Working with Silk

This piece started with a piece of silk picked up at a thrift store a number of years ago. Although gaudy, it is silk and would have been thrown away if I hadn't taken it home. The fabriholic in me couldn't let that happen. What can I say... I knew something would occur to me, but quilting wasn't what I had in mind at the time.

Silk is interesting to work with. Cottons are predictable when hand appliqued. Raw silk or duponi silk have a similar dynamic to cottons and don't move around, but the fabric I was working with is the lighter weight charmeuse so is very slippery. I fused interfacing to the back (not something that works well with a silk as the heat needed to bond the interfacing is too hot for the silk). Silk does applique easily even though it is slippery and doesn't seem to fray the same way, so it created wonderfully sharp points where I wanted them without the frustrating little bits of thread everywhere.

Now I'm at a loss how to quilt what I would consider the background. I've had several ideas and tossed them, so it sits on my design wall and taunts me. I wish it would talk to me instead.