Photo To Landscape Class

Above is the black and white photo I took in a park near my home. This is what the landscape quilt below was taken from. There is NO photo transfer in this project. This project was done for a class I am teaching on April 19 for the Kalamazoo Log Cabin Quilters, which is my local guild. This is my first time trying this technique, and my first time to teach a quilting class. I have been fascinated with thread painting since seeing Nancy Prince on Simply Quilts and seeing her wonderful quilts at the IQA Quilt Festival in Chicago. She is my inspiration for this project and class.











This close up shows the first tree that I did thread painting on. I actually had it completely covered in thread and realized it looked too heavy, so I added the sky fabric with the branches toward the top, giving it a more airy look.










Below is a close up of the wall and the bushes. You can also see the thread painting on the path in the distance.










Below is the last of the close ups. This is of the bushes, flowers and grass in the lower right corner of the piece.










Now that the class sample is done, I need to go back and make the mock ups of the various stages, to help the students see the progression of the piece.

I am starting the students off with a black and white photo because I want them to use their imagination and make this their piece, and not an exact copy of mine. They will start off tracing the main components of the picture onto clear vinyl with a permanent pen, and then transfer that to a medium weight stabilizer. This stabilizer will act as the foundation for the fabrics to be built upon and will also assist in the thread painting.

The piece starts by blocking in the main background colors, working from the back (sky) forward (down). After that the background trees are added, using fused raw edge applique. Working forward, the path, the rear bushes and the wall are added. Then the two front trees and the front bushes/flowers are added.

The tree in the upper right corner had too much solid thread painting so I added a piece of sky fabric with a branch on it and then did some thread painting around the edge. I feel this made the tree much better looking. The main rear trees' leaves started out as a leaf print that I had put fusible web on, then I just randomly cut small pieces out and layer by layer fused them on. Then I used a variegated thread to do a generalized swirling thread painting over the top to unify them.

I did a lot more detailed thread painting on the trunks of the trees, trying to give them more texture. The wall is a printed silky type polyester fabric that I stitched over the printed lines, to give the stones more depth.

The grass fabric in the front had a lot of very light empty areas between the clumps of grass and I felt it would look better with lighter colored grass stitched in, and I am happy with the effect.

This was a great learning project for me, and only enhanced my desire for thread painting.