I have created over 80 Sunset art quilts. In the 11 years I have been making landscape art quilts, I have improved my observation skills, my ability to pause in daily life to notice a unique or just beautiful sunset. And truly, aren’t they all something special?
Sunset 83 was created from a photo I took from my back deck of a central Pennsylvania sunset this year. It surprised me with the escalating color and striations from left to right, like someone was painting the sky as they walked up a set of stairs. I was also struck by the unusual colors. There were brownish dark golds and even some colors that seemed brownish grey. The photo was pleading with me to create a wall quilt…so I did.
I’ve had several conversations with other quilters in the past few months about how I go about creating my quilt which has no patterns, which involve decisions on piece size and shape as I go. I took a “layout” picture of this quilt before I started creating it. The layout took several hours over two days as I focused on both the design of the colors and the combination of colors in each layer. And as always, there were decisions to change or add colors 
as I went. I often don’t add the dark foreground until the end so there is no foreground in the layout plans.
I designed and pieced this quilt from the bottom edge up (before adding the foreground). I actually had another 6-8″ on the top of the quilt which I decided just didn’t work so off it came. A painter will paint over parts of her painting which don’t suit her. My options involve ripping and repiecing sections. It is all part of the process.
This is so pretty! I especially love the quilting; it is an additional layer of “flow” to the piece.
You are so kind! I had fun sorting out how to create the angled effect of the sunset.