Treelines Art Quilt -- The Whole Process

My family and I took a wonderful trip to the Netherlands last summer. One of my favorite things was the bus ride from Amsterdam out into the countryside. I was entranced by the lines of trees. 

I've zoomed in and cropped this picture so it's blurry, but you get the idea. 

Here's another. The cows too!

This was the beginning of my inspiration for a new art quilt collage. Another bit of inspiration was my desire to enter the "large appliqué" category at the Quilters Guild of Dallas annual show which requires quilts be at least 72 inches on one side, but not all sides. Aha. I could made a long narrow landscape design. I took those two parameters and got to work on some sketches.

I put some strips of fabric up on the design wall.

I tried some other fabrics and began cutting strips of trees including big round trees #1 in blue.

Then I tried some other fabrics and cut some more trees including big round trees #2 in aqua.

I knew I wanted to break up the trees with a wide house-like shape similar to the barn in the top photograph. This would be a great place to incorporate some handwriting as a surface design pattern. I tested some pens and colors.

 The writing is intentionally illegible, but I think it was mostly stream-of-thought about our time in the Netherlands.

With the addition of the green barn and big round trees #3 in red, I eventually arrived here.

There are lots of problems with contrast in this composition which meant I needed to shop for some alternatives. I brought swatches with me.

After lots of time at the design wall, the dining room table and the ironing board, I was able to move forward and began adding strips within each layer that were similar in color, but different fabrics and patterns.

One of the pieces I wanted to add was this lovely green pointy print.

But I only had a tiny bit. I sent a desperate text to Kristin LaFlamme and this yardage arrived a few days later. Yeah!

By this point, I was growing weary of working on something so wide. Because all those strips go all the way from left to right, it was tricky to move them around, get them fused together and keep everything aligned. That's part of the challenge of working with an improvisational collage technique. But I can't imagine doing it any other way.

I wanted to break up the wide strip of red on the bottom and remembered the grasses growing along the roadside in the Netherlands.

Ta Da... grasses. 

At this point, I decided it needed something else. My work is all about layering fabric, paint and stitching and this piece did not have as much paint as it could have. I mean, there's already a lot going on, but sometimes more is more.

I sketched some possible motifs to create a foam stamp.

It's a little scary to add stamped painted patterns on top of the finished fused top but I did it. I didn't take any pictures of the process though. You can see the green leafy shape in the foreground as I'm fusing the entire quilt to batting on the dining room table.

The finished fused top. Can you believe how many steps it takes to get here?! I'm glad I added the green stamped leafy motif. It visually ties the layers together.

The sun-like shape in the sky strip is a pattern I created using a hot-glue gun stencil. I wrote about this technique for Quilting Arts magazine.

I printed several copies of the quilt and began planing the stitching.

I knew the green house needed something. Eventually I decided on a ghost tree silhouette.

I created the tree pattern using freezer paper that I ironed to the top to stitch around. I sometimes like this method better than marking the design on the quilt top. Yes, the freezer paper peels off eventually, but it's easily reattached. Pins helped the process too.

After finishing the hand embroidery, I fused on a backing and added free motion machine quilting.

It did hang in the Dallas Quilt Show in the large appliqué category!

I am also delighted to say that it has been juried into an upcoming Studio Art Quilt Associates global exhibition called Connecting Our Natural Worlds which will premier at the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum in Tuscon, AZ in October.

I recently had Treelines and some of my other work professionally photographed.

Treelines, 30 x 80 inches

I love how the ghost tree silhouette turned out.

The yellow fabric with the blue raindrops was created using the rolling prints techniques I demo'ed in this video.

 See the tiny snippets of the black and white stripe? They are my suggestion of cows.

Thanks for scrolling through all those pictures! I hope you enjoyed a peek into my process.

Oh, by the way, the big round trees in blue and aqua and several of the other rejected trees from this project have already made their way into other quilts. Scroll through my Instagram and see if you can spot them. 

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If you're intrigued by my process, you may enjoy my book Art Quilt Collage: A Creative Journey in Fabric, Paint and Stitch.

I've also created a workbook called Head, Heart and Hands: Developing Your Creative Voice which includes lots of ideas, inspiration and thoughts about how I arrived at my unique style and process.

Out and About

Claire and Benjamin and I had a fun weekend!

Benjamin and I went out for lunch at a new fancy restaurant I've been wanting to try, The Theodore. I started with a lovely latte. With a sugar cube!


Amazing sweet little donuts.


Eggs Florentine... on a plate with a bison.


Need some salt and pepper?


It was super fun to eat and chat with this amazing person.


The decor and atmosphere of the place was clever. Abraham Lincoln was peeking out at us from a secret room behind a bookcase.


We got close up with Lincoln after our meal. Washington too... over on the right.


Protect the Parmesan!


And Claire went to Prom on Saturday!


She went with a group of beautiful friends.


They went to the Dallas Museum of Art for more group pictures. I love this stunning image against the beautiful DMA mosaic.



A mother-daughter selfie.


And so it's not just about the kids...

My quilt, Rising and Setting is published in Machine Quilting Unlimited! It's part of a lovely article about quilts in the Matter of Time textile exhibition organized by Brenda Gael Smith. It's always such a thrill to be published. (Hey it's fun to be next to my long-time art quilter friend Sarah Ann Smith.)

Dallas Quilt Show Part 3

Still more quilts!

This is Crow Water Dance Waist High in Lighting Seed by Naima Jones. I love her work and find it instantly recognizable for its hand stitching and repurposed fabrics.


I think her work is often overlooked at quilt shows but might be much more celebrated in a folk-art exhibit.  I spoke with Naima about another of her quilts. She's very thoughtful and intentional and richly tied to her community and history.



This is Kerri Green's stunning Murmuration.


You have to see a detail to see how the screen printed images are layered.


You see Kerri won 2nd place in the Art Quilt category for the quilt above. AND she won first place in the same category. I would guess that the judges had no clue that these quilts were made by the same artist. They are really quite different, but equally stunning.

The blue ribbon quilt is Hugs and Kisses. It really makes an impact! As you study it, you can see that the four sections are all the same composition in just two colors, then three colors, then in multiple colors.


Kerri had one more quilt in the show. It's called Fun House 1. I'm crazy about that red triangle.


Heather Pregger had one of her Tuning Fork Series in the show.  It's Tuning Fork @29: The Marsh at First Encounter Beach.  I really love the deconstructed, landscape feel of this work.


Here is an amazing hexie quilt. I wish I had taken a close up shot so you could see the piecing of the small shapes, but it's more impressive from far away. The circular, swirling image she created must have taken so much planning! It's called Almost Charming Circles by Fay Poe.



Here is the first place winner in Wall Quilts. It's Richard Larson's Tapestry. As I understand it, this is a computerized machine embroidery pattern. It really boggles the mind to think how this is stitched and pieced.

Here's a detail. There is no black fabric in this quilt. All the black you see (other than the border) is black thread. (I think.)

Frankly, I really don't understand the draw. Here is the same quilt in a vendor booth. 

There were other quilts that incorporated machine embroidery in various ways. Some more innovative and interesting than others.

I love Karen Stone's work. Years and years ago, I paper pieced a quilt using her New York Beauty pattern. She had at least two quilts in the show. Here is Must Love Linen. It's a relatively traditional quilt and a bit outside of what I'd expect from Karen, but I love it. 

And here is Spot On.

I'm going to wrap up with just one more quilt. I shouldn't have saved it for last because it was the stand out experience for me from the whole show. It's incredible. Innovative and original, but grounded in tradition and masterful technique. It won the Viewer's Choice. Deservedly!

It's Rebecca Prior's Extraneous Female: Escapement Mechanism. She says it was based on blocks she learned from Elly Sienkiewicz in the Baltimore Album style. She also was loosely inspired by patterns for two steampunked theme quilt blocks published in Wired magazine, but beyond that I believe this design is entirely her own creation! Bravo Rebecca!

There was so much to see and enjoy with this quilt.  Can you see the flaps that open to reveal the heart on the woman's chest? Inside is a bird in a cage.

The steampunk theme was really strong and fun!

Some of the blocks were a bit creepy and odd, but it all worked.

Notice the quilting? The lightbulb?! Genius!

The titles on the books here are all steampunk genre.

This corset/bird cage may be my favorite block. It feels like such a traditional Baltimore album style basket... and yet different!

I didn't even show you images from the special exhibits which were really excellent. The Quilters Guild of Dallas puts on an excellent show. I am so proud to be a member of the guild and I enjoy it every year. Second week in March, mark your calendar and come see us!