Happy Fourth of July - the Background...

This post is all about the background and pitcher for this patriotic mini-quilt.

Red, white and blue were my obvious color choices, with red and white ruched flowers in the pitcher. I decided a dark blue would set the red off nicely so I found a piece of blue batik in my stash that would be my primary background.

I've been trying to jazz up my backgrounds more, so I started pondering what to add to this.  I have been fixated on rectangular shapes lately. That is part of the reason I have been doing so many city-scapes. I don't know why, but the stacking of vertical shapes catches my eye and seems appealing. I'm sure a few sessions in therapy would turn up some underlying psychological issue to explain it, but I'm not going there!

So, some rectangular blue pieces along the "horizon" line could look like decorative items on a table, or just some abstract shape for interest. I wanted the blue rectangles to be a subtle addition. I cut the rectangles out and turned the edges under with a glue stick. I wanted them to be a little wonky, so I didn't take great care to see that they were symmetrical or straight. I arranged them, pinned and glued them, and then applique stitched them down. I thought a hand stitched edge would be more subtle.

Next for the pitcher. I collect pitchers and have quite a few on display in my house. I used this one as the model for this pitcher.

The overall shape was all I was after, kind of chunky looking. I drew the pitcher on freezer paper, found a red small print, and cut the shape out. Here's a photo of the freezer paper pattern and some of the blues I considered for the background rectangles:

Next came hand-appliqueing the pitcher to the background. I also stitched on a sliver of dark red to depict the inside of the pitcher edge. That turned out to not be necessary since the flowers and leaves covered it up.

With the background complete it is now ready for sandwiching and quilting. I'll show that on my next post.

Thanks for visiting my blog!