Two New Tree Quilts

I have had a summer filled with custom orders so not much time to create art quilts for my shop.  The past two weeks I decided to look back at some quilts that sold quickly and use those as inspiration for some new quilts.  Because I don’t use patterns and often I don’t have the same fabrics for creating another quilt in a similar design, the new quilts are always different but you can see the similarities as I compare them.  

Trees 20 was my inspiration for the new Trees 23.  This new art quilt is more rectangular,

Trees 23 with Mountains

wider than it is high at 20″ H x 27″W as compared to Trees 20.  I also used some different fabrics and decided to highlight the stream through the middle of the quilt with more dynamic fabric.  It is lots of fun to take a design and play with it, try some new colors or combinations and try some new free motion stitching too.  I’m very happy with the new quilt!

 

 

 

 

The other quilt I used as inspiration was Trees 22 which was Trees in Springtime at the Lake.  

Trees 24 with Mountains and Lake

I modified that design to be Trees 24 with Mountains and Lake also just finished this week.  These are very different size/shape quilts and I was going for a different view with my new Trees 24 design.  But you can see the similarities.  I expanded the foreground as I wanted to try some new combinations of green fabrics and batiks and prints for stone formations in the design.  I used more variety in brown fabrics for the new quilt trees which I think adds character to the quilt.  For one of the light green sections in the foreground I tried some different curved free motion stitching which created a kind of “mound of green” in the foreground, some unexpected depth in design.  I’ve included a picture of that section in a close up.

 It is very scary to use new free motion designs as I worry I will ruin a quilt which has taken hours to create!  But….it is rarely a disaster and usually I like it….still it is scary.   Check out the mountains for some variety in quilt stitching too.

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