Cool Collections, "It's not tacky, it's Kitsch!

"It's not tacky, it's Kitsch!" 28" X 32" by LAPaylor

This is my Cool Collections challenge quilt made to showcase my collection of  Flamingos, cows, poodles and Betty Boop.
 I also collect fabric, ahem, so I included some of my vast fabric collection of flamingo/cow/Betty/and poodle related fabrics. Oh my friends, it was hard to cut up those precious never to be found again fabrics! As a wise quilter once said to me, if you put them in a quilt you keep, you'll always have them.
Still...

Anyway, I have included some close-ups of each area so you can enjoy them too!
I started by gathering a few of each items from around the house. I set up a photography area, with a drape of navy flannel and arranged the items in different groupings and took pics.
After looking through the many photos, I chose nine that most represented the collection, nine because nine fit on my three sheets of printable fabric. They faded in intensity during the printing, so I went back in with pen, pencil and paint to spruce them up a bit, note the sparkly red paint on each.
Arranged them on the swirly black fabric and couched around them with one of my collected specialty cords. A problem with this was the couching foot skews fabric but the walking foot doesn't have the hole to keep the cord in place.

I used a double needle on the inner border quilting to make it look kind of Fifties like. It needs more quilting but I quite like the line it has now. A judge would not be amused.
The silver flamingo broach is the one in the photo beneath it. The other embellishments are from old jewelry and broken stuff and buttons collected over the years.
Great to get them out of storage and into the open air so I can look at them!

The poorly done writing on the photos is to look like those Polaroid pictures from the sixties. The multi-colored rick rack is available at any store. The letter beads and sequins along the bottom represent my bead collection.
Straight line quilting in the border because that's what I like these days.

Moovers and shakers is a pic of some S&P shakers, couldn't find my flamingo shakers. The poodle walkers are two Christmas ornaments. Couldn't find my cow pen. DH was upset by the hanging poodle angel pendant. Don't know if that was because it reminded him of moving on, or if he knows Cole isn't an angel.

When I asked DH if the beads were tacky, he started chuckling. I said, be careful....
He said he wasn't sure if there is such a thing as too tacky for me, or if the quilt was so far gone already it didn't matter.

Well, it speaks for me, and I love it and I got to use my creativity and favorite fabrics and share it with my peeps! Winning!
LeeAnna