Monday, August 20, 2012

Umbrellas, Beauties and Head Slaps. . . Design Board Monday

Am I the only one that has "Aduh" moments??  I mean like seriously, want to slap-your-head-really-hard moments???  Well this weekend, I had just such a moment.

 I'm not quite sure when this piece became such a pain in the as    butt.  It started out so nicely with the idea coming easily.  Still then I had to repaint the sky three times, drive myself crazy figuring out the colors, do a full size pattern only to realize that its the mirror opposite of what I really wanted to do, and now, realize that the background is measured - WRONG.  (insert serious aduh head-slapping moment).  sighhhhh.

Okay, enough griping and moaning  - I'm beginning to sound like a designer on Project Runway.

Soooo anywayssssss, I did manage to get the background done and decide on a palette of blue, red and yellow  - country style.  I wasn't sure at the time since I honestly hate this palette so much that I literally purged my stash of the colors.  It was really hard to find any commercial prints on the shelves that would work - I  had to even go into my Liberty of London stash.  Looking at how its coming now though, I'm very happy with it. 

I went on to paper piece the umbrella.  Every time I paper piece, I always say, OMG, I'm never doing this again.  My mind just doesn't think like a paper piecers should and I'm constantly not cutting enough fabric or putting things on backwards.  That aside, it did help keep the umbrella nice and accurate.




With the umbrella done, I went on to do the first beauty.  I had a super hard time orienting her on the background.  Now let me just say that when I do a full size pattern, I don't really use it as an exact pattern.  Its just sort a guideline so that I can keep proportions and curves right as I go.   That said, it seemed like I was way off with the beauty.  It took a while but I realized that I had way more water than I was suppose to have which made the background 5 feet instead of the 4 feet its suppose to be.
(Insert head slapping moment and another big sighhhhh).

So here is where I am now - with too much water - by next week hopefully the background's proportions will be right and the ladies will be sitting on their blanket soaking up the last rays of summer!

See more Design Walls at Judy's Patchworks!

7 comments:

Glen QuiltSwissy said...

LOL. I feel your pain. I am having some difficult issues with my paperweight pattern. But, with perseverance, we both will win!

I just hope we don't knock ourselves silly before that!

glen

Gari in AL said...

Reading this made me much happier that I doing have any artisitc abilities and can be content with just being creative: mine don't have to have good dimensions. I do love what you are doing and know it will turn out perfect (in my eyes at least).

Quilter Kathy said...

I love paper piecing :) Your umbrella is awesome! Love how you let the quilt be the boss of you!

Kate said...

Love the concept you are working with. The umbrealla and the beauty look great. Sorry you have to rework the background.

Carol A. Babineau said...

Nina-Marie,
This piece is growing quite nicely. I too am working on water, but can't post it as it is a gift for my future DIL and she reads my blog. That's why I am not posting much right now.
I love the umbrella! Your sky inspired me to piece my background - well more like applique, but it's not one piece of fabric, just a group of three interchanged to make ocean. I am eager to see the other two gals added to the design.
Keep going - you are doing fine.
Carol

Nina Marie said...

Thanks everyone for the comments and encouragement. I finished up the second beauty and will work on the third today. The piece looks totally different with the background in the right proportion!

Berta Barrington said...

Don't be so hard on yourself. I think it came out great. You know how it is with artists. They think what they're doing looks bad when in fact in the eyes of the people around you, it's already a masterpiece. Anyway, I know you'll get it right - the 'your-way' kind of right.