I’ve been putting it off, but it is time to finish the integration of the deer into the main piece. Since I altered it by removing some from the bottom and adding some to the top, the seams no longer line up. I have to make some templates to transition between the two areas. This is not easy! You can see the registration marks on the back that help with correct sewing and some proposed seam lines that I have not used. As last minute decisions are made, often seam lines are altered, eliminated or even added!

In order to piece the ear in, I would have had to redo part of the tree, so I decided to appliqué that little bit. I replaced some of the dark fabrics that I had in the foreground that I thought were distracting.

It’s time to actually cut some sky pieces. I need some nice strong color at the tree line to transition the tree line into the sky.

I thought I would like the cloud print fabric that I had ordered,

but I liked the striated batik better.

The past week was spent tweaking the Seasonal piece, changing and adding fabrics. It is still in two pieces but bulky and awkward to work on. I think that I have at least one more change to make and then I will just live with it for awhile and see if anything else demands attention. At this point every change requires that I rip something apart and add in new, sort of like mending, which I hate.

That little place on the left will need to be fixed. The fabric that I was using there was not big enough and I was hoping that it would be in the “waste� area and to be cut away when I trim it to size, but I’m afraid it will be too much.

Last evening, I folded and put away all of the fabrics I was working with and swept up the bits on the floor, the studio will not look too bad for company on Thanksgiving!

The fabric came last week, ( late Oct) I had ordered these sunrise / sunset fabrics for consideration for the sky. I do think they will work. Now I can be more confident in the selection of other fabrics for the scene.

I have chosen some orangey prints to give reflected highlights to the tree trunks. An old batik with both blue and orange will make nice reflections on the pond ice.

The distant tree line is the backside of another batik. It will look more like trees when the quilting is added.

I have integrated several other fabrics into the foreground to further fracture the panel, give added interest and tie into the piecing of the other prints.

Some peachy reflections on the snow have been laid in.

Sewing some seams tightens things up. That brush against snow fabric with the peachy background was a lucky find from my stash. The rusty batik will help the background trees blend into the sky.

Well, there has been a lot going on, it is now mid November, and I have been busy . Some days there is not time to sew at all, and some days time to manage only a few seams.

This week has been better and I have had a few days to really work at it. I am starting to lay in some sky color.

As I work at it, I am constantly tweaking and changing things so I try to avoid sewing all of the seams until I live with the fabric choices for a while but there comes a time when, just to get things in perspective, you just have to sew some seams! Inevitably then you have to UN sew some seams as choices made at the bottom affect choices made at the top and vice-versa. The long narrow layout (32 x 78�) of this piece presents it’s own challenges! Luckily the deadline is April, so I can take my time and enjoy the process.

The first step was to figure out how to place seam lines that would integrate the deer into the whole. I did this by tracing the print to freezer paper and aligning it with the full sized freezer paper pattern on the wall. Then I could plot out the seam lines to be able to cut and sew it to fit into the scene. I wanted to fracture the panel and make some changes in the placement of the deer.

Luckily, the freezer paper allowed enough of the print to show through so that I could trace the basic outline of the deer!

I started the piecing with the bottom of the tree area, so that I would have a base on which to add the deer.

It has not been without drama though. After several day’s work, I was not happy with some aspects. I decided that the tree needed to be lower, more behind the deer allowing me to add more branches to the top of the tree to balance the composition.

I reworked parts and now I have the problem of fitting already pieced elements into a revised whole, but it will work out, I’m sure. I ordered more fabric from two different sources, as I found some sky and some coordinating foreground prints that might work in. The first arrived yesterday and the second is due any day now. It’s a little difficult to plan without the fabric here so I am working on the parts where I feel safe, knowing I may have to tweak later. This has enough challenges to keep it interesting for me!

To be continued……….

My work is machine pieced, in this case I will be using straight seams.
Transferring the original picture to tracing paper, figuring out where the
seam lines will go and dividing those into sewable sections comes next. I have to leave space at the bottom for the deer.

The finished piece needs to be 32 X 78� , so my working pattern will be
about 36 x 85� since I know that my intensive machine quilting will take up several inches in the end.

When I am satisfied, the lines are transferred to overhead projection film and projected in the mirror image to freezer paper on the wall in the finished size, which will be cut apart to become the working templates.

Freezer paper has a plastic side which will temporarily stick to fabric when pressed with a hot iron.

When these templates are ironed to the wrong side of the fabrics, cut with a quarter inch seam allowance and sewn, it will look like the original layout.

I have a pretty good stash of commercial prints and hand dyes suitable for nature inspired work. One of the first things I do when starting a new work is to pull any fabrics that I think have possibilities of working into the piece.

My studio has good natural light from windows and overhead fixtures so I keep my fabric behind bamboo and canvas roll – up blinds to combat fading.

Much of what I choose will never make it in and more will be added later, but this is a starting place. The fabrics are all 100% cotton, mostly commercial prints, though I do sometimes use hand dyes. I use a lot of batik fabric because I love the variations of colors within a piece that lends itself well to the nature inspired work that I do.

Behind the cutting table, you can see the blinds in the down position.

When I was teaching in Springfield, Mo., I found this wonderful panel.

(Winter Whispers by Michelle Mara, Wilmington Prints)

The scale seemed right and since my specialty is working with commercial prints, and even though I didn’t know if I would be accepted into Seasonal Palette I just had to buy two panels just in case! I needed two panels so that I could accommodate the seam allowances and still have things line up. I would want to fracture the scene, maybe rearrange the figures and integrate them into the piecing.

Deer often frequent the area of our farm pond and I thought they would bring life to the composition.

When my acceptance letter came, I was lucky enough to be assigned “WINTER” based on the committee liking the “In The Bleak Midwinterâ€� photo in my entry package. There were so many entries and over half of them wanted winter which surprised me! They asked that my new piece should be in the same style. I had said that even in winter there is much color to be seen and the one they liked had sunset colors reflecting on the snow.

“In The Bleak Midwinter� 32 x 34� 2011

The first step was going through my photos for a likely inspiration picture. I cropped long narrow portions of several before settling on this one, which is a shot that I took across our farm pond in the snow.

Since I proposed that my finished piece would be reminiscent of  “In The Bleak Midwinter�,  I decided to change the time of day to dawn so I could get some nice reflections on the ice and snow.

I isolated one tree to be the focal point.

More tomorrow!

Now that Quilt Festival is over for this year and Seasonal Palette has had it’s grand opening everyone is free to post those long awaited pictures! My entry is called “December Dawn”.

Click here to see them all.

The process began with submitting photos of existing work from which 37 artists were selected to produce seasonal works measuring 78 x 32� each. The working styles of the selected artists are vastly different, coming together to stage an amazingly cohesive body of work. The exhibit was staged in an enclosed, hard walled space with a tranquil gallery feeling that was so calming amid the crowds and bustle of the show floor. In progressing around the space, one walked through the seasons. In the center of the space was a table where artists journals of the making of each piece was displayed, with benches so you could sit and spend as much time as you wanted with the journals and the actual artworks. I wish I had had enough time to read each and every one!

There is a lovely catalog of the exhibit available for only $20.00 showing each piece with a more in depth view of the making of some of them, including “December Dawn“ at the end.

At this premier opening, already two pieces were sold!  I have been enjoying the posting of the making of some of the pieces as they are posted to blogs, so starting tomorrow I will begin to publish entries from my own journal.

I finished the quilting last week on the Seasonal piece; it took so long because it’s big  (32 X 78″ finished, so I was working at about 35 X 83″) and I put in a lot of quilting. but also because I used so many different threads, so I was constantly changing and burying ends.

I blocked and trimmed it for the binding over the weekend. Trimming was tricky, as it is so long, and the size requirements are precise! Measure twice and cut once didn’t even feel safe, I measured at least four times. I was up in the air about the finishing – facing or binding? Decided on binding a little larger than usual at 3/8″. That was sewed on yesterday and since when I do the binding I always incorporate the sleeve and documentation into the binding seam, I had to come up with a name for the tag. Settled on “December Dawn”, it’s short and to the point. Now all I have left to do is the hand sewing on the back of the binding, sides and bottom edges of the sleeve and two edges of the documentation tag, and it will be DONE!!.

I only got to work on the new piece two days last week and two days so far this week, but it is coming along nicely! There is a lot of challenge to this one and I am enjoying that! When I was in Springfield, MO teaching I found this fabric

and even though at that time I didn’t know if I would be accepted to Seasonal Palette, or how I would use it if I were, I had to buy some! And I am so glad I did…….Since a big part of what I do is using commercial prints, this one was too good to pass up!

“Longhorn Splashdown” has make it home from PIQF, along with it’s judging comments. Nice things were said about design, fabric and colors, but the negative comment was: “would have liked to see more variety of quilting motifs”.  Hmmmmmm- 15 weren’t enough? Sometimes you have to wonder if they even look. Or if they realize how stupid some of their comments make them look!

I have been having great fun this week with the new Seasonal Palette piece and have a nice start! I wish I could show you but there may be a book so they don’t want pictures posted.

But I WILL show the fabric I pulled. Some of this has since been put back on the shelf and others added…….

It has not been without drama though. After several day’s work, I was not happy with some aspects so reworked parts and now I have the problem of fitting already pieced elements into a revised whole, but it will work out, I’m sure. I ordered more fabric from two different sources; the first arrived yesterday and the second is due tomorrow. It’s a little difficult to plan without the fabric here so I am working on the parts where I feel safe, knowing I may have to tweak later. This has enough challenges to keep it interesting for me!