I took a piece of muslin the size of the entire quilt and dyed it with a gradation from pale to (supposedly) very dark teal. It's the lower fabric in this picture:
(The twisted fabric next to it was a different kind of experiment, and didn't really work out at all. Over 50% of the fabric remained completely white, so that'll have to be overdyed or something to make it useful.)
The gradation itself was relatively successful, in that the center is a nice light teal that darkens as it moves toward the outer edges. For some reason, though, the yellow fixed more readily than the blue in what were meant to be the very darkest parts, leaving a sort of olive/forest green (with light spots created by exposure to air) instead of the darker teal I had intended.
In a sense, it's preferable for the background not to get too dark, since we need good contrast with the foreground fabrics.
On the other hand, both the green and the light spots are a little weird and I'm tempted to redye the same piece again, using the same technique. I have enough of the same dye mixture to do that (once), so it wouldn't change the color, just the value (lightness/darkness). I would hope to keep the center as light as it is now--or nearly so--while darkening and also evening out the color in the outer areas.
Or, we can go back to the original idea of piecing together a background from a range of teal fabrics, rather than using a single whole-cloth piece.
As you can see, I also got some new fabrics for Cellist and Clarinetist. I wanted to keep the primary color scheme we had discussed, but needed to take those three basic colors in directions far, far away from the Crayola Effect.
I tweaked the lighting and contrast in this photo to bring out some of the detail, and as a result the colors of the fabrics are somewhat muted. Rest assured that, in person, the three ribbon fabrics are rich and vibrant. The background piece appears relatively close to its true colors.
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