Ocean and Dunes Art Quilts with some new techniques

I have been creating ocean and dunes art landscape quilts for many years but this week I decided to try some new designs.  In Ocean and Dunes 22 I used one fabric for the sky instead of piecing it like I usually had done.  When it came time to quilt it, I thought I would try a loose stippling pattern.  After adding this it just didn’t look right at all!  This is the worst situation to find yourself at this stage in designing and creating a quilt.  My only idea to save the quilt was to add tight stippling in sections of the sky which created cloud like places and saved this quilt from the reject pile.  I’m very happy with the effect the tighter stippling created and will definitely use this design in the future.

In my second quilt this week, Dunes with grasses 2023, I did my first serious attempt at thread sketching.  Initially I thought I might try this technique on the Ocean  and Dunes 22 but the larger size of the quilt kind of intimidated me.  Trying thread sketching on a smaller size first seemed a better idea.  I just love the effect of the thread sketching  on this smaller dunes quilt.  I decided also not to include detailed free motion quilting in the dunes area or the water in this quilt as the thread sketching should be the main attraction.  Instead I simply did a stitch in the ditch quilting approach for dunes and water.  After the grasses were painted in by thread, I added a simple free motion design in the open part of the sky to finish the quilt.

Both quilts were fun with opportunities to try some new approaches in design and stitching.  I’m ready to explore thread sketching and painting on future quilts and to try new free motion designs in my sky sections of landscape quilts.