing before I make a decision. Thank-you1