February Landscape

A new art quilt

Yes I know it’s now April but I started this piece in February and the inspiration for it was quite interesting…

It was the artwork from my calendar which is by an artist called Annie Soudain. I was staring at February’s page thinking about how beautiful it was and how much it reminded me of the Freehand Curve Landscapes I have made and taught over the years (that eventually became my Poplars Quilt) when I was inspired to make a version of the calendar art in fabric!

I have always made my Poplars panels with straight line trees but I thought I would try curving the trees as an extra challenge. This means improv curves on both the horizontal and vertical lines plus some of the tree trunks (intended to be silver birch) were separately pieced before the freehand curves were cut.

To make things extra difficult I decided to use fabric from my linen/wovens stash including the 100% linen for the sky which was left over from a top I’d made (and was very stretchy for piecing!).

I had a plan for a lot of hand stitching and I knew I would enjoy this more with these softer fabrics. They also offered a more muted palette which I knew would suit the winter vibe.

Many of the fabrics used here are from my curated bundles available from A Beautiful Thing.

Once pieced I made another controversial decision. I decided to leave the back off the quilt! Instead I layered on to the wadding alone.

One reason for this was to cut down the amount of layers I would have to stitch through. Excessive hand quilting is not good for various old repetitive strain injuries that I’m not keen to re-awake. Stitching through less layers (and softer top fabrics to begin with) would make the process easier on my hands.

I also knew I wanted to use embroidery stitches such as cross and fly as well as hand quilting and these leave quite a messy back so this way I could add a backing afterwards and allow just a small amount of neat quilting to show.

The idea was to use hand quilting to create the bare wintery branches of the trees and then add texture to the layers of landscape with hand stitching in the same way that I had used machine sewn FMQ to add different patterns to this Poplars mini quilt below, made for The Thread House Academy Poplars Online Class.

I used Aurifil 8wt cotton thread throughout in coordinating shades along with their ‘almost black’ which I used for the tree branches. Despite the thickness of the thread and the amount of stitching it’s amazing how much the quilting still blends into the background. I ended up adding some orange to the trees on the left too.

I used the cross and fly stitches on the fields as planned, as well as some hand quilting ‘pebbles’. I wasn’t sure what to do with the large area at the bottom until I thought about sashiko.

I bought a new sashiko stencil template from the Scottish Quilting Show and used this for the foreground layer. It took ages but I think is was worth it!

Here is the back once I had finished the initial hand stitching. The other benefit of leaving the backing off is that I didn’t have to worry about knots which speeded the process up.

This was such a soothing piece to work on through the end of the winter. I became a little addicted to adding more and more stitches.

The final addition was some colonial knots to the birch trees.

Eventually I decided to stop and baste a backing. I then added new rows of hand quilting through all layers (and hidden knots!) and even more tree branches!

This is the finished back showing quite a lot of extra quilting through all the layers.

I used a faced binding to finish so it’s like the horizon just keeps on going beyond the quilt.

The dimensions are 29” x 31”.

I hadn’t intended to make this quilt at all. I have quite a tight schedule this spring and this wasn’t part of it. But I’m so pleased I acted on that initial calendar inspiration and took a few days off to create this top. The hand stitching was all done in the evenings or late afternoon when I need a break from work but it was already too dark to go outside for a walk.

Now we have much longer days already but I still have plenty of hand stitching to do! I am busy finishing up class samples for our Thread House Academy 26/27 launch on 25/26 April (Have you signed up to our FREE TASTER WEEKEND yet?!).

As it’s been a few weeks since my last post I didn’t get the chance to share our Easter Promotion with you. But you still have a few days left to take advantage of 20% off my Mini Chicken Pouch online class. Just use EASTER20 at checkout!

One last look at this new February Landscape quilt as I wish you all a happy Easter, Passover or whichever spring celebration you observe. Let’s wave goodbye to winter together!