Patriotic Trip Around the World!

This is a quilt that I made as a Thank You to our friend Christine.  It didn't take me long to decide on a Patriotic theme for Chris as her camp is filled with Red, White, and Blue items, flags and more, in honor of her family who has proudly serviced our country!

I decided to use five fabrics in the quilt using red, white, & blue, as the color choices and flags and stars as theme fabrics.  Once I collected the color and design fabrics I thought they would fall wonderfully into a Trip Around the World Pattern. This is the quilt with one layer of each fabric. 

And this is the quilt completed.  It measures 60" square - my favorite size for a couch.

I machine quilted this quilt on my Pfaff.  Can you see the Stars?!  This is my first attempt at a free-motion meandering star design.  

 I love the way that the red variegated thread shows up on the back. It was however a bit lost on the busy trip around the world pattern on the front  :)

Art Quilt

 I have always been fascinated by trees.  Since I was a small child I loved to draw trees, not that I'm very good at it, just that it is so amazing how the branches grow and head off in all different directions.

Maybe it's because I am ALWAYS in SO MANY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS AT ONCE!!


 
I wanted to play with the yarn in this picture and it just looked like a great 'bark' color so I decided that it would make a good 3-D tree feature.

I cut out a background piece for the tree top and two landscape pieces for the bottom and placed them on the blue fabric I wanted for the sky.  Using detailed embroidery stitches I outlined and attached the tree top to the background.  I then sewed the yarn into place to form the tree.

Once the tree was formed I used detail embroidery stitches and free-motion quilting to add dimension to the landscape pieces at the base. 

Stars sparkling in the night.

I continued free-motion stitching the sky then add small Swarovski Crystals for create tiny far away stars and larger shell buttons for closer stars.

And here is the completed Quilt

It's to be one in a series...

I better get creating!!!

MJ Art Quilt Tree Series 1 Fall Tree Night OOAK Wall Hanging

  This Art Quilt Mini measures 11" x 11 3/4"

To View in my Etsy Store