For this month’s Quilting Arts Magazine ‘In the Garden’ Reader Challenge, I was initially thinking of a flower garden with bright colors – but I just wasn’t getting inspired. So I went to my image collection and found this photo I took a couple of years ago of a clump of iris leaves in the sun. I love the light and dark patterns created by the sun and shadows.
Then I found this beautiful fabric in my stash – it has a gradation from dark to light green. It’s the fabric on the top, folded so you can see all the different shades of green. On the bottom are several coordinating solid and tone-on-tone green fabrics. I’m excited about using this limited color palette to make an art quilt. It’s going to be almost completely about value – ensuring there is enough difference in value so the leaves can be distinguished from each other.
I’ll enhance the foreground leaves with thread work, and I’m going to experiment with tulle over the leaves in the back, so they will fade into the background and make the scene appear more three-dimensional.
Here’s what I’ve done so far. I like how it’s looking.
I’m linking up with these blogs for WiP Wednesday. Click on the buttons below to see all the creative people participating and check out the projects they’re working on.
Wow this is really interesting – I’ve never seen this technique before. It looks great.
Amanda, I cropped and edited the photo in Picasa, then printed a black & white copy. I traced the outlines of the leaves with a Sharpie marker – the lines showed through on the back of the paper as a mirror image. I used that to trace the leaves shapes on fusible web.
Wow…”green” with envy here. I just don’t know how you can go from picture to fabric with such ease. Could you tell me how long this process, of what you posted took? I really love seeing your stuff in Quilting Arts…(I think that I have 😉 )
Peg, I just started cutting fabric this morning – it took 2 or 3 hours to get to the point in the photo. I did spend a couple of hours on Monday editing the photo in Picasa, drawing the outlines of the leaves with a Sharpie and selecting fabrics.
Thanks Terry. I will be sure to check back. I have also written you down in my little tip book so that when I decide to embark on picture to fabric I will check out your work. The sharpie tip is a good one to have!
This will be wonderful when done. I can see it in my head from your description and what you have done so far! Lovely!
It looks great already. I’ve just started experimenting with art quilts a little bit more, particularly from photos of people, so I’m going to have a good browse through the rest of your blog now to pick up some tips!
I’m going to really like this piece! And it’s very interesting that it’s monochromatic. Great idea.
Very neat! I have used Picassa to create a quilt as well – a great tool for me, since my drawing talent is not very developed!
Beautiful, Terry!