excavation part 1

i've been stumped all this time about what to do with my elder cloth. i didn't want to rush it, and figured the answer would come in time. i bought some scrim to stabilize the open areas, but then realized it still wouldn't work with doggy paws. then recently i saw the discussions on bee creative where deb was having a similar issue, and cindy suggested weaving into the cloth, which worked great. then cindy suggested needle weaving, which would be so time-consuming, but brilliant.

still, i couldn't get going with it. the size of my starter cloth was intimidating. i did some stitching, trying to tack things down, but it didn't feel good, and i couldn't visualize it. so i did what i should have done ages ago and put the cloth on the wall.


looking at the whole of it, with the huge seam down the middle, it looks to have been joined not for any design purpose, but just to keep the cloth together and to act as batting in the smaller quilt.


looking at that seam, i just couldn't resist...

and i see that this inner quilt is separately quilted and backed, and only lightly tacked to the current back.


so i am now bent on deconstruction. after i fully remove this backing (and use it somewhere else in this cloth), i think i'm also going to take the entire ragged pieced top layer off and re-back it without the batting (like cindy suggested early on!) and maybe rework some of the pieces with weaving of some kind. we'll see..