Golden Moment

The golden retriever piece (Golden Moment) was finally dry today. When I put it in water to take out the water soluble glue I use to temporarily attach the binding — and to prepare it for blocking — some of the red in the harness crocked onto the lighter areas of fur. I’ve sadly had this happen before. Red dye is never predictable. I had the same thing happen on Beach Guardians. (I had to paint over that spot.) It’s probably the same fabric — when Beach Guardians comes back home, I’ll track that fabric down and throw it away. One of my first quilts was a very large red and white quilt — and it bled like crazy. I almost cried when I pulled it out of the water. I sprayed it liberally with Shout & threw some Oxi-Clean in — & then re-ran it through another cycle. That particular piece — Childhood — still shows some red on the back on the toile where it shouldn’t be. It happens.

Today I pulled out all of the pins on Golden Moment and photographed it. At first, I forgot to turn on my special lamps. When I was done, I remembered and re-did my shots with the lamps. All of the shots I took before I turned on the lamps were yellow — so all of them were trashed. So lucky I have those lamps (thank you Holly Knott).

I’m still a little uncertain about all of the space I left around the golden retriever. I bought a yard of fabric and fit it around her — and when I was done, it seemed wrong to cut off all of that extra fabric. I didn’t want her centered, and it feels to me as if the extra space on the left and top gives the viewer the feeling of being in the shoes of the person the golden is gazing at. That’s what I see when I look at it — I hope that I’ve successfully conveyed it.

I don’t know what my next project will be. I always spend some time wandering between projects. Today I went to JoAnn’s and bought muslin and velcro so that I could replace the cover on my ironing board. Years ago I made an ironing surface after watching Sharon Schamber’s video. I thought about taking a picture of the cover I was throwing away — but frankly it was embarrassing. Just know that my board is now clean and spotless.