I decided to add the daisies from the embroidery machine to my little quilt top. I had embroidered them onto a piece of white cotton, which stood out against those brights and made the quilt blindingly ugly! So, last night, late at night when sleep just wouldn’t come, I got up and pulled out my Caran D’Ache Neocolor II Watercolor crayons.
When I first got these crayons, I wasn’t sure I liked them. The bleed was hard for me to control, and the colors looked pretty flat when I was done. Then I got a chance to see Susan Edmonson demonstrate her technique for using them. Two of the things I picked up from her were to use textile medium to control the bleed, and the more color variations you use, the better. That really helped perk up my coloring from drab and blah to having some life! I really appreciate when you go to quilt shows and members give demonstrations of techniques and share their knowledge!
But back to this piece. I contemplated using greens for the background of the embroidery, but decided that would be a bit too predictable for me. Green in the embroidery, green in the background. So, thinking I needed to blend with the colors and bring out the green somehow, I used 5 different blues and 3 different greens in a crosshatch design to shade the background. Then I fused the embroidery on (and afterward noticed the bleed into the flower?), and edge stitched it down with my sewing machine.
The result:
And a detail shot:
I deliberately placed this embroidery in the lower right quadrant. I plan to anchor it with quilting and spread the quilting upward and bending back over the design. So, next comes the quilting stage. I’m thinking I’m going to carry the bouquet of daisies into the quilting design but place them like they are growing in a field, and I’ll use mostly greens to quilt with? What do you think?