In Progress: Not going so well

The last couple of weeks I've been working on a new art quilt intended for a show called "A Color Runs Through It" being organized by the New Mexico SAQA group.  It's to be 18x24", black and white with one additional color.  Since it's a small format I decided it would be a good chance to experiment with some things I've been wanting to try.

My starting point was the idea of reading and identity.  I've always been a big reader, mostly fiction apart from professional stuff, and have a long list of books that are pretty important to me.  I started by pulling up covers for some of these books.  Some are ones I really feel have helped shape who I am while others are just books I love that I go back and re-read often (much to Mike's amazement).  I turned all the book covers black and white then arranged them by value in a photoshop file.  I then scanned my thumbprint (from a piece of paper), and experimented with overlaying it in different ways on top of the books.

I settled on a few different options and uploaded the file to spoonflower for printing.  I've been wanting to try them for a while and am so glad I finally did!  The print quality was great, you can read all the book titles and everything.  I printed  four different options of my 18x24" panel (it's actually 19x25 so if there's shrinkage during quilting I won't have funny white edges.  The first one, (top left) is just the books while the other three have some version of my thumbprint superimposed on the books prior to printing.

For my first attempt, I decided to use the top left panel with no thumbprint and introduce the thumbprint by printing bits of it on organza and then quilting it.  I have the world's most finicky inkjet printer, and I detest the fabric sheets you can buy (although I do use them), but I found this tutorial for printing on organza.  The main key is using a full-size label sheet, but there are tons of important details in the tutorial so I urge you to click through.  End result, perfect printing and not problems with the printer.

I printed sections of the thumbprint in pink on white organza and in black on pink organza and then layered them on the quilt and fused them down.  I then used a light box to trace the entire thumbprint (from a full size paper printout), and quilted it in various shades of pink.

You guys!  It was a total disaster!  The quilted thumbprint is way too subtle to see unless you're very close to the quilt and even then it's hard to tell what it is.  Even worse, when you step back and look at it, all you see are big giant pink organza blobs!  And don't be fooled into thinking it looks better in person or would look better once the blue washable marker is gone.  It really doesn't.  

One moral of the story: bright pink organza is still bright pink and is not ever going to be particularly subtle even if it's a sheer.  So now I have to make a different quilt for this challenge- I'm going to try to use one of the other three panels I had printed; we'll see how it goes.

Linking up with Nina-Marie as ever!