Background fabric choice

I have been dithering about which painted background to pick for the August base fabric. I had narrowed down the desicion to two pieces at the last blog entry. But there I was stuck! I liked them equally. I did some sketch ideas for both, and could identify the things I liked about each one. I reminded myself that there is no "right or wrong" answer, which always helps to lower my anxiety, and then decided that each one would make a wonderful piece, each one unique. But the decision is...which one do I want to spend hours and hours working with for the rest of August?!?

I used my favorite decision making technique, which I used also in picking the June background, which is to set a time limit to make the decision and to believe in my intuitive self to work it out. I'll call my technique "intuition under pressure"!! I opened my bead box and as I picked up each baggie or tube or string of beads, I asked myself if these beads would fit into one of these pieces, and then placed them in one of three places - either back in the bead box, or on the fabric piece that I felt was a good fit. After a few minutes of this, a clear winner emerged! The beads that wanted to go with the green piece were dark, depressing and few. The beads that wanted to go with the blue/yellow piece were happy and plentiful (as shown in the photo on the left), and the ideas were flowing. The decision is - blue/yellow is the base August fabric.

The next step is deciding how to quilt this background. Tomorrow I will print out a couple of paper copies of this background fabric and I will do some preliminary doodling, then audition some thread colours, and finally, do the quilting. Now that the decision is made, I am really looking forward to starting to bead!