Cactus Flower Collage

This piece has provided me with several lessons and took much longer than expected to complete.   I was very frustrated with my machine when I tried to free motion quilt it.  I got many skipped stitches.  I tried different thread, different needles, and many other "fixes" but nothing seemed to work. However I persisted and I eventually solved the problem but it was too late for this creation.  The addition of some beads and hand embroidery, which I had already planned, made the skipped stitches less noticeable.  

My artistic friends who helped me think about how to finish the piece suggested extending some of the leaves/shoots into the frame space (on the left and bottom) which I think improved it although if you look closely you can see where I added fabric for these parts. After deciding to frame it using stretcher bars and ordering what I thought were the appropriate size bars,  I realized that I needed to make it "bigger" so there would be enough fabric to wrap around and staple to the frame.   This entailed trying to match the brown paint I had originally used on the "frame" portion.   Finally, the staple gun we have is not my friend-- it is very hard to depress-- but I got help from J to finish the stapling.  

Now it's found a place to hang in my entry and I'm very happy with it.  I just need to make a label to put on the back.