Custom Quilts Keeping Me Busy

I want to share some of the custom quilt orders which have kept me busy these last couple of months. 

First, in late spring I made a custom quilt of browns, oranges, and yellows in an abstract mosaic.  This quilt was 24″wide and 40″high.  Mosaic quilts are truly designed 100% on my flannel design wall.  There is a lot of placing and moving and stepping back and re-placing pieces and colors of fabric.  I work with pieces which are usually 3″x4″ or smaller, some are as big as 5″ on one side.  Often there is a lot of trimming to fit when I begin the sewing process.  Sometimes I piece blocks of pieces and sometimes I do columns of pieces and sometimes I do both in a quilt.

My next custom this summer was my largest art quilt project yet:  A tripytych of three panels, each 30″ x 48″ of an expanded version of my Abstract Trees. the total size was 90″ x 48″.   Designing a tree quilt which is 48″high creates some challenges as my vertical abstract trees, usually single trunk trees, can get very tall at 48″!  I designed more trees with limbs to the right and left to break up the 48″ visual.  The photo I’ve included has me standing beside the quilts so you can understand the scale.  (I’m not usually eager for photo opts!)

My third summer custom which I just finished last week is a custom of Birch Trees By the Lake, 40″W x 27″H.  I have made many birch tree quilts and quite a few with a lake in the background.  Though I start with a sketch on graph paper (think stick figures as I’m not a sketcher!), the combinations of fabrics and colors is something that happens as the quilt is created.  These quilts in which all the trees reach to the top of the quilt but start at different places lower down in the quilt, means that the sky is created first, then the background hills or mountains, then the lake and THEN the foreground and trees are added slowly and carefully.

My next post will be about a custom order last spring in which the customer actually gave me sketches as guides….it was a challenge because only one of the custom quilts was of my designs – two were her designs.

From mid September to early October I will be away from my studio.  I look forward to whatever the fall brings with more custom orders or some time to experiment.