SMQ Small Quilt Sale

The members of the Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild make and donate small pieces to sell at the quilt show every year. The six flower postcards I posted about here are my donations.

Another donation is a combined creation with my friend, Jane. It's title has something to do about a tree and flames ... I don't recall it's final name ... "Flaming Sunset" would be appropriate.

18"x 20"

It began with an exchange of single elements each of us had made. She gave me the tree she had machine embroidered in a Dottie Moore workshop. She hadn't realized a stabilizer under her base fabric was necessary, so she ended up with a wonderful tree on a very gathered background that she didn't know what to do with. For 3 weeks I studied the piece on my design wall trying to think of a way to utilize that textured background. I'm kicking myself for not taking a photo of it before I started.
Well, I couldn't come up with a way to work with the wrinkled fabric, so I cut it away in wedges leaving some of it around the tree branches and trunk. Many cut away pieces were layered on the fabric piece that looked like a glowing sunset. I found a piece of home decorator fabric for the foreground. I decided to move the tree right of center and to turn the sunset fabrics "wrong side" to the front. Now I saw a lake with the reflected sunset sky beyond the hill that the green area formed. To accentuate the perspective of looking out over the plains from the top of a hill I put boulders in the foreground. Then the fun began of finding bits and pieces to define the areas of the composition.
After the collage in my "ortwork" technique was layered under tulle and machine quilted, I highlighted and blended various areas with oil stick pastels. The pastels are heat set into the fabrics. I use my tiny iron at the design wall. It's set on medium-low heat so the tulle won't melt (I've done that and it's pain to patch). I wear a mask to keep from breathing the dust created when the pastels are applied to the surface. I don't know how effective it is against the fumes from heating them, but I think it helps to keep me from breathing them since I'm working at nose level.

detail

I gave it back to Jane with the batting and backing extended beyond the edges of my contribution. She added the borders and finished it off.

The heads of the committees for putting together this wonderful quilt show have first chance at purchasing these quilts. Jane donated AND bought this one. Later I'll post about the other piece in this exchange between her and me.