How boring to be updated on an apple tree….!!!!!

Well in fact NO, I've had an interesting day and this little apple tree has given me a wonderful idea.

It's  a small drawing and the leaves were quite fine. the point end on the Tsukineko pen is much thicker than I would like, so I used a new brand, a fine (pigment pen – so I was told) 

It looked great, I manged to get quite a few colors in the leaves and I was happy with the illustration.

I sandwiched the quilt and I thought, I'll just press it before I quilt it…. and the batting shrank about half an inch…. I've never seen that before… and this is a small quilt !!!!! so I had to pull it undone and re-sandwich it. It was 100% cotton pre shunk batting, so I'm going to contact them on that.

I first quilted with mono filament around the tree image and all the leaves… it looked great. Then I changed to fine cotton thread and began quilting around the border.

Half way through the quilting, as I often do, I decided to press it to re-shape it…the iron wasn't quite hot enough and water spilled from it…. and voila, I had one heck of a mess…. the new pens bled into the fabric…

I looked at it with disbelief… I've been working on this darn tree for days and I should be able to do it in a few hours…!!!!

Now I had to re-do it….

"Oh darn it" so I washed it and the offending ink came out with a concerted scrubbing  effort.

I dried it and  all that was left was the black pigment ink pen I always use and the Tsukineko ink…. that will never wash out.

Dried, I re-colored the image with Tsukineko ink and the black pigma pen…..

BUT, I want a finer look.

So the object of this project is that now I have an idea to present to Japanese Pen manufacturers… and I know it will work..I won't go into any more detail, but trust me…. I'll organize it.