Next Step - Quilting!

After getting the background set, I placed the cut out peacock on the background and used a tacky glue to hold it in place until it was sewn down.





I started the machine quilting on the peacock itself. I used a tight meandering stitch to secure all the little pieces that make up the body of the peacock.
















I considered placing tulle over the entire bird and stitching on top of it to make this process easier, but I didn't like the change in color that resulted from the tulle. The only area that I used tulle was the white/gray feathered area on the back of the bird.





After stitching down the bird I started on the background. You can see the area near the feet of the bird has been stitched in the photo below.




I moved around the background and did the majority of it, saving the tail area for last. The peacock's tail extends down to the ground, so I needed to add more tail pieces in this area, and use the stitching down of the tail as the quilting stitch. I will show that on my next post.




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Peacock Background Process

I'm showing photos from the creation of a peacock art quilt that I started in a workshop with Susan Carlson. This post shows the progression of making the background. 

Here I am cutting out the peacock collage piece from the muslin that it was built on:

Next I did a lot of experimenting with different fabrics to find the right design for the background:

 I liked the orange colors. They make the peacock colors pop.

I considered making the bottom darker, as if it was a ground surface. This idea was considered but I rejected it.





  I wondered if putting blues in would make it tie back in to the peacock. I considered this but rejected it.

















I did many other iterations and this last one is close to what I ended up doing. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do on this. It really was a struggle for some reason! But it is done now, thankfully!

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