Bobbie Pin: Rockabilly Chick

 This quilt began as another quilt which was for a Ricky Timm's Convergence challenge. I purchased a piece of his hand dyed fabric and then used it in the challenge. When I received the fabric I thought it was the ugliest fabric in the world-brown and muddy looking! It needed some bright colors to help it out! I wanted to do a portrait quilt with raw edged fused applique over the Convergence pieced background and drew up a design with a Rockabilly woman with tattoos and fun retro hair. It is fun combine my hairdressing career with my quilt designs!  The photos of the original quilt are toward the bottom of this blog post. I made that quilt in October but never shared the photos because of the epic fail.
I will talk now about the my newest version. While teaching last November at Houston my Janome tech support woman was sewing a project with a fun line of fabrics called "Good Hair Day!" This fabric line caught my attention because of the bobby pins, blow dryers, hair combs, curls and braids. Once I was home from Houston I ordered this fabric line. I enlarged my normal 5" square to 5.5" and added a border. The rest of the project went pretty conventional in construction. I quilted the background in a triple crosshatch design. When it was complete it reminded me of a 1960s silk robe's quilting I had as a child! Very retro just like the Rockabilly theme!
I embellished the quilt with blue rhinestones and a large bead for an earring was hand sewn in place. A small amount of fabric paint and glitter nail polish to accentuate the eyes. I discovered I had colored sparkly blue bobby pins which I hand sewed to the corners in the outer border and two in the hair area.  The fabric motifs were very strong and showy and too many embellishments seemed senseless. I had fun creating the flower, heart and Hello Kitty tattoos-I have not added tattoos to a quilt before.

This is a close up view of the face.

 These are the photos of the failed attempt. What went wrong? There is not enough contrast between the pink used in the applique and the pieced background.

I made several attempts to add definition to the face by adding lots of glitter and fabric paint. The details just do not show up. I did enter the online Convergence contest and, of course, I did not get accepted. I love the newer quilt with plenty of contrast and am stuck with the original quilt. What should I do with it since it's not something I am proud of?