Because this one – the commission that must be finished this week – has six layers in places, nearly requiring pliers for additional hand quilting, I plan to use cotton batting and cotton backing and make the next small quilt a pleasure to poke a needle through –

Even though the woven sections are multi-layered already and include batting, it will be so much easier than the bigger piece I’ve been working on.

To facilitate machine-stitching over many, many raw edges, I added a layer of black tulle (a la Susan Carlson), and even resorted to a pin-head sized dot of glue here and there.  The result was way too dark, so I started ripping away the tulle and when that wasn’t working well enough, used my husband’s solder iron to melt it.  FINALLY, I grabbed some sand paper and ripped away at it.  That worked pretty well, and added a shadow to some of the stippling (more pictures later), but I still needed to lighten it and so added scraps of lighter fabrics to highlight certain areas, increasing the density of the quilt by a ridiculous amount (at least for hand-stitching).

If this were not a commission, I would stretch the piece on a frame and gesso the foreground, add layers of light green paint, and sand some more to see what happened.

As it IS a commission, I am planning today, in the fog, to finish up by the weekend.