Having damaged my toe on Friday I’ve had the perfect excuse to shut myself away in my workroom and start on a new project.  I wanted to create an art quilt based on trees and reflections so last week, while out walking my dog, I took a series of photographs along the riverbank.  The aim is to make a 30 x 40 cm quilt as a prototype for a larger version as part of the David Hockney Challenge.  The thought of doing one 30″ x 40″ straight off was a bit too daunting!  The finished design isn’t intended to look like a Hockney but the influence is still there i.e. trees and reflections in water.

I particularly liked this image but decided to simplify the layout for my quilt and position the riverbank “straight on”.

Yesterday I painted a wash of colour on my background fabric, layered it with organza and netting and machine quilted it to create the sky.  I’m not sure if I did the right thing by making it this colourful….I wanted a bit of drama behind the trees but might have gone a bit too strong with the blues!  We’ll see when the trees get added.

For the riverbank I remembered I had an old scarf which was the ideal colour so this was cut up and distressed using a heat gun before being sewn in place.

The background is ready for the trees to be added.

I figured an easy way to create the trees would be to draw them onto iron-on Vilene and cut them out using a craft knife.  With the branches criss crossing it enabled me to cut it as one piece rather than fiddling about with several individual trees.  I like using Vilene as it gives a crisp edge, it accepts paint really well and using the iron-on type means there’s no need for Bondaweb or spray adhesive.

The trees cut from Vilene.

The trees are now in the process of being painted and I will post an update as and when they are ironed in place.

Starting work on painting the trees