I have often felt I should take photos of the backs of my art quilt tops BEFORE I add the batting and backing. For quilters, having a chance to see how the pieces come together is always fun. This post is about the quilt back of a tree quilt.
I create my tree quilts by first piecing the background from the top down to the point where the first trees are added. For this quilt that is about 2/3 of the way down from the top where five trees were added. Each of these trees was cut into the pieced background and sewn in just as you would piece a traditional quilt.
Then I finished adding in the foreground of greens and gray/browns (for rocks). After the entire background is finished, then for this quilt I added 10 more trees which run from top to bottom. Again, each of these trees was cut into the background and sewn in right sides together and then pressed.
I’ve also included a photo of the art quilt top for reference.
None of the pieces in this art quilt except the trees are cut to look like they look once they are pieced. Rather, I use strips of different fabrics in which I cut one side to match with the previous strip and then sew it in (I use a wallpaper cut). Then when the following strip is added it is cut to match, etc. This entire quilt is pieced in the traditional way with right sides together for the two pieces sewn together.
I’m doing a Trunk Show with a local Quilt Guild in May and I’m planning to take some unfinished tops in addition to a sampling of my finished art quilts. These seemed like an interesting topic for a blog post too.