A couple of summer ago, after seeing some of Ann Lovelace’s art quilts, at art fairs, I became fascinated with her style of Landscape quilts. How realistic these fabric scraps could represent a place so familiar is mind-blowing.
So way back when, when I realized a class with a similar, but different, style of Landscape quilts was being held at a quilting shop, near me, Interquilten in Interlochen, MI, to be exact, quickly signed my youngest daughter, and I, up.
We were asked to bring in a landscape photograph. After sifting through many, many pictures, I settled on this one I had taken earlier in the season.
This picture is a favorite view taken as you hike up in to the woods, above our cottage, a very familiar place, to our family.
We were also asked to bring in batik scraps in colors similar to our photograph. No problem there, I seem to collect batik! These need to be true batiks, the color needs to go though and through, not be printed on like so many imitations, are.
And a rotary cutter, with a fresh blade, to cut the batik into crumbs. Tiny crumbs. The tiniest of crumbs would would be using to “paint” our pictures.
After taking us outside, helping us to see that trees don’t float in the air, but how they relate to their surroundings, we set about cutting and layering the colored scraps into a picture. Along the way, I added birch trees carefully cut from fabric. I also cut out other trees from random, non-tree fabrics.
This was then overlaid with more crumbs and finally with a piece of black netting and pinned together with a thousand pins. We were then instructed to free motion machine quilt it.
This is when the problem arose. If you know me very well, you know I am not much of a machine quilter, so this project lingered on for a really long time. Then, in August when I saw how impressive Ann’s winning quilt was at Art Prize, I finally pulled my unfinished piece out and went to work finishing it.
I am so glad I did! I learned so much making this and having finally finished it, I would consider attempting another one, some day….. It really is fun to see a photograph come to life as a quilt!
Side by side…
This will be my second entry, in the Bloggers’ Quilt Festival 2013, Art Quilt Category.
“Take a Hike”
Art quilt category
October, 2013
10″ x 13″
A Sewfrench original
Machine Quilted by myself
Batiks, printed fabric, synthetic netting, cotton batting
Knife edge binding
My other entry is in the Baby quilt category and can be seen here.
If you scroll towards the bottom of the main Bloggers’ Quilt Festival page, you will see quick links for the rest of the entries here.
Also linking up with:
Fabric Tuesday
A Stitch in Time
Finish it Up Friday
TGIFF
Previous Festival favorites:
Flower Garden ~ Fall 2009
Mosaic Tiles ~ Spring 2011
Shoot For the Moon ~ Fall 2011
Bubble Quilt ~ Spring 2012
Out of This World ~ Fall 2012
Thousand Pyramids~ Spring 2013
Head Over Heels in Love ~ Baby quilt ~ Fall 2013
As mentioned above, one of Ann’s pieces recently took away the Grand Prize at Art Prize 2013. To have a quilter win such a huge, international, art show, representing over 1500 pieces of various art forms is amazing. It just goes to show that quilting is finally being recognized as an art, not just a layer to keep you warm. And that she is from our neck of the woods and often uses Michigan scenes, in her art, is a bonus!
