Beginning Again

Beginning a winter scene.  Quilting on the trees right now.  This will take a while.

In the meantime we are having summertime weather.  So went for a drive to take some photos including these beautiful Wisconsin Dairyland Happy Cows. 

"GOOD MORNING"

"GOOD MORNING"

36" X 28"

Original Copyrighted design

Raw edged fused applique

Machine Quilted

Framed on stretcher bars.

THE JOURNEY

Thank you all once again for taking this journey with me.   It was a fun one and full of fall colors.  I enjoyed the process and am happy with the results.    Now...what will be next?

QUILTING

There are days when it is very difficult to stay indoors and work when it is so beautiful outside.  Today is one of them.   This new piece has so much detail on it, it will be quite a lot of quilting and thread changes so this will take a while to finish before moving on to the foreground.  At least there is a big double window in my studio to gaze out of and feel the breeze some through while I work.

QUILTED BLUE JAY

Unlike many art quilters, I choose to not quilt traditional quilting designs on my pieces.  I want the piece to replicate the reality of the scene and be more mainstream art quality rather then a mix between traditional quilt and art.  I am proud of my traditional quilt background and used meanderings and other fillers in the beginning as well as feathers and leaves on vines and other quilting designs.
However, at some stage in this growth as an art quilter, I personally thought it looked foreign to the art work and chose to now just replicate and add texture with my quilting. My backgrounds are usually organic lines...sometimes wavy..sometimes fairly straight because I do not want the quilting to interfere with the fabric choice.  There are also times when I choose to quilt in parts of the background fabric particularly when it is leaves or branches. In this case with this background I could have easily done that but I wanted the background to totally fade away so the crab apple tree came forward and then the blue jay even further into the foreground..

You may choose differently and that is what it is all about....finding your style.

Hens and Roosters!

Well all the girls and boys (seems some of the young hens are actually roosters) are quilted.  The border is on and all that is left is my favorite part (haha) the binding, sleeve and label.  There is a lot of quilting on this one but it was worth it for the results. 

Quilting Finished!

 I have been quilting all day long.  It is almost 4 and I am finished!  Frog is looking like he has a skin now!  I am pretty happy with it.

I think there are about 6 colors of thread in this frog.  I am attached to him now.  Something about working on living subjects.  You start feeling their personality and then with that comes an attachment for me.  This guy just makes me happy looking at him.  He has that look on his face!
I will have to keep him for a while.  :)