"Standing Tall" for New Beginnings Blog Hop!

"Standing Tall," 17" x 42.6", made by Pam Geisel, Jan. 2017

Welcome to the "Happy Harvest" collection in the Island Batik Ambassador's "New Beginnings" Blog Hop!

We were challenged to use at least 8 of the fabrics in the collection and create a piece that was at least 24" x 24". Bonus points if it fit the theme of "New Beginnings." (Just kidding, there aren't any points given.)

Here are seven of the eight fabrics that I used. Since I wasn't sure which fabrics would be in the final piece, I took the photo of the fabrics after I was finished, and I used up all of the background fabric in the quilt so it's not in the photo. (I also used another piece for the backing fabric so it's not in the photo, either.)

I let the fabrics tell me what they wanted to be, and they wanted to something in a forest. So it doesn't exactly fit into the "New Beginnings" theme.

I also fudged the size some. Once I decide to make a quilt of a giant redwood tree, I realized the quilt needed to be at least twice as high as it was wide. The fabrics we got for this collection were half yards (18" x 44") so I again let the fabrics talk to me and made the quilt the size of a half yard of fabric. (I figure if you do the math the square area of a quilt that is 24" x 24" is 576" and mine is 722.5" so even though it's not as wide as it's supposed to be, it is larger in square area.) (For the non-quilters who are wondering why if I started with a piece that was 18" x 44" how I ended up with a final piece that is 17 x 42.5", you loose some size when quilting and when doing the knife-edge binding.)

I started with the tree's trunk and fused three of the brown fabrics. Then I fussy-cut around the pine needles and fused them to make the branches. I added some highlights using the mint green background from the fabric that had the deer on it.

For the forest I again fussy cut around the pine trees in both the darker and lighter green fabrics and added a middle layer from the mint green background with the deer on it (you can see part of the deer's horns in the bottom right of the photo above.)

I machine free-motion quilted along the raw edges, in the green branches, and in the background. I used a knife-edge binding and then couched on some chunky varigated green yarn that has the same colors as the fabrics. I did that after the binding so it would be the same distance from all edges, although it doesn't go across the bottom.

As always, you can click on any of the photos to see the images lager.

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