Design Your Own Nature Quilt in Western North Carolina

I had a fabulous time teaching “Design Your Own Nature Quilt” in western North Carolina recently.  The students were talented, excited to learn, and willing to experiment.  As a result, they produced some amazing quilts in our two days together.

After learning some design concepts in the morning, the fabric was flying in the afternoon of day one.

Our class motto was “Be inspired by your photo, not controlled by it.” But, Gloria’s photo was so great that it needed very little editing.

She wisely brought the perfect background fabric.  Note that it doesn’t need to have tiny branches, just something that shows the general sky color with some variation/”imperfections.”

When placing the branches, Gloria deviated from the photo, which I applauded.  However, a little trial and error was called for (as is generally the case.) In the first rendition, her branches were too parallel to one another and they lacked the proper taper and lovely curving of actual branches.

She did a little tweaking and soon arrived at this, glued and ready to be stitched.  Isn’t it lovely?

Becky was also inspired by branches, in particular these covered with an early snow.

Here first few branches were not bad, but also needed a little better tapering and such.

After a bit more experimenting she added in a bunch more branches with snow and the piece really came to life. Don’t you love the strong white diagonal lines of the snow? She created it by tucking white fabric under dark brown.

After initially cutting perfect leaves, Becky realized they didn’t actually look perfect in her photo and something more irregular would do the trick.  Aren’t these great?  This is progressing very nicely and, after a few more leaves are added, she’ll be ready to stitch.

Can you feel the Adrenalin that was building in class?!

I have many more photos to show you so watch for them in future blogs.

Ellen Lindner