Trenton Makes is finished!

Yes, my Trenton Makes quilt is finished.  Well, almost finished, I still need to prepare and attach the facing later this week.  But, it is finished enough to share with all my quilty peeps.

Let me tell you, it has taken a while and a roller coaster of emotions to get to this finished place.  In my last post, you'll remember I was in a period of dislike with my project.  So I'll share what has happened from then til now.

Here's where we left off - on the frame main ditchwork finished and ready for quilting.

You can see in the photo above the buildings are chalked.  I started there, as the sky background would be easier to fill around them.  If my memory serves me, there is the Department of Labor, Health/Agriculture, and the Justice Complex.

So then on to the sky fill - one of my favorites as it creates such movement.  It was a super windy day here and I later found out it was also windy back in New Jersey... pretty cool!

Okay, at this point I was getting back to my happy place, until... yep, all those little tiny places between all the bridge trusses needed fill too, ugh, here comes my laziness.

So after like a million hours, they were finished!

Now on to the concrete work... lots of thread work to match the paint.

Yay, I was starting to like my bridge again!
Then came the neon reflection work... big ugh!  Back while I was putting all the pieces together I thought about painting the reflection.  I should know by now those little thoughts are actually voices and I should listen!  I didn't, I said to myself I can do that in thread... guess what, I was wrong.  As the reflection is so bright on the water, the thread wasn't enough, it really needed the paint as a base.  If I had listened and painted it earlier the thread would have been an awesome highlight to the paint.  But, as you can see in the photos, the thread just fades into the fabric.  To me, it looked like someone sprayed silly string.  The red thread was reading as pink, the yellow was glowing, and the beautiful orangy-copper metallic (an entire spools worth) was just sinking into the blue fabric. Ahhhh, yep, I was totally back to the period of dislike, again!

So... how to fix this as I was totally hating the project.  Yep, paint!  Now, if you follow my blog you know I have an interesting past with paint after-the-fact.  So, knowing I could totally ruin the quilt at this point I tested the paint on the edge.  Hmmm, this might just work!

So here goes... no turning back now.

Not so bad.  I continued with the paint on both sides, allowed it to dry, and then added additional paint in the areas that needed it.  Yay, back to a much happier place!

So now it's time to block this beauty... into the tub with some crazy hot water so soften those foundation pieces.

About an hour or so and some super sore fingertips later it is all blocked and drying.

It took me a lot of emotions to get to this point.  I loved it, I hated it, I restarted, I put it away, I started again.  My heart wasn't feeling the project like it was in the beginning.  Sometimes projects just happen so quickly and others take their toll on you.  This was one of those, but I think I actually appreciate it more. This is my project for my Journeys Thru Art groups 2016 challenge, bridges.  I can't wait to be able to share the others with you.  Upon acceptance, they will debut at AQS Grand Rapids in the Ultimate Guild Challenge category... fingers crossed!