Botanical Reflections – part 3 – 2016.12.11

I’ve finished ‘Maple Reflections’, my second artwork for the Fibre Art Network exhibit ‘Botanical Reflections’.  You can read about my first piece ‘Ginkgo Reflections’ here and here.

As with the Ginkgo leaves, I fused and stitched the leaves to felt.  For the Maple leaves, I used 2 different fabrics for each leaf, and left a narrow bit of felt showing for the main vein.  Then I free-motion stitched the leaf veins and around the edges.  Fortunately I had just enough of the olive colored felt left for these leaves.

I’m very pleased with my idea to fuse and stitch the leaves to felt.   In addition to adding dimension, it’s much easier to do the free-motion stitching on a small piece of felt, rather than on the whole quilt!  I can, and do, free-motion quilt in any direction, but if possible I like to turn my quilt so that I’m stitching toward myself.  It feels like I have more control.

This process also gave me the option of  rearranging the position of the leaves, and adding more leaves as I worked on the piece.   As you can see below,  I changed my mind a few times about the number and positions of the leaves.

Once the leaves were finalized, I pinned them to the quilted background, then positioned the purple bias tape.  I was able to stitch it down without removing the leaves – I just lifted each leaf out of the way as I stitched.  Then, I quilted each leaf to the background, stitching through the middle vein and around the edges.

While working on this quilt, I started wondering exactly what type of maple tree these were from.  I took a break from quilting to do some Internet research, and I’ve concluded that it’s an Amur Maple.  This first image below is the photo I took in Victoria BC.  The others I found on the Internet – click on each one to see the website it’s from.

Here’s a photo of both my Reflections quilts together.  Each is 12 x 24 inches.  I think they look great as a diptych, but it’s unlikely they will be displayed together.  There are over 70 entries for this exhibit!  Those of us who opted to make 2 entries, will have only one on display.  If the first one sells, then the second one will be hung.

And here is a detail shot.  The reflections were cut from the trimmings of the leaves.

Thanks for stopping by.  I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.