Venetian Disguise

There were many problems that turned up after I had the body and arm sewn down to the quilted piece. Puckering developed in the arm and the quilt would not hang flat because of a big curve around the water below the gondolier. I played with the arm to get it to lay flatter, but have not yet been successful in getting the quilt to lay flat. I tried removing the trunk of the body and sewing it were it naturally fell and this helped. But it did not resolve the problem. Short of re-doing the trunk, I'm not sure yet how to fix this.

These photos show a before and after of the figure. In the top photo you can clearly see how badly wrinkled and puckered the neck,arm and hand were. The bottom photo is after I re-worked the these problem areas. This is the photo I submitted to the $100,000 Quilting Challenge in the forth quarter. I was asked to send the quilt in for a final jugement, but, unfortunately, I didn't win in that quarter. I have been re-working the piece a bit trying different things in order to disguise some of the disproportion of the figure. Unfortunately I can not remove the painted face & chest piece because the fabric will not tolerate seam-ripping.

I have added a sleeve to the arm and changed the wand of the mask to fabric that will lay flat and not twist the fingers. These changes have been an improvement to the figure, but, I still feel like I should add the other arm & have that hand holding the wand. I'm pretty sure this will not happen.
I have also removed the wire-strung pearls I had sewn down to the mask and I am replacing them with string-strung pearls. I also spent quite a bit of time adjusting the outside edges in order to get the quilt to hang straight. After these few changes are completed, I will have to call it finished. I think I have done all I can for this one & it is time to move on to something new.