Tree of Life

My latest piece is a tree of life. I was given two lines of fabric and was challenged to create a quilt using only those fabrics. The colors in the two lines are bright and beautiful. I laid them out in my sewing room for a couple of days arranging and re-arranging them thinking of different things I could make from them. Too many design ideas were limiting me to using just a few of the colors. After two days, the idea of a tree of life came to me.

THEN it took 2 days of sketching and erasing to come up with a tree that I liked (drawing is NOT my forte!).  Here is the tree cut from the brown fabric:

Then I decided it needed roots:

And then leaves:

At this point I debated whether it was done or if it needed more leaves. I was also bothered by the openess right in the center of the tree. I played with putting a nest and a critter there, but wasn’t happy. I asked for a critique from a couple of friends and they agreed it was too open and one friend said a tree of life couldn’t have too many leaves.  So I went back to cutting out leaves:

I was much happier with the addition of leaves. At this point, I started adding the  critters I wanted in my tree. There’s an owl, a squirrel, a opposum, some birds, butterflies, and dragonflies. There’s also a snail and a frog.  I want to put a nest on one of the branches, but that will go on last because I want it to be 3 dimensional.

I’ve done the thread sketching and I’ve started the quilting, but have been too busy sewing to stop and take pictures. I’ll post those in the next day or so.

My plan is to finish the quilting and then add beads, hand embroidery, and some angelina.  This quilt has to be finished day after tomorrow.  Still can’t believe I’ve tackled this challenge!

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