Stash Busting Stars: half star #2

Having finished all my full Stash Busting Stars, I have turned my attention to the half-stars that are needed for the layout.

Here is the second half-star I've completed.

And then ... listen to my tale of woe.  Woe is me.  (there's more).

The quilt project that I am currently working on is out of my comfort zone.  Yes, I did intentionally decide to do this.  It's a (for me) artsy-fartsy sort of design of leaves "blowing in the wind" but in a controlled sort of way.

Additionally, I am using some rainbow ombre quilter's lamé fabric, purchased God knows when or from where.  I had about 1/4 yard and that was *IT*.  There's not a glimmer of a chance of getting more, so that is exactly how much fabric I have to work with.  Therefore, I cut out exactly as many leaves as I could ... and that's all there is.  Period.  I gotta make this design work with the number of leaves in the colors that I have.

After looking at lots of inspirational pictures, I came up with a design that I kinda/sorta like and can live with.  It's not as dismal at you might think because, having no original design gene in my make-up, I never "know" what exactly to do, so everything is shades of "can I live with this?"   And the design I came up with was on the "yes" side of that question.

But, the design felt as though it needed an "anchor point", so to speak.  I figured a green stalk would hold down the design in an asymmetrical sort of way.   I do have a shimmery green fabric in my stash but it's more of a remnant than yardage and was nowhere near the amount that I needed for this stalk.

So, I went shopping online.  I figured some shot cotton would be cool and I found some.  While I was waiting for my order to be delivered, I came across a design that *immediately* jumped out at me and said .. OH YES!  THIS IS THE DESIGN TO USE!   Not only was I so pleased to be enthusiastic about it, it happened to be a free tutorial!  With the pattern!  Oh, hooray, hooray!  This design is a lovely, lovely bare tree trunk and branches with leaves scattered all over.  It was a MUCH better design than what I had come up with.

I eagerly started reading the tutorial only to find that the design had found the process of getting her pattern pieces to the publisher (she apparently had it published at some point) rather difficult because the design is just so large that she point-blank told her readers that there was no way she could provide the tree pattern on the blog and her Dear Readers should simply ... *draw it freehand*.  Oh My Goodness.

Well .. I suppose that having  a picture of her tree will guide me to drawing FREEHAND my own tree.   :: gritting my teeth ::

But now ... if you remember .. I've already ordered the green stalk fabric.  It's on it's way and can't be cancelled.  Tree trunks are NOT green.  Unless they are covered with moss and even then, there's some "tree trunk" color showing through.  Sooooooo ... since my leaves are ombre rainbow anyway (and not real leaf colors), should I just use the green fabric for the tree trunk?  It'll look rather surrealistic.  Or should I put the green shot cotton into my inventory for another project and go looking for some brown tree trunk fabric?  Would a realistic brown tree trunk go well with rainbow colored leaves?  Or should I just leave the tree green because the whole image is preposterous anyway.   :-)    I'll think on it.

Meanwhile, back at the online site, I decided that it was about time that I came to a conclusion about the background fabric for the Stash Busting Stars (and you thought that topic was finished for this post, right?)

Looking at the clearance section ( ... LOOK at how much money I'm saving by purchasing it on SALE!!  :-)   ), I saw a very soft butter yellow fabric that, in my mind's eye, would work rather nicely with the stars that I have made.  Unfortunately, I ran into a problem when I added the butter yellow fabric to my cart: they didn't have enough of it for my background.  Aaarrgghh.

Back to the clearance section ... and I found a white-on-white design that would suffice.

The fabric was ordered and my life moved on.   Several days later, my bundle of joy arrived in the mail.  Hooray!  This was my green stalk fabric and my butter yellow background!  Oh yes, I could definitely see that butter yellow as the background!  It was going to be so pretty!

But wait, you say.  Didn't you actually buy the white on white?  

Well, yeah, but my one remaining brain cell hadn't remembered that.  To say that I was 1) puzzled 2) annoyed and 3) disappointed when I pulled out 7 yards of white on white is an understatement.  Then I remembered why it was white on white and not butter yellow.

Unfortunately, my brain is still fixated on the butter yellow.  It's not really *liking* the white on white.  And I'm stewing.  My mind is frowning.  What can be done to remedy this situation?

BUT WAIT!!  A solution has been thought of!!  Dang, I can DYE THAT FABRIC!    I've dyed white on white fabric before and it comes out a wonderful tone-on-tone because the printed white design absorbs the dye differently than the base fabric.  When the dyeing gets done, it will be a yellow tone-on-tone in a very unobtrusive sort of way .. and it will be *fantastic*!

Yay, me!  :-)   So, *that* project needs to be done before I can proceed with using it as the background for my Stash Busting Stars.

Post Script:  as I was writing the above, the image of a green tree trunk VS a brown tree trunk was swirling in the back of my mind.   I'm leaning on the side of using the green because the leaves are outrageous already.  :-)