It almost seemed as though the making of a Japanese scroll just wore me out. Actually, it's not far from the truth. D finally managed to share one of his colds with me, and I went down for the count. Yesterday I started feeling better so I decided to go back to working on my current art quilt project.
The first thing I needed to do was set the background so I went about getting those background pieces together. One of those pieces was a checkerboard made of one-inch squares. As I was pressing it, I forgot one of the basic tenets of working with batiks - especially dark ones. Beware of water. Yup, I spritzed that checkerboard, applied heat, and watched the dye spread from the charcoal batik square into the white square. Showing it to D I said I thought I could cover the resulting ugly brownish stain with something or . . . He stopped me and said, "You'll do it over."
He was right. Today, I decided that the ugly brown stain was a gift. I hadn't been thrilled with that checkerboard though I still loved the idea. Something had to be changed. Today I spent all my time remaking that checkerboard. It was the scale that didn't work for me so I changed the size. Now that checkerboard is made up of half-inch squares.
It took all day because, as I discovered, that's no easy task. Those tiny little pieces just skitter all over the place! Okay, that's an exaggeration because one doesn't sew separate squares; one sews strips and prays that one is seeing the quarter-inch seam allowance accurately. The new checkerboard is finished, and although not perfect, it is much better.
My next sewing day on this project will see me sewing the background to the batting and backing. Then the fun of adding the details will begin! So what started as a mistake turned out to be a gift.
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