Time for the complement… Color that is

On Thursday, I had yet another day free so I spent my time in the studio, and my thoughts turned to the complementary color that is required by the challenge.

But before the color addition I had one other decision to make.   When I placed the plants on the background I had allowed several of the leaves to fall off of the quilt and my original plan was to chop them off when I finished the top. Having said this, I kept wondering whether or not I should put a fabric on the back and allow them to float free.

I had posted a photo of the top  on Facebook and one of my guild friends (Madeline) commented that she liked the way that I had “violated” the borders of the quilt.   Well, that word….violated…..was enough to convince me that I should do it!!!   So my first step was to fuse a backing fabric to a few of the leaves.

OK….that decision made…..now onto the color…..

When I first started thinking about this piece, I  found a picture of a tree frog that was green with bright red eyes. 

My first idea was to simply have this tree frog in the middle of the piece with borders of green jungle leaves.  The problem arose when I realized that the finished quilt size was a 40 inch square and that was simply too big for one frog!

So over time the idea developed into growing a Rainforest with a few frogs inserted….the red eyes were a must.

I had been worried about these frogs from the very beginning.  I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get the colors right, that I wouldn’t be able to fuse all of the small pieces and that, if I was able to make them, that they wouldn’t look good with the piece.

So, with fear and trembling I took my picture…..

….turned it into a line drawing and started previewing fabrics.  I had an “A..HA” moment when I realized that I didn’t HAVE to use the exact colors and could make it any colors that I wanted.

Here is my finished, fused frog…..details will be added later with thread…..

And I LOVED the eyes!!!!

Once again I was stumped about where to go next.  Do I add more frogs with requisite red eyes or do I go with a red flower or do I leave it with just the one frog.

What to do……what to do……

Answer….bring my husband in and ask him.  He looked at it and said, “why don’t you put red berries on the stalk in the middle of the quilt.” 

I was planning to put green berries there but had entertained the thought of making them red, so this was the confirmation that I needed.

Here is the finished top…..

And here is the state of the room…..

Maybe a little clean-up is in order before starting the stitching!!!!

Oh, by the way, in the middle of all of this, I heard a funny sound from my laundry room and found that our water heater was spewing water out of the top.  So, a fast call to the plumber, an outlay of a fair amount of cash and a new water heater is in place!!   These things happen!!!!