Breaking it up

I have been playing with my letters for the tea towel quilt today; just trying out how the light letters will look against the stripes and how to arrange the words.

The fabric is from a thrifted duvet cover from my ancient stash from when I first started quilting and it’s ever so soft and wonderful and has a light, light washed out green colour with an even lighter printed pattern. I did not want stark white as there’s already a lot of white in the towel. I was able to center the words as planned although I could not fit as many letters on each line as expected.

I decided to appliqué the letters instead of quilting them down as I normally would do. Usually I would add some kind of stabilizer on the back, but my towel is rather thick and tightly woven, so I skipped this step. To avoid lots of twisting and turning, I decided to free motion stitch each letter twice.

It worked out ok, I only got a little puckering but that will probably iron out, or at least quilt out.

I was anxious to see how my vision worked out, and I absolutely love the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t-effect. The text breaks up the stripes really nicely and quiets them down, which is what I wanted, and the soft text is like a whisper. “I am great, and yet… I am humble” (from the TV show Shark).

Looking at it now, I can hear that it wants to be rectangular. Does your work speak to you? Whisper? Scream? Am I going mad from all those stripes breaking up?

I am wondering what the jagged border will say when I start slashing tomorrow. Ouch??