replacement

As my first quilt for 2013 decided to remain in it's hiding place, I had to make a replacement. It is roughly based on the same idea but a bit simplified. Here is the picture:

And now no quilt can go missing :-). They are all packed in the box ready to go to the post office.

Happy holidays to you all.

Ancient Cactus

As I have stated...my theme for 2013 is Up Close and Personal. I am using 6 of the most favorite macro shots I've taken and making them into art quilts. I'll be posting the completed art along with the original inspirational photograph.

And here is the first. The photo was taken on a trip to Texas. We were walking along and saw this scarred and beaten very old cactus. I got a very close up shot of a few of the leaves. I've always loved this photo and the resiliance portrayed. An old cactus, well worn over time, yet still growing. An inspiration worthy of an art quilt I think.

ANCIENT  CACTUS

original photograph

I used simple quilting so as not to detract from the scars on the leaves. All the scars are reverse appliqued.On the largest scar, I pleated the light gray fabric before doing the reverse applique on the black for the deeper cut (see below).  I even let the fabric pucker as I stitched it because I felt it enhanced the age of the cactus.  The "thorns" are hand embroidered. All the fabrics are my own hand dyed cottons.

Ancient Cactus - detail

 

Winter tree

Don't know whether it is a Blogger or an IE problem, but I managed to upload the picture of my Winter Sunrise using Chrome.

First tree

The theme I will use for this year is trees. And my first quilt is completed :-). As background I used a piece of snow dyed fabric, not in one piece, but in strips. Here is a picture of the background fabric:

I prefer to do my quilting before I do the applique. Maybe a bit unusual, but much easier with the quilting :-). Sorry but I forgot to take a picture at this stage.
The final stage was adding the tree. For this I used a commercial black fabric, fused it, cut out the shape of the tree and ironed it onto the top. Additional quilting was added. Just like my previous quilt I did a facing to avoid a very visible binding and this is how the final results looks like:



Title of this quilt is Winter Sunrise.
Blogger is having issues at the moment. I had a lot of trouble uploading the pictures and I do not know whether you can see them. When I edit the post I can see both pictures, but when I just view the blog I only see the first one. Not only on this blog, but also on my personal blog.