Working on Projects

In my first blog, I added two photos, but didn't fully describe them, so I am going to describe them in this blog. The first photo is a photo quilt of the bed and breakfast where we stayed in Scotland. The name of the B&B is Barrachandronan. It was a fabulous old farmhouse and dairy farm that had been converted to a Bed and Breakfast. There was a beautiful dry stone wall in front of the house where they had parked a white and turquoise fiberglass boat on a trailer. Thanks to the magic of digital photos, I was able to clone the stones and grass to remove it. I was also able to delete the electic lines that came across the whole scene. That allowed the photo to look at least a decade older than it is.
When I had printed the photo onto fabric, my quilting project began. I placed it onto my design wall, and began adding elements that extended the landscape into a larger picture. It was really fun and challenging to continue the driveway, the fence and the mountains. Finding just the right fabrics was a challenge, and when the RIGHT fabric wasn't available, I used something close and added elements using my colored pencils. After turning the edges and sewing down all the elements, I was able to begin the quilting and embroidery. It was an interesting process to quilt in a way that enhanced and even drew attention to itself. Usually the quilting is meant to just enhance but not draw attention to itself, but in this situation, I felt that sometimes it was appropriate to over-quilt in an embroidery-type way. I really enjoyed enhancing this piece.