Grasses and machine thread sketching

I continue to be surprised how some quilts sell and others don’t. Truth be told, I’m often happy if they don’t sell right away because I can enjoy them in my home for awhile.  This quilt became a favorite as soon as it was finished.  It isn’t flashy or colorful but it is a bit of nature in your home.

I have tall perrenial grasses in my front yard.  These produce lovely fronds every fall.  As I was looking out my kitchen window admiring these grasses I knew I had to create an art quilt and add thread sketching.  These could also be seen as cattails which are found all over my town in low lying wet areas.  The point of my art quilts is not a perfect or even exact depiction of something but more about the essence of, in this case, a beautiful plant.

If you look closely at the quilt you will see this is 100% pieced, not raw edge applique.  That is a challenge!!  At a recent trunk show several people were puzzled by my focus on piecing for something they would be inclined to fuse and raw edge applique.  I simply said it was about preserving and honoring the art of quilt piecing.

This art quilt captures the perspective of depth within the design of the leaves.  I do this by choosing different greens for the leaves and have some hidden behind others (done by layering the piecing).  The thread sketching gives the grasses or the plant more character.  I tried a very different, very largescale meandering quilt stitch for the background and I really like it. Sometimes first tries on something new work well and sometimes it feels like a mistake and you scrammble to try to fix it.  Such is the life of being a creative quilter who likes to try new things.  I always feel the worse situation is I keep the quilt myself and don’t put it in my shop.  This has rarely happened.

I find I like mixing tradition piecing and quilting with thread sketching.  I plan to do more of these in the future.