Unstuck...and stuck

Today I exposed the towel-covered lump on my quilting table and discovered it was this, last blogged about in August 2019:

It was a lack of any quilting inspiration that was holding me back. I didn't want to do the same wiggly design I had done in my previous bowtie, but knowing what I didn't want to do wasn't helping me to find what I did want to do!

Browsing the interwebs wasn't giving me anything helpful (but it did confirm that I didn't want an edge-to-edge overall design quilted on this) so I finally just flopped the thing on my cutting board and sat across the room in my sewing chair, pondering.

Eventually my eye started tracing paths and ideas that might lend themselves to continuous-line quilting.

Grabbing a notepad, I scrawled this ('flowers' first, then the bowtie idea):

Because even I have a hard time figuring this out with just shades of grey, I colorized it:

It's 45º from the quilt on the cutting board, but at least the eye can figure things out easier now.

Because the backing is mostly a reddish-brown, I'm using this for the bobbin:

The negative space is made up of white-on-white and off-white fabrics, so this will be used to stitch the petals:

 So far, I'm pleased with the results:

I'll let ideas for the middle section percolate a bit before I quilt it.

The quilting is...organic. I have to remind myself to look at where I'm going, not where I am. When I focus ahead of the needle, the curves are smoother and there's less overlap and loopiness going on.

I managed to get 3 rounds of continuous-stitch petals done (in the neutrals between the pink/orange bowties, between the orange/teal, and between the teal/green) before having to cut thread to move to the next rounds. However, while hiding them I tugged the knotted thread ends with a little too much enthusiasm and somehow managed to break the head of the self-threading needle with my thumb. Not in my thumb, thank goodness!, but I still drew blood. Time to call it a day! No matter--the logjam is broken and I'm looking forward to working on this again in the days to come.