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What Secrets Does the Forest Hold?
It’s DONE! And with great thanks to a motley crew for their input….. I had wanted to do this quilt of the ivory-billed woodpecker on a large-scale….say 4×6 feet. Then, I discovered the yarn company wanted the piece I said I’d do for them for Quilt Market….which opens on Oct. 22. Well…..I had planned to try out the yarns for the woodpeckers and the treetrunk, so I decided to do a smaller “study” so I could meet the very-soon deadline (this ended up 28 in. wide by 32 long on the tree trunk). Then, once I’d made the male ivory-billed woodpecker, I lost my urge to do it a second time on a larger piece. Someone on this e-list suggested I try to incorporate as many details I had planned for the larger quilt into this one so I’d like it better, and that’s just what I did. And I’m happier with the results.
If you’re curious, scroll down a bit to see what this looked like late last week—worse! I worked more on the tree trunk (thank you to the Frayed Edges for observing kindly that it just wasn’t “finished” yet….sure enough, they were right…). I was browsing around Lorraine Roy’s website
and saw a description of how she works….using chopped up bits of cloth, thread, whatever, under tulle. So I took a couple yards of each of the colors of yarn I had and chopped them up with the rotary cutter, sprinkled them across the treetrunk, spritzed with basting spray, then pressed a black tulle with a spiderweb pattern (which happens to look like the crenelations in bark when layered) on top. Then tore strips of brown tulle and layered them in vertical strips on top, and quilted the whole shebang.
Then, I added the female poking her head out of the nest hole. Finally, I quilted words into the borders on the sides. For the “big” version I had planned on using a dark brown or near black for the borders so the lettering would be visible, but I really liked the batik I had put on this one, so stuck with it. That means, however, the words are VERY subtle. Like I souped ’em up a bit by coloring in with spring green prismacolor pencil. If you are close and look, you can see the writing. In some ways, I like it…it’s a secret the quilt holds only for those who look closely (and alas, you may not be able to see in the photos). On the left side it reads:
What secrets does the forest hold?
And on the right:
The Lord God Bird Still Lives (and in smaller letters) campephilus principalis
It’s odd…I’m a bit ambivalent about this working with companies thing. It has been REALLY good for me to work with first Bali Fabrics, then Janome. The doors it has opened have been wonderful and very helpful to me. But now, I’m wondering if I need to distance myself a bit…make it more on my own. I don’t know. Anyway, my main contact at Janome changed jobs and is now working for Lion Brand Yarn company, and she contacted me asking if I’d be interested in working with them, thinking that of the folks she had worked with via Janome, I’d be a likely suspect for incorporating yarns into quilts. To be undiplomatically blunt, Lion doesn’t always have a great reputation…mostly I think because they sell through Wal-Mart and JoAnns and such. And some of their yarn really is kinda shiny- acrylic-y. But some of it, to my pleasant surprise, is really nice…the “eyelash” (Fun Fur) and suede-look chenilles. I used the fun fur, couched down and quilted intensely, for the birds’ feathers, and used the “suede” and one of the homespun yarns on the tree trunk. I really liked the quality and look of those yarns…they worked well, and who needs to spend more $$ than necessary to embellish a quilt….
So anyway, I’m pleased that they asked me, pleased that the quilt turned out well and will hang in their first-ever booth at Quilt Market. But I’m still wondering about the working with companies……I also am having a bit of a reaction to the Quilting Arts Magazine trends of putting anything and everything onto a quilt….I have a more spare, “clean” style. I’m wondering if I need to stop, re-think, and maybe return to the fabric and the thread. Generally, I use whatever technique or material I need to get the look that is in my head (and don’t let a technique drive the idea), but still wondering if I need to re-group a bit.
What I really need to do, though, is get that damp laundry out of the washer, so enough blathering and back to reality! Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think.