Paper and Fabric Art Quilt

For this assignment in our It's Sew Easy class we were shown how to make a paper art quilt featuring free-motion stitching and even more frightening - binding! Eek!

So I put it off... and off... and off. And then decided to quit being such a wimp and go for it.

To start I embellished tissue paper and lined paper with stamps and paint

Then I cut the tissue paper in squares and rectangles... ish. This isn't an exact sort of project.

Next I Mod Podged the tissue to my piece of batik fabric. I usually loathe batik but this one, to quote my kids, "looked like the sort of thing I'd make with paint and white fabric" so I went with it. 

I realized my piece was going to be HUGE so I trimmed it down a bit but followed the same Mod Podge steps with the spare strips so I had something to practice on.

And then, after all the glue had made a big old mess I placed my pieces in the bath tub to dry over night and then trimmed them into squared, usable bits including ATC sized cards.

If you recall my earlier post, I made these with the ATC-sized scraps:

Back to the topic at hand... I bound the scary art quilt and it really wasn't that big of a deal. I thought the mitered join of the binding strips was going to make me throw up with anxiety but beginner's luck saw me through. And Julie's instructions were excellent.

Trouble is... when all was said and done... (and maybe it was just the size...) I had made the worlds most time consuming placemat. Seriously. You'd want to place a plate on it if you saw it. Not good. I mean it was lovely, great colors and interesting... but so very, very placemat-like. 

So I printed a photo I had edited within an inch of it's life:

(Pretty, no? I went to Costco and photographed some of the bouquets. It was a cheap way to get some pretty images to play with.)

And then I sewed it onto the quilt to serve as a focal image.

I like this a lot better. It's certainly less like a placemat and once I frame it I think it might end up to be a pretty piece of art. That said, there's a fair-to-middling chance I'm going to seam rip that photo off of it, add a frayed, painted, textured mat of some sort and sew it back on. It looks kind of flat... and tidy. 

We can't have that!

What would you do?