For Once, Finished Early

The page I created for the July "Half Way Mark" challenge is done, and once again, the results turned out better than I had planned.  Maybe I expect too little from myself as I begin each TIF challenge or maybe it's true that when you show up at the craft table, some creativity goddess takes over and guides your hand.  In any case, there's a smile on my face.

The back of the page was to have three compasses stitched off-center.  But the design needed something.  There was too much blank space.  It was like the page was saying, "Get me out of here as fast as possible."  Since I really wasn't in any hurry and certainly didn't want the page to give that impression, I started to play around with sayings or phrases to embroider onto the empty space.  In the end I settled on scattering some fussy cut flowers from the border.  I stitched five of them to the page and embellished them with some beads.  But then the flowers looked like they were somehow unconnected to the compasses, just sort of floating around in space (see, I did learn something from my introduction to drawing class and March's TIF challenge), so I took a few more beads and scattered them randomly between the flowers and the compasses.  The compasses did not receive any beading (don't think I didn't try, but beads just didn't go with the zigzag stitches and the fabric imprint.)  I used dark blue and turquoise beads at the center of the flowers, bugle beads radiating out from the flowers' centers, and yellow, bronze, and clear beads as the connectors between the compasses and the flowers, with a few red and turquoise beads thrown in at random for accent.

Now, I know some of you are sitting there saying, "Maybe she should have been in a hurry to get out of there as fast as possible because I still don't know what she is trying to say with the flowers and the compasses."  Well, I guess an obvious message is:  Fiddle with the design until you're happy with it.  The Freudian message probably is:  She had no direction at the start, so what makes you think that in two weeks she got one and found her way?

The front of the page remained pretty much as it was last weekend.  I tried some scattered beads but decided against them, thought about embroidering something at the right side of the page, but then realized that this is where the grommets will go so that the page can be inserted into the book.  In the end, I just sandwiched the the cotton batting core between the two pages and stitched on my border.  I did not quilt the page, although when the page was done, the grid lines of the foundation fabric lined up perfectly on each side (what an Act of God!), so I did consider it.

This project was good practice for the quilt I'll be starting on Monday - a gift for a friend who has had (and is still having) a run of extremely bad luck in her personal life. I am hoping that maybe the palette Sharon selects next month will agree with my quilt colors.  I can't imagine that the theme will!  :)