Background Filler Project

I m back onto my background filler project after a few weeks of a bit of a break. Felt somewhat overwhelmed with the enormity of the project and lost some steam to keep going. So I did a few other projects to take my mind off mainly working on some listings for my Etsy shop but also 'playing' around on EQ8 with some new patterns (fantastic program...was able to manipulate a pre-existing layout into the custom size that I wanted, changed it a bit and ended up with at least 5 different versions of possible quilts - there is another blog post waiting to happen). Will finally include an applique design that my daughter drew when she was really young. 

In addition and to stall further I looked at social media, specifically Pinterest and started to clean up my account a bit, organized my boards and in general had a bit of a look what had accumulated over the last 10 years. Well, stumbled across their Idea Pins and got inspired to give that a try...so did some videos (which I generally find really hard), read about Idea pins and watched a few YouTube videos and finally managed to put some reasonable videos together to try that out. Did that on my phone which worked really well. The topic was not super exciting -  'Basting a Quilt on a Sitdown Longarm' but that was what I was doing at that moment. Must say, that came out really nice and worked a treat for me. Might do that again as I like it better than Instagram Stories or reels.

Finally though I re-looked at my background filler 'monster'. We had a bit of sunshine yesterday so I took some photos.

 Close up of the fern area that I really like

Those darker areas gave me a lot of trouble with the Invisafil thread. Being that fine at 100wt I had real trouble seeing where I was going. If you look at the darker area I had to do the pebbled area first leaving a channel to then fill in the rainbows. That was incredibly challenging on the old eyes.

...and then I finally continued and finished off that side...not too bad...

Almost there...continued a bit further on the right but will take that out today as I am not happy with it. The key on this thing seems to be pre-planning. If I am unsure what design to use, it is best to stop and think that through carefully rather than charging ahead.

So, hopefully I will make it to the end of this over the coming week!

Karin