How Can You Tell When A Design Isn't Quite Right?

     Have you ever finished a piece but then looked at it and thought something wasn't working? I finished my wildflower piece and was sort of happy with it. It came out as I intended it. I hung it on the design wall for a few days and showed it to my art group. I didn't ask for a critique so I didn't get any. But something was bothering me about it.
     So there are a few tricks I knew to do. One is to take a photo and look at the photo on a small scale. That way you just see the shapes, colors, and values. When I did that, I could still tell that something was off, but I couldn't pinpoint it. The next thing, was to look at it upside down. When I did that, I immediately saw what was annoying me. My ammonite fossil was both too small and it was facing in the wrong direction.
     Luckily, it was an easy and quick fix. I cut another fossil from prepainted fabric I had and free motion sewed it right on top of the old one. I ripped out the old seeds, which I didn't like anyway for two reasons. I didn't like the shapes I chose and I didn't like how they ended up on top of one of the rectangle shapes of fabric. Now with the fossil facing the other direction, they were in open space and I could redo the shapes better. Then I added another chain of embroidery to connect to the fossil and all was good.

old version

The Seed Bearer

     So now I declare it finished. I'm still not crazy about it. There are parts of it I like but still I'm bothered about something. Enough time spent here so I'm moving on to other projects now. Maybe someday, I'll see what I'm missing. I'm in the mood to go monoprint some fabrics. Poor cats will be locked out of the studio for a bit. I've got some big news next post. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.