Every Day Should Be All about Thankfulness

In Green Pastures.

Copyright 2000

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I'm thankful. Thankful for another day. Thankful for eyes to see it with. Thankful that I'm not hungry. Thankful that I'm not sick. Thankful for my family and friends. Well, you get it. I'm thankful!

The piece you see above was titled In Green Pastures because it's about the 23rd Psalm. The 23rd Psalm is my favorite Scripture. My Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Jettye Barton, made us memorize it. Some nights praying it is the only thing that enables me to go back to sleep.

That's because some nights I wake up scared, especially now. I'm worried about my family. I'm worried about our country. I'm worried about the status of worldwide Christianity and the increasing pressure against it. There are a lot of days that are tough, and we are really facing some now. It's frightening and scary to watch the news. The tensions and pressures are growing, and I'm worried about the results.

Well, we just don't know what's going to happen and it's a good thing we don't. But I do know God is still in control. I do know that my Father said He makes me lie down in green pastures, and leads me beside the still waters. Without exception, I know He always brings good things out of bad. I'm trusting He will continue to during these troubled times as well.

So this quilt is about the cool pleasantness of tree shade, pretty flowers to look at, the lazy antics of sheep carefully watched by their Shepherd--an environment of peace and calm and trust. It's circled by the words,

"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures."

It's About the Shadows

Winter at Woodson Bend, KY.

copyright 1999

I don't consider this piece a tremendous success because there are now such wonderful, skillful landscapes out there. By comparison, this one seems a little primitive!

However, it was a learning experience for me, and it did win 1st in the medium category in our guild show in Torrance, CA. It's also the largest landscape piece I've done. It was made from a photo I took and I worked on it off and on for several weeks. Finally, I got to a point that I was pretty much finished, but something was wrong!

I went to a class--forgot which one--and came back knowing the problem. It was "flat!" There were no shadows! The concept of light wasn't working because there were no shadows. So I went in with black tulle and added the shadows for the trees. Even so, this piece isn't perfect; the shadows should likely all fall in the same exact angle of direction. However, if there were an obstruction of the light (such as the mountains), the light rays could get skewed, and I guess that's the way it is here.

Some of the design techniques in this quilt include: hand-painted fabrics for the sky, hand-dyed pieces for the mountains, layers of tulle to create a foggy-like water up-front (as opposed to normally being further away--came from the pic), and tiny snippets to replicate the fallen leaves. Also behind the tree on the mountains, I used yellow tulle and then stitched with gold thread, trying to replicate the sun shining through that cleft of hills and onto the water. I'm not sure I was totally successful there.

One technique was used here which I learned from Natalie Sewall, and that is ragged cutting. Note the bushes in the front. The piece of fabric was scrunched up into a point and lopped off with my scissors, to make holes. They and the trees were cut free-hand without a lot of correction. Nature is wild! There isn't any precision about it.

There are some things I don't like about this piece and to some degree have corrected. I don't like the greenish sky fabric behind the green trees on the upper right (not corrected). And I never liked that green fabric for those trees, so now I have filled in with a dark green fabric marker to make them look more like evergreens. It gives more contrast and I'm happier with it.

In this pic, which is several years old, you will also see behind the large tree, that I used some iridescent tissue fabric to re-create the water shining from the sun. For some reason, I didn't continue it all across to the shore in front. That was a mistake! Accordingly, a few years back, I appliqued on some more of the iridescent stuff and now it looks right.

So, yes, you can correct your design to some degree! I don't know that this one would win any prizes, though, if it were to be judged. . . .

One more note: the colors here are important in carrying through that concept of cold. There is subdued blue, gray, gray-brown, violet, and soft colors for the most part. I included some rust, because out in nature, there are trees that don't drop all their leaves in winter. And note the little bit of purple bush to the back right of the large tree. In left front, and right back, there is green, and some orange in between--the secondary colors! They always make a piece more interesting.

This piece is on my wall in my studio, and I enjoy it because I remember the original scene as well.

New Quilt--99 Years. . .

"99 Years. . ." c. 2008

Our guild held a challenge recently, devoted to "9's." There were some rules to follow:
At least 9 fabrics
The number 9 in the quilt
At least one fabric 9 years old
A 9-patch in the quilt
Our hope is to get our group of quilts accepted for showing in 09 at the new AQS Show in Knoxville, TN.

My quilt, above, came about first from hunting a 9-year-old fabric in my stash! I have many I know, but couldn't remember which! I found the star block which I knew was that old, and the light solid in it was from my early quilting days. So I started from there.

It had that little print in it, and I found I had more that would coordinate. The theme came from working frantically all summer in the studio, and everyday praying, Oh Lord, what all can I get done today? (This comes from having been gone most of the spring, and the fact that we spend over 3 months in Fl each year!) I don't have access to all my stash and stuff all year, so I wanted to take full advantage of my time. And none of us know how much time we have, right?

The challenge for me in this quilt was all those letters! I hand-drew them all and cut them out, then they all had to be applied somehow. That wound up to be with a fusible on the back, and then blanket-stitched by machine. I never was so glad to get that task done!

By then, I saw it was taking on this "Mary Englebreit" look. At the end, I went to my stash and the fabric which looked best for the back was a surprise. In the selvedge, there was "Mary Englebreit" (forgot which fabric line); so I guess that was meant to be.

To further the theme about time, I went online and got images of clocks. They were applied with a fusible as well. On the left is a charm made of letter beads, which reads "more time, Lord."

It was a challenge because I took more pains and did some new things I hadn't done (because they take more time!). I didn't win the Viewer's Choice, but I really liked the one that won. Karen Barger did a quilt that showed her sewing room in applique and "possession is 9/10's" being the problem! I identified totally.

But I really like my quilt and we are very hopeful that we will get to show them all next year.

Adding 3D to Your Work

"I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes Unto the Hills" c. 1999

First let me say that the sky fabric was my inspiration. When I looked at it, I saw dawn. Then I remembered those wonderful flowing spaces of the Southwest. That's how this piece evolved. It's really another example of my previous post--"Sometimes the fabric does all the work"--but this time the tree becomes the focal point and the sky secondary.

Often a tree comes forth in my work and a recent class I had taken helped to create this one. If you could see it up close, you would see that it has some puffiness to it, meaning that it doesn't lie flat on the fabric. In quilting, we call that trapunto.

It's not hard to create a 3D tree, or anything else really, that you might want to create. Take a piece of muslin, lay a piece of batting (not high-loft) over it, then the fabric (right side up) you are using with a design drawn on it. (Or to really cut loose, use your sewing machine needle to sew it free-motion!) Sew around all the design on the design line. Then trim it out your new motif leaving a 1/8" allowance. Place it on your design piece wherever you want it. It might be good to temporarily "baste" it on with some spray adhesive. Then either straight-stitch, or zig-zag stitch it on with matching, or nylon thread. Another option, which I did here, was to use the cording foot of my sewing machine, and stitch down all the edges with a matching yarn.

Lest you think all those branches you see were done this way--no. The biggest thickest branches were done this way, then I used matching thread to free-motion stitch all those little feathery branches you see on the tree, after I had attached the tree to my piece. Please note: when you are sewing on objects and embellishing by machine stitching, it is best to have your background fabric in a machine hoop and maybe even use some tear-away stabilizer. Otherwise your fabric will pull and get wrinkly. Not good. This piece was done mostly out of batiks, which are stiffer, but tear-away stabilizer never hurts. (I use Tear-Easy by Sulky and it is very easy to take off.)

The three shrubs were done using this process as well, but they were just stitched on with nylon thread--no cording on the edges.

You might ask why I did not do the mountains using the 3D effect. Because I wanted them to have that far-away look (remember my earlier post about perspective?), I chose to keep them flat. Any dimension would have brought them closer in. So the lesson there is, if you are doing a landscape, likely any 3D work would need to be toward the front of your picture.

If you study the composition on this piece, you might wonder why there are several things on the left (a tree, 3 shrubs, and a fence in the front), and none on the right side. In asymetrical design, the weight of one side visually equals the other. The right side had a really striking light sky drawing attention, as well as a light sand dune. To keep the greater interest on the tree (which was my design plan), there are more "things" on the left side to hold your interest there. That way, I didn't have two equally-competing focal points.

Finally, the title of this piece came from the 121st Psalm: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

This piece helps me remember that.