April's TIF Completed

This piece is 14.5" X 17.5".

I've FINALLY completed my April challenge. This challenge never caught my imagination and I had to fight the piece all the way, from painting the background fabric to hand finishing the binding. I did enjoy the free motion stitching at the bottom for the grasses and the flowers and also the detail work on the tree trunk.

I even had trouble taking the picture at the finish. Oh well, I'm excited abut working on the May Challenge. I'm starting on that tomorrow.

For more detail on the processes I used, look further down to the April Update entry. I went into detail on the individual processes I used for this piece.

April TIF - Update

My first step for this month's TIF was to paint a background for my project. I first thought I would do 4 - 1/2 tree's to show the changing of the seasons. I tried to change the sky in each area to also reflect the changing of the seasons. My piece wound of being very large and I wasn't quite ready for that, so I took 1/2 of the fabric and cut a tree out of some Sherril Kahn fabric I had. I was going to put lots of branches in but I realized that they would be hidden under the leaves, so I just made some main branches to peek through.

I found some small scale climbing rose fabric in my stash and cut off a large chunk and used my rotary cutter to cube it into smaller pieces. I cut some fusible web in an organic shape and put it over the first two branches, on the left, and heavily sprinkled the fabric over the top. Now I had my Spring.

I did the same thing with some green hand-dyed to get the look of the summer leaves.

I did things a little differently for fall. I had some scraps of a great multi-color fall fabric that I made a shirt for my husband from. Since it already looked like fall leaves, I just cut out small organic shapes of the fabric and fused them down. After I got the three seasons done, I got some fine green tule and fused it down over the spring,summer, fall sections of the quilt. I sprinkled some Bonash powder on the sections to help hold down the tule, but I found in some places I had gotten it too heavy and you can see the shinyness in some of the pictures. Note to self - be very careful how much you use!

I used the last branch for the winter scene. At the after-Christmas sales, I picked up a plastic bag of that snow they use in scenes (like model trains with snow on the village). I tried to glue it down with some foil glue, but that didn't work all that well, so I put sone more glue ove the top of the snow and then coved it with it with a piece of fine white tule. I had some small plastic snow flakes, so I put them between the limb and the ground. See how handy those little bits and piece you pick up here and there are?

This is what is looks like right now, I've got it pinned to do the thread work on and it should be finished early next week, I'll post as soon as it is one.

April TIF - first post

Well, I have to admit that this challenge is a very hard one for me. If you asked me I would have said that I think change is a glass half full, but....this past year has been full of big changes and a time of personal growth. I'm finally comfortable with the changes of the past year, and my glass is getting a lot fuller. It was hard for me to find the glass anywhere last year, but thanks to my friends and husband I have come out the other side.

So do I try and portray how I felt during the changes of the last year? I still can't figure out how to do that. For me change has always been a time of growth, and I certainly have had a lot of changes most of my life. If I look back the changes have resulted in something good, but they have been often been painful as they happened, even if I decided to make the changes.

The idea the has stuck in my head the most the last few days are the changing seasons. I think I will try and do something along that line. I need to find a way to show the changing seasons without getting too elaborate. I'll post more as I start my project this month.