Progress Report...Yellow Silk

Last weekend I indulged in 3 days of sewing with good friends.  I was not only able to thoroughly enjoy their company but got some quality time in on my silk wholecloth.

Prior to my quilting weekend I had everything "roughed in" and spent my time filling in all the details.  It seems to be taking forever...I quilt for an hour and  have just a few inches filled in.

I thought everything was looking fine until I put it up on my design wall and I didn't like it at all.  The main medallion designs looked lumpy and didn't have that fine detail I was looking for.  sigh.  Who would have thought that something a little over 1/4" wide looked lumpy?  By adding a very fine echo detail inside each medallion and around the center piece it looked much better.

I still thought this space looked lumpy and I tried a small bead which didn't really work.  I finally decided upon a small French knot in each space and that seems to help...still up in the air on this one.

I was so focused on working on the middle I blew off the border.  I stress to all my students that you MUST equally quilt a wholecloth...never start in one spot and then work your way out.  Your piece will twist and bunch up. Well, I know better and it started to happen on this piece.  I was quilting so heavily in the middle my outside edges where the feather borders were going were twisting and puckering. (I only had one side of feather border done...the other three were the spines only). 

Soooo, I've gone in and quilted all the feathers all the way around and trust me, I have had to do some major tensioning and easing to get this to lay flat again.    You can see the poof I'm trying to wiggle in.  Feathers are a great design for doing this...you end up with fat, fluffy feathers.

In addition to working on this piece (quilting time 4-6 am each morning), I am rewriting my handbooks and have started with my Backgrounds and Feathers.  I have an Heirloom Feathers/Backgrounds class coming up on Saturday so this is a great deadline for getting this done.  I had my "Beginners Backgrounds" handbook but have rewritten it to be my "Heirloom Backgrounds".  It has gone from a 20+ page handbook to nearly 40 pages.  Those of you who have paid for updates of your handbooks will have some goodies coming your way by February!

Hope you are all surviving the mad holiday rush before Christmas...things are good here in Chico!

Hugs, Cindy :)