Colour My World Cyan

Wow, it's the end of May and the end of the fifth colour for this Colour My World Challenge. And I'm still having as much fun with this challenge now as I was in January. I hope you are as well!

I ended up trying to duplicate Dan from Piece and Press's reverse appliqué technique using two patchwork tops. Of course, I wish I had looked closer at his giraffe quilt so see that his two tops were pieced differently and more improvisationally than my checkerboards. I think that's what gave his piece so much fabulous drama. I'll have to try that next time. As I'm just experimenting here, I chose the simple and graphic window design that I saw on someone's door for the cutout. He he! There's a lot of 50s and 60s inspiration in my neighbourhood. :)

I did choose the lighter top to go on top because I was less comfortable with it and I am trying to break out of my colour comfort zone.

I got a reminder of why walking foots are fabulous. I had the embroidery foot on for the first corner and thought I might get away with it...until I switched to the walking foot and saw what a huge difference there was:

Which one of these corners is not like the others?

 So I unpicked it and stitched it down using the walking foot. Much better, eh?

All better!

Detail of the quilting

For the quilting, I decided to echo the circle shape alternating between straight stitches and decorative stitches. Using the decorative stitches was fun and I love the sheen the denser stitches give the piece. If I were to do this again though, I'd probably mark out the circles so that they gradually expand from the centre of the cross all the way to the edge of the piece rather than just to the edge of the circle.

Detail of the quilting

Now that I'm seeing the photos, I'm thinking of adding some accent circles in a straight stitch in a slighter darker aqua to see what it would do. Hmmm.

In the dark teal area, I did little curlicues and pebbles. I had a lot of trouble with the free motion quilting again - skipped stitches all over the place. I'm wondering if it's the spray basting glue because I seem to have this problem anytime I use it. Anyone else have this problem? 

Like my other challenges, this is 14.5" square with a zigzag stitch finish for the time being. So this is my Cyan:

Next month is brown. Oh boy, talk about a challenge! I'll do a post next week with some tidbits about brown.

I'm a little early (about the only thing this week!), but this is also my TGIFF! Laura @ Quokka Quilts is our wonderful hostess for this week. We are starting to book August hosting dates, so if you'd like to host, head on over to the TGIFF! site and sign up!