Sequins Here, Sequins There, Sequins Everywhere!

For the background fabric for my delphinium piece I was planning on using a dark ultramarine blue, but I found a blue-green fabric in my stash that had some floral embroidered shapes on it with sequins. I loved the way this fabric color made the flowers and pots "pop", and wanted to use it. It is a fabric that I purchased years ago because I thought it looked so cool. I think it is intended for use in making saris, but I am not sure. These two photos show the fabric and you can see the embroidered floral shapes and sequins.

I thought the sequins on this fabric would make for an added level of interest in this quilt. However, when I placed the flowers and pots against this fabric and held it up to a mirror to look at it, all I saw was the reflection from the sequins. It was a very distracting element.  I also asked some of my art quilting friends and they agreed that it drew the eye away from everything else in the piece. I either had to remove the sequins or find another background fabric. Here you can see how the sequins show on the background. It is just too much light reflection for an area that is supposed to be "background".

Well I could never find a fabric with the same shade of blue green and decided I needed to use this fabric from my stash. That means removing the sequins, which didn't seem that difficult since it was just a single stitch to remove from the back of the fabric, right? Wrong! They were stitched on with some strange industrial sewing machine stitch that went around the sequin a couple of different ways. I used my seam ripper to attack this stitching from all angles, and finally the sequins started coming off...and off... and off!  I did my best to control these popping sequins, but they have a mysterious way of sticking to everything they come close to and I had sequins all over the place. I vacuumed, swept and hand picked them up, but sequins are still showing up from I don't know where! 

Nevertheless I persevered and finished the sequin removal operation. I cut the background fabric up in slices and restitched it to distribute the embroidered areas around in a more pleasing manner. It was a bit of work but I was happy with the end product after it was all said and done. The last photo shows the background, sans sequins, cut up and re-sewn.