I finished the hydrangeas at last this morning. I had problems with the border
quilting - ripped the whole lot out, which was a radiowave kind of design.
Instead did twin needled straight sections with a free motioned petal in the
centre of the boxes. That is invisible from the proverbial galloping horse
anyway, but at least it is flat!
I did 3 wonky lines of silver grey round the tops of the petals that had a sunnyglow in the photo and used blue round the lower shaded ones.


Things I learnt:

Even using SAS lite, some areas are very stiff and the needle picked up gunk.
Will try misty fuse more another time, or just tack.

I used monofilament on the back, which was simple - no changing bobbins, and no
thread dots on the top. However, it feels very prickly on the back, and I don't
think I will do that again. I want to see the stitching on the back!

If I am going to do the 3 wonky lines to define the petal edges I don't need to
zigzag them first. I had done that with a selection of expensive variegated
threads, which you can't see at all now! Probably 2 days work completely
unnecessary.

I really like the bolder vein lines in the petals, which is all that secures the
fabric changes within petals (apart from the SAS of course). It looked really
garish close up but looks fine from 2 metres.

The problem with taking a photo of a flower is that you concentrate on
interpreting the flower, instead of thinking about composition. There is a bit
of movement in a V shape with the three boldest flowers in the mid and mid-lower
section, but there's nothing to bring your eye round again.

I am happy that I agonised over the background quilting and the border, and
found a solution that is aesthetically pleasing and at the same time functional
in flattening the areas without flowers. I tried out on paper several options for the background quilting, involving echo, meander, spirals etc. When I decided on the free form grid, it really helped not trying anything that would compete with the flowers. Ditto the border. I had measured sections and put in a dot so I could do the sine waves I originally envisaged. It looked really good on paper too. But looked a mess when I was almost at the end of three complete rounds of waves. So ripped it and started again. Basically the fabric is busy enough that it just needs to be flat, and have something that looks good from 6 inches away. Otherwise you can't see it. I tried about 6 thread options, but you couldn't tell them apart from 3 metres.

I'd like to try another more abstract version later, but this week I will play with FFFC. I need playtime.