Pathways

Another failure? I have been making so many jackets lately that I suppose it's time for another one not to work out as envisioned. I have about 6 hours into this one so far and I'm not terribly pleased.

I did my prep work. These are the paint samples to see which paint I would prefer on the fabric.

And this is my test piece to see how much paint to load on the brush and to check the colors again.

As for the results, here is the back of the jacket. I like the colors, but it just isn't how I pictured it. (Also I have a blob of pink paint that went outside the lines, argh!) It's not laying well because of the intense quilting in some areas and none in others. This is okay to leave areas unquilted on a jacket in many cases, but apparently not such a great idea when the space is entirely enclosed (or mostly enclosed) by heavy quilting.

I've tried ironing it, but you can still see the pulled areas if you look closely.

So the question is what do I do? Options:

• finish as is and use as an object lesson (who knows, maybe it will hang out better than it lays flat on the wall) OR
• toss it (I haven't spent that much time on it and I have plenty of other things to keep me occupied) OR
• moderately quilt the empty spaces and hope that helps it to lay flat (but what appealed to me about the idea was the contrast between the heavily textured quilted areas and the smooth background areas) OR
• trim each area out and applique it onto another surface (the flannel quilted beneath it might show through and is it really worth all that effort?).

What would you do?