One day to comment for raffle.

Has been a gloomy week with all the rain so have felt better to curl up with a blanket and read my just arrived back issues of Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts. I also have read and carefully considered the comments I received for the finishing of my mini quilt. In a previous post I said that all who comment would be in a raffle to win the finished piece. What I will do on tomorrow's (12 PM PST) deadline is put all the names in a box and have my husband Mike select a name. The winner will need to e-mail his/her address and it will be on its way!
Considering everything, I am leaning towards a simple double or triple gold roping finish.  The rick-rack is definitely out!  I will be working on it this afternoon and will post a photo as soon as I can.
Keep the comments coming!

To Art or Not to Art, Part II Raffle

Spent the last several days deciding what is to be done with my now painted flour resist batiks.  After printing the images on organza and deciding that was not going to work, thought I would start with what I called the 'Ugly' before.  Actually, that piece was really not part of the resist process - merely a piece of muslin I threw on the remaining acrylic on my palette!  So I guess you would call it a mono print. Therefore I felt confident to experiment and toss it if I wanted to. Well, the more time I spent on it the less inclined I was to call it a complete disaster! 
You can see 'Ugly' in a previous post where I first laid in some color. At that point I could see trees in the background and maybe a lake and I printed some trees to play with that idea. Nothing worked until I found in my napkin stash some orange colored grapes and I used matte gel medium and glued it onto the muslin.  Hey, that was fun and now I was on a mission to make something out of it. I drew and painted the bird on a piece of the napkin and threw that in the background. Seemed to need something to bring you into the scene, so drew and painted a big butterfly on deli paper and put him in front.  Here is a close-up of the first lay down.

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to try some free-motion stitching on this and decided it would become a mini-quilt.  Had some fusible fleece, grabbed that and fired up my new Viking Emerald 183. There were some big frustrations; I broke 3 needles and did a lot of cussing, but after a while I was having great fun.

I used a purple rayon thread in the background to make that area recede and all the rest a yellow cotton thread. The Ugly Duckling has not exactly became a Swan, but had fun trying!  But now I am stuck on the finishing and am hoping I can get your comments on where to go from here.

These are two ideas for finishing and I apologize for the bad photography.  Another thought I had was to blanket stitch the edges adding either beads and yarn or both.  What do you think?  I will set this aside until next Friday to finish.  Anyone who posts a suggestion or comment will be in a drawing to receive the completed piece! It is 9 3/4 X 11 before I add the binding and it will be ready to hang. To do so, click on the word comments (it will underline when you point to it) just below this post and the form will come up.