Doing more in the hopes it will improve the idea

I have actually scheduled this post so I won't forget to do it on 17/1/17.  How organised am I?? (It is not as good as 7/1/17 but it is ok.)

It has been much nicer in the last week or so, weather-wise. Gorgeous summer days with cool nights.
The Australian Open tennis is on this week, so it will, of course, get hotter. I don't know how the players survive some of the conditions they are asked to play in.

But back to my interests ...

I have made some more little skeleton pieces. I laid them out on the, supposedly, finished piece I was not happy with.  The camera is a wonderful invention, especially the digital camera, where you don't have to pay to have the images printed (remember the old days??).

I tried a few different layouts and then decided on the one that I like best.

Can you notice the subtle difference? Such a big decision!

Now I have sewn them on and even put a border around it. That was traumatic, I hadn't given any consideration to how I would finish it off, I was just focused on how I might make the front of the small art quilt.

Keeping to my idea of only using what I have, I couldn't find any fabric that would be an ideal border. I wanted it to be muted and unobtrusive.

Fortunately, I have also been playing around with an idea for the 4th quilt in this fossils of Gondwana idea that I am currently working on. So I had some fabrics spread around for that. (More on that later, probably.) It occurred to me that a couple of them might make good borders. They didn't quite do the job I wanted. However, after I had done the sides, I realised that, if I used the second fabric, I might get a better effect. So now I have two different fabrics in the border. Not my usual thing but, as I kept telling myself, the quilt police aren't involved in this. I just have to do what I feel like doing.

I Wonder What Would Happen ...

I am trying to come up with a design that has some connection to fossils.
We have a fossil lying around in the house, of which I have taken photos.

I have LOTS of silk, scrim and other bits and pieces that I have dyed, mostly using eucalyptus leaves and bark.

Not quite the same studio as in the magazine article.

I played around with this idea, a little bit, a few weeks ago, for one of our machine embroidery group meetings at the Embroiderers Guild of Victoria.

I made one piece too big for the task. It has been hanging around on my pinboard, looking interesting but not particularly useful.

Then I thought … I wonder what would happen if I did several of these. Can I layer them to look like layers of fossils.

Here it is with another couple of trials. 

After playing around with the idea, I keep changing how I am doing it.  The changes are not huge, just trying to work out a better way to make the bits.

I made a couple more pieces similar to the first one - of course I couldn't find any more scrim that colour. So now the pieces are of varying colours.