This year happened to be the 50th Anniversary of the Glen Helen Association. Glen Helen is a 1000-acre nature preserve owned and operated by Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. They run educational programming including busing out 6th graders to stay overnight in their dorms and learn about nature.
You could say that Glen Helen is dear to our hearts. Many years ago my husband and I both attended Glen Helen when we were in school (although not at the same time) and we both kept coming back whenever we could, and many years later we shared our first kiss in the Pine Forest.
One of the events to celebrate the 50th anniversary is a juried art show, featuring sights found in Glen Helen, and these 6 quilts are all of places in the Glen. All of these quilts use a collage format, are made primarily of fused fabric with a raw edge applique technique, and are all embellished. Since they all have an image that was inspired by a photo, I tried to find different ways to "frame" the picture on the quilts.
They are all 8" x 11". I also had notecards printed using images from these quilts.
"Pine Forest Looking Up" The pine forest is a favorite place for a lot of people, and this is the view when you lay on the forest floor and look up. The sky fabric is hand-painted with thread painting on the green fabrics to loosely represent the pine needles. There is a thin piece of red fabric framing the pine trees with a piece of brown yarn couched around it, and has two metal buttons.
"Pine Forest Tall" This quilt shows the pine trees from a straight on view, with most of the pines needles at the top. The light brown fabrics on the pine floor are the sunlight that filters through. There are three boxes on the right side with a silver cord couched on top of them. The cord emphasizes the height of the trees and it also hangs below the edge of the quilt with a wooden bead at the end. Seven small wooded beads are on top of the silver cord and a stone-like bead is in the brown box.
"Grinnell Mill" The Grinnell Mill, located at Grinnell Road and Bryan Park Road in Yellow Springs, was built in 1813 and restored in 2006 when it was converted to a Bed & Breakfast. The building uses three different red fabrics and blue and green yarn is couched around the blue background. There are two square and two round beads on the blue and green boxes above and below the mill.
"Covered Bridge" The covered bridge is located near the Grinnell Mill. It was moved to this location over a creek and can be crossed by foot. There is a black cord couched around the opening to the bridge. The vertical orange batik was pieced to the brown fabric, has black bugle beads down the middle, and there are red and black beads at the bottom.
"Trillium"
"Cascades" The cascades is the waterfall over Birch Creek. I used several different grays to make the rocks and couched some white yarn where the falls meet the water. There are two pieces of blue yarn couched horizontally across the top and bottom of the quilt and I used blue metallic thread to quilt the falls. There are three round gold beads at the top, one metallic green bead near the bottom, and seven stone-like beads across the bottom.
3 comments:
i especially love your pine forest pieces! I, too, went to Glen Helen as a sixth grader, and many years later, Rodger and I hiked the trails on our first date. It holds a special place in my heart, and you did a wonderful job capturing its beauty.
Pam, I love these! The pine trees speak most loudly to me too.
Sorry we won't see you tomorrow at the Street Fair. Tom's working and I'm too tired to manage a toddler there alone. Hope it's a fun, profitable and dry day for you!
You're not the only ones who think so...the Pine Trees have already been sold!
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