Clue #6 (sans Stars) and Finished

Linking to Val’s Tuesday Archives where the theme is circles.(Button in sidebar) The large ones are inset; the small ones hand appliqued.

In the absence of thread, I worked on the Quilted Snail’s mystery quilt. Both need to be finished at the same time, so changing the order is no problem, yet. But I’m not thrilled with Wait and see if it is a “little bit delayed” and no clue of what they call “a little bit.” But back to the mystery quilt.

Finished top

You may remember that clue #5 asked for three squares on three blocks. Well I managed three, but only on two blocks. Close enough for me. I meant it to look like light reflecting on a sphere . . . it doesn’t.  I think it needs to be lower to give the 3-D effect. Next time.  I did like putting each color on the bottom sphere though.

Here’s where you can help.  Clue #4 asked for meaning to be expressed either with words or symbolically, and I chose symbolic.  How do you read it?  (There is no right or wrong answer here–it is what you see, and whatever you see will be helpful to me.) I’ve actually changed my thinking as it has progressed.

Clue #6 asked for a rectangle on two blocks and six stars.  The three squares are surrounded by rectangles, and at least two are on two squares. Stars?  Time to depart from the clues and take back ownership. The mystery has been fun, and it has definitely allowed for more maker control than most mystery quilts.

I tried something new for finishing.  Usually when I don’t want to frame a quilt with border or binding I face it. But that has given me trouble with the corners. I tried stitching front to back before quilting for a knife-edge finish. When quilting I did get a couple small tucks–a problem with finishing first.

Some suggestions I played with: use an odd number of items.  Instead of moving a circle into the middle block to make a group of three, I added a ghost circle in the quilting.  Instead of creating one big spiral of circles I created two crossing each other and tried to guide with quilting.

Now, a design concept that is problematic to me. A critique frequently heard in the master class was about lines leading off the design. Now, my eyes never leave a design, so I don’t quite have the concept. It is difficult to correct for a flaw I am not sure I see. I’m thinking this one has the potential in two places, as best I can tell. So I tried to control it with quilting.  Let me know (a) if it really had potential to lead the eye off and (b) if so, if quilting is enough to stop it.

Here’s the quilting. 

That’s the best I could do for the time of day I took the picture.    Edited to insert better daytime photo.

Shows a bit better from the back.

The batting allows for 10-inch unquilted spaces. The larger full circles are 7 inches.

Here are some detail shots.  edited to delete detail shots since detail now visible.

Of interest in thread use: all the quilting took 5 bobbins of thread; the stippling around the smaller circles alone took one whole bobbin. I’ll know to have plenty of thread on hand if I want to do a lot of stippling!

Remember to comment: What “message” do you see?  And talk about the design problem of leading an eye off the “page.”

Linking with Quilted Snail. And since I haven’t had a finish for quite a while,  linking with LAFF, TGIFF, and Finish it up Friday. And linking with art quilts at Off the Wall Friday. And for quilting fun, Free Motion Mavericks. And I crush big time on finishes, so linking with Main Crush Mondays. Here’s hoping others agree with my judgement that this improv mystery allowed enough of my decisions to count as my own.  Linking with Creative Goodness. Check out the linky posts for some inspiration. And just in case knife edge counts as binding, linking with Binding Blitz.

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