Creativity and the Winter Blahs

Do you find your creativity lagging in the winter? Mine surely does. I'm not so sure it's just the seasonal affect disorder causing it. I think those of us who live in the northern realms are meant to hibernate in winter! That way we wouldn't have to put up with freezing snow, never ending clouds and feeling like the house is closing in on us. Can you tell I hate winter?

Below is a picture of the tree in my yard, taken last spring. I can hardly wait for it to warm up so my bulbs will sprout and begin to bloom. I long for the glorious greens to return! I think I know why I never make brown quilts, I get so sick of just the brown tree trunks and limbs in winter that I crave using color, magnificient color.

I've not started anything new, creatively. I am working on writing up and fine tuning a class I will be giving to the members of the Kalamazoo Log Cabin Quilters in April. The class is on doing landscape quilts using a photo, but not using photo printed fabric.

Here's a quick sequence of what I do: I start with a picture I have taken and print it out in black and white. I then put that picture in a clear cheap report cover (get it at the dollar store), and using a Sharpie or other permanent fine line marker, trace out the main lines of the picture. Essentially at this point you are only doing a blocking of the areas, don't trace out all the leaves, just do big loops around an area of leaves so you know that is for a specific tree.

Next, I turn the picture over so the blank side of the paper is under your traced lines. Put a piece of non-fusing medium weight interfacing over it and trace those lines on the interfacing.(if you want the landscape to be larger, take your traced piece to get enlarged and then trace on the interfacing over that. Hint: Be sure your interfacing is of good quality and medium weight, and not fuzzy, because you will build your quilt on this foundation and be doing free motion embroidery on it. If the interfacing has a soft texture and is sort of fuzzy, it will catch in your machine. Trust me you don't want that, ask me how I know :>)

Now that the foundation is ready, you can begin by adding fabrics to block in your colors, starting with the distance and working your way forward. You can either fuse these down, do raw edge applique or sew and flip the fabric. After this is done the fun begins!

Working on the details is next. I fuse small pieces of fabric in multiple prints/colors (like Snippets) to create the effect of different leaves, then I go back and do free motion embroidery over them to secure and integrate them. For the distance I don't do a lot of FME, just enough to give some stability to the pieces and to add to the depth. As you come forward in the piece you become more detailed in the pieces and FME.

I also like to add dimensional details like bushes, tree trunks, and flowers, using netting layered between two sheets of Sulky water soluble stabilizer and doing FME to create the item. I love this technique for the depth it gives to the piece. I am not the one to create this, but Nancy Prince has great instructions on her website at http://www.nancyprince.com/

I'll post pictures with more details of the steps after I've done the class, and I have all the steps done so I can get them photographed, to help explain my technique. Check back around the end of April, as my class is on April 19.