Abstract Autumn

The abstract quilt I made for Sky is the Limit gave me an idea for my trees theme for Voyage as well. Same idea but looking differently:

As background I used a snow dyed piece of fabric and for the trees and the falling leaves other hand dyed scraps out of my stash.
Technically speaking my quilts for this year for Voyage are completed, but I have no idea where I put the first one. As we are having a show in France next year, I might have to make a replacement for that one.
I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday. Check out the link to see what other people did this week.

Birches

This year I am making a lot of quilts with the theme trees. There are so many ways of using this theme and creating something with it. This time I focussed on birch trees. As background I used a multi layered piece of fabric. Using my own photos and some ideas I found on Google I created a line drawing which I enlarged to the size I needed. This quilt is one for Voyage and the size this year is 12"x17". The enlargement I copied onto freezer paper and ironed this on top of the fabric. With paintstiks I colored the areas of the fabric which were not covered with the paper. After it had cured I stitched only the background area. And this is how it looks:

Okay I admit I should have ironed it before I took the picture :-).

Abstract Trees

The October theme for Sky is the Limit was abstract. After I had made the background of commercial fabric I played around a bit with paper shapes. When I had a composition which I liked I cut these shapes out of hand dyed fabrics and fused this down onto the background. My original composition was not this one, when I was quilting it it looked much more pleasing this way. And it also gave it it's name: Abstract Trees. As always size is 12"x12".
My theme for this year for Voyage is trees, so I have an idea for my 6th quilt for this group as well :-).

Fantasy trees

This morning I realised that I had not yet blogged about this quilt which I finished last month. For Voyage my theme for this year is trees and as you all know that does not mean that they have to look like real life trees :-). I think that some fantasy trees should be included as well. Size of this quilt is 12"x17" and all the fabrics used are hand dyed ones. Either done by me or by Kelly as I was with her when I made this quilt.
I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Tree

By now I do not know whether it is a Blogger problem or an Explorer problem, but I managed to get this picture uploaded to my blog using Chrome.

Trees

Blogger is having issues at the moment. Every time I tried to upload pictures to the blog, the program got stuck and nothing happened. When I tried a detour by uploading directly from Picasa I got an error claiming that the upload did not work, but strangely enough the picture showed up as a draft in my list. By copying/pasting I was able to put the pictures into this blogpost. When I googled the error, I found that they had this problem before. Hopefully Blogger solved this problem soon, because this is not a fun way to do it. So with some delay, I was able to create this blogpost :-).

The project I was working on is finished, but you have to wait till I find a proper place to hang the quilt, before I can take a picture of it.

In the mean time I worked on another one. I am a member of  Voyage and for this year we are working with a different size: A3 or 12"x17". The theme I will work on this year is trees. And my first quilt for this challenge is completed. For background I used a piece of snow dyed fabric, not in one piece, but in strips. Here is a picture of the background fabric:

I prefer to do my quilting before I do the applique. Maybe a bit unusual, but much easier with the quilting :-). Sorry but I forgot to take a picture at this stage.
The final stage was adding the tree. For this I used a commercial black fabric, fused it, cut out the shape of the tree and  ironed it onto the top. Additional quilting was added. Just like my previous quilt I did a facing to avoid a very visible binding and this is how the final results looks like:



Title of this quilt is Winter Sunrise.

And one more tree

Here is the latest tree I made. The picture is not the best, in reality it is square and not like the picture shows. As with my other trees I used hand dyed / painted fabric for it and a facing. This one is called Weeping Willow.
More trees will follow in the future, although I have to admit at the moment I am not working on one. Some other commitments and ideas for shows will have to be done first :-).

working in series

I am taking several on line classes at the moment - yeah overlapping in time - about working in series and when something like this happens, the subject pops up everywhere. Even in Pam's class - which is actually not on working in series, a series developed :-) Here are some starting points for tree quilts.

At the moment they are only pinned or glued, so maybe I will make some changes to them. And no doubt more will follow :-). All tops are 12"x12".

trees

Many of us will have used trees in their work. I am guessing that most of the time those trees looked like real life trees. But would it not be great fun to play around a bit? Here are 3 examples of fantasy trees:

The size is 8"x10" (20x27 cm) each. Background is snow dyed fabric. The trees are made from commercial batiks and/or hand dyed fabric.
Now I am in doubt. Shall I make 3 separate journal quilts? Or shall I continue in making more fantasy trees and add them all into one big quilt?