A quilt with a view

I am not sure exactly what is the difference between a “Landscape Quilt” and a “Pictorial Quilt”, but today let’s look at a few of the quilts in the Landscape division!!

Now I LOVE these types of quilts and, if you remember, have one in process, although if I don’t get going on it, it may end up in the UFO category!!!

I’ll start with this one that was pieced and was one of my favorites, made by Barbara Danzi…..

It is very stylized but I love the impressions that you get from the piece!! You can definitely feel the ferns!!

This next quilt, by Susan McBride Gilgen and Cheryl Paul Styler had a bit of everything in it…..

There was Applique, Embellishing, Embroidery, Dyeing, Piecing, AND Quilting. There was even some tatting!! I had to scour the photo to find it, but it is used as an embellishment in the binding. Sorry for the quality of this photo, but at least you will get the idea…..

The colors in this quilt by Susan Jackan definitely appeal to me…..

She said that it was inspired by photos of rock formations in Utah and she marveled that a tree could actually take root in such a challenging environment. She used painting, hand piecing, and machine quilting.

Nancy Hershberger created this magnificent Autumn scene based on a photograph of the Great Smoky Mountains….

The leaves were done with snippets and were super effective…..

….and the quilting added great movement. You can feel the leaves blowing in the breeze!!!

I am always interested in how quilters portray water in their masterpieces…..

Finally, Barbara Matzke produced an amazing river mill scene…..

The threadwork in the trees was wonderful…..

….and I especially appreciated the piecing in the bottom of the quilt…..

It was a great way to recognize that this was a quilt and not a photograph!!

In the same vein, tomorrow I will show a set of Pictorial quilts. Believe me….you WON’T want to miss them!!

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Five years ago…..

There are certain things in each of our personal histories that we will NEVER forget!!! It may be a wedding, a birth or even a death.

Sometimes though it is an accomplishment and that is what I am remembering today.

In October of 2015, Michael and I participated in a 10 day trek in the Himalayas, climaxing at Annapurna Base Camp!! On October 8, 2015 we reached what seemed to be the top of the world…..

After 6 hard days of climbing stairs and crossing rivers, we were there!!

The scenery was astounding…..

….and the sense of accomplishment was huge!!!

Interestingly, one of my favorite parts of the day was spent by myself in a dry lake bed, just enjoying the sight of the mountains surrounding me and hearing the glaciers breaking and falling on far slopes

Naturally, when I got home there had to be a quilt about this trip and inspiration started with the Buddhist shrines and Stupas that we passed on our journey and also the prayer flags that fluttered in the breeze.

Those inspirations and ruminations resulted in “Himalayan Hallows”……

I was pleased when it was accepted as into the “Tactile Architecture” exhibit in 2017 and loved that it traveled during that year.

This is what I wrote about the quilt for the exhibit and I think that it is the best description that I could ever give…..

I almost feel that this quilt should be called “Serendipity” because so many things happened during the construction that were not planned by me but ended up being exactly what I wanted to portray. I started the project knowing that I wasn’t sure how I would complete it and that at any point, I might ruin it, but decided that I just wanted to enjoy the process and see what happened.

As I worked on it, I thought about our 10 days of trekking to the Annapurna Base Camp and how the mountain called Machapucherie was always in our view. It is the highest peak portrayed in the quilt.

I also fondly remembered the Nepalese guides and porters who assisted us on this journey, and of the great care that they showed for each of the trekkers. I remembered how hard it was to say goodbye to them at the end of the trip and how we waved and waved until they were out of sight.

Finally, as I worked, I could smell the wood smoke pouring from the teahouses and hear the sound of the bells that hung around the necks of the pack animals that walked the trails with us.

My husband and I are privileged to have the opportunity to travel overseas often and I love making quilts that come from these journeys, but this one will always have a very special place in my heart and in my mind.

Meadow for a favorite “Wildflower”

This is my friend Lyn……

…..all spiffed up and ready to begin her epic journey up the Appalachian Trail, a trip that covered 2,190 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mt. Katahdin in Maine…….

My parting gift to her was a “Hello Kitty” doll that made the entire trip and I loved getting photos of how far “HK” had traveled…..

As she hiked, the other thru-hikers presented her with a “trail name”….a name that says something about her personality that her given name never could. Her name is Wildflower!!!

As I created the Meadow Art piece (now called “Meadow Walk”), I kept thinking about Lyn and her connection to nature, so “Meadow Walk” is going to live at her house now and hopefully remind her of her much loved trail days!!

Meadow Play

Don’t you just love it when you finish a project, and especially when you feel like you did a good job!!!

This past weekend I spent several hours doing the last of the hand embroidery and yesterday I called the Meadow Art piece complete!!!

The final thing to do was to put it in a frame. I had bought a reclaimed wood frame from Amazon a few days back and was so excited to see it ready to hang……

This has been a fun project and one that has opened my eyes to ways of adding texture and depth. There is another design in this book that uses architectural designs and I can see lots of possibilities in it as well.

So what’s next??? Today I start quilting on the Brown Stripe quilt and then I need to look back on my “Inspiration Day” to see where I want to head next!!

Practice makes…..one crazy!!!

The last step on my Meadow Art project is to add the daisies. In my last blog installment about this project, I showed some of my attempts and concluded that the best way to do them was to do the initial work on the machine and then use embroidery floss to finish the petals (#4).

THEN, I started thinking about using Perle cotton in the bobbin and working the flowers from the back. The first few attempts were not successful as I didn’t have the tension set correctly……

I kept changing settings until it looked like this…..

Those are better and would work for another type of flower, but not for these daisies!!

I made several other tries using a smaller Perle cotton (size 5) in the needle but it just didn’t look right.

In the end, I moved back to my plan of machine work under and hand-work over.

I decided to color in the centers to give me an idea of exactly where I wanted the flowers to fall…..

….. and then stitched the first five flowers on the machine The two on the left have been finished completely with hand stitching and centers stitched……..

They are not nearly as good as the ones on the sample, but they do look good on the piece. I also noticed that the ones on the sample have some shading on certain sides of the petals so I am going to explore that further before I finish the artwork.

The important thing is that I am still enjoying this process and am already starting to think of other ideas that I want to do in this same format!!