Watching the Series Grow

 

Here is this series so far - the original sketch, Mother Earth and Spring.  I think the series itself deserves a name.... hmmmmm..... not sure yet.  But I do know that Summer is next!

Spring

So where do you go when the first quilt of a series is Mother Earth?  Hmmmmm.  I started looking at my stacks of fabric for inspiration.  And I found the perfect piece.  I could see the design almost immediately.

Here is what the fabric looked like before I started to chop it into little pieces.

Of course what I really mean when I say "chopped" is that I did what quilters call Fussy Cutting.  That means taking scissors and carefully cutting around a design.  Using teeny tiny scissors with serrated edges for some of the small areas.  I added fusible webbing to the back of the fabric before I started cutting.

Here is how the design that I used for Mother Earth looked when it turned into Spring....

 

I originally planned to have some of the green foliage stick out from a regular green fabric that would be exactly like the design on top of Mother Earth's head - but it did not work out that way.  For this particular design it needed to be different.  That makes me curious to see what direction the next quilt in this series will go.

Here are some details to show the beads on the flowers and the ferns and the fancy-schmancy  (my made up word) stitching that I used to secure the edges of the fabric. More on that particular subject in just a moment....

Securing the edges.  Ha!  I learned a very (!!) important lesson with this quilt.  Do you remember the picture of the fabric that inspired this design?  Well it is beautiful fabric but it is NOT quilting fabric.  Nope.  It is upholstery fabric.  Which I learned (after all that fussy cutting and fusing and putting the fabric down on the background) is very very very hard to sew into without shredding the fibers so that they stick out all ! over ! the place !!

YIKES.  I was actually flamboozled for a while trying to figure out what to do.  But then I just revved up my Bernina and chose some fancy-schmancy decorative stitches that would secure the edges.  Whew!  And I also used beads and tiny stitches by hand to secure other areas.  Lesson learned.  No more upholstery fabric no matter how pretty the design is.

 

Mother Earth

So here is the first quilt in this series.  Actually until I finished this one I didn't know that it was going to be a series - but I kept having thoughts about different colors and things growing from her head and I just couldn't stop myself.

But back to Mother Earth.  You will notice a couple of changes from the original little sketch that inspired this quilt.  First of all she has two eyes - not just one.  I really struggled with this.  But she looked like she needed two eyes so - boom - there they are.  I am glad that I added the second one.

And she has lips - which were needed to complete her personality.  And of course those are branches growing out of her head. 

Another bit to notice is that there is no neck on this creature.  I feel like she isn't so much a "person" as a creature or energy field erupting from a rocky crag of the planet.  I have no idea if anyone else will think that - but that is OK.

Once I finished the fabric portions of the basic design, I could tell that she (do you notice how this is a "she"???) really needed some sparkle.  So beads were added.  Here are some close ups....

A New Adventure - A New Series!

Here in Arkansas it has been HOT HOT HOT!!!  It seems even hotter than a normal summer.  Or maybe just hotter earlier.  (Or maybe I am feeling my age!  Heavens, that cannot be the problem!)

Anyway..... while hot summer weather and gardens require a lot of energy and time, I also find it a perfect time to quilt.  I call it Guilt-Free-Quilting because a sensible person should NOT be outside in this heat.  They should be inside where it is cool.

So I started a new series.  I love to work on a series of quilts with either a theme or an idea or a specific design to create structure to a group of quilts.  Probably part of my natural instinct to organize the world.

Inspiration for this particular series came from a little scribble drawing I made one day.  This is what it looks like.  For some reason it really speaks to me.  It is only about 3 inches square.

It is sort of peculiar because it has only one eye..... I am not certain whether this will stay the same or change when it becomes a quilt.  We'll see.....