Attack of the Drunken Monkeys

Finished the New York Beauty wallhanging that’s my “Scrap Attack” project a few days ago, and have given up on waiting for better weather/light for pictures. The sun will reappear one of these days and if I get better pics I’ll add them to Flickr. For now here are indoor-with-crappy-light shots.

This is my first paper foundation-pieced project, and I’m delighted with how precisely those crown-arcs came out. From the get-go, though, I’d planned to minimize accuracy (which can feel rigid) and play up the wild-wonky aspects of this piece. Loosey-goosey spirals in the center circles seemed like a good way to go, so I loaded up the machine with the brightest multi-colored King Tut variegated quilting thread available at my LQS (color #921: “Cleopatra”), let down the feed dogs, and had at it.

Halfway through the first spiral, I thought I’d have to rip it all out and come up with a better idea. I had in mind loose and wonky, not something that looked like the work of drunken monkeys. I’m the sort of quilter who rips out stitching only under dire distress, so I shrugged off the creeping unease and let the monkeys have their way. Now I love it.

Here’s a shot of the whole thing:

Here’s the back. I’ve had this fabulous leaf print for about a year and a half, and am delighted to be using it for something (and that I still have a nice piece left):

There’s no label on it yet. I think I’ll just write on one of those pale leafy bits.

It’s 25″x44.5″ which is a perfect size for where I thought it would go — above the toilet tank in “the beige coffin” toilet enclosure in the master bath — but Mr. de Hilo is negotiating. I think a space that we are in and out of multiple times every day deserves to be as pretty as possible, and in this case said space is a windowless beige closet that could really use some life and color. No disrespect to Miss NYB, but I made her with that  space in mind. Mr. de Hilo thinks she deserves better. Could be he feels confronting it up close several times a day would be too much, but he swears he really likes it. So it looks like we’ll be going with Plan B: the tall wall between sink and shower areas, which ought to have a full-length mirror on it but doesn’t. That location provides the same “see it often” advantage, plus it will also be visible from the master bedroom.

Which is a fine compromise, and means I now have to come up with something else for the smallest, blandest, beige-est space imaginable. I already have some ideas…

Tagged as: art quilt, free motion quilting, paper foundation piecing, scrap quilts