Landscape quilting progress

Today I tackled the mitered borders on the landscape quilt.  Although far from perfect, I am satisfied with the results and will move forward. Next step is to bind the quilt  (easy as I have done a lot of binding in my sewing years)  and then the fun part, free motion stippling.  That will be the best part of this whole project.

I chose a subtle printed cotton in the same orangey-gold shade of some of the flowers to be the inner narrow border. A 1-inch wide strip was sewn to 4" wide strips of the background fabric.  They were then sewn to the trimmed quilt picture, and I spent several hours trying to get the miters as good as possible. I resorted to hand sewing two of the miters as I just could not get them right on the machine. I doubt that my miters are actually 45 degrees, but who is checking?  

Now I can see that you want a bigger picture to begin with as there isn't that much area for stippling. Not to worry, there are going to be more of these quilts in my sewing future. I already have a second one planned in my mind and am anxious to get fussy cutting for that one. 

Overall, I am fairly pleased with my final result here, I will post once more with the finished quilt, once it is bound and stippled, blocked and hung on the wall. 

My thanks to Nancy Zeiman and Natalie Sewell for their wonderful books on landscape quilting. I often thought of Nancy as I was making this, and I hope to meet her one day in the great beyond.

 

I am trying my hand at landscape quilting. Recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in my hands, I have found most hand activities too painful to do. But I can't live without fabric creations (or gardening for that matter) and I thought perhaps I could cut and assemble pictures with fabric.

Inspired by the late Nancy Zeiman and her friend Natalie Sewell, I took this project from one that Natalie did of a rock garden. You cut leaves and flowers from  various fabrics and then assemble them in layers on a background fabric.  I chose a batik quilting cotton for the background, a dark blue with splashes of white through it.  Then cut out foliage, first I cut just green shapes from fabric that looked like greenery but then I realised I actually needed leaf shapes.  So those first cuts were discarded and I "fussy cut" leaves from several different fabrics, colouring the ones that weren't quite the right green with permanent markers. Then flower shapes, and a lot of cuts to resemble tulips. I couldn't find tulip fabric so had to improvise. Also the tulip leaves were cut from other leaves and reshaped to resemble tulips. 

This is a photo of the quilt with all the flowers and leaves stitched onto it. Now I have to make a border to resemble a photo mat, I have chosen a quilting cotton in the golden orange shade of some of the flowers. Then a second border of the background fabric is  added, then a final thin binding is put around the edges. 

And the final step is to stipple quilt the entire background. This is done free- motion (feed dogs down) and I love doing this. I made a jacket a number of years ago, all the fabric was stippled before constructing the jacket and I still wear that jacket ten years later. 

A close up of the fabrics assembled and stitched to the background

A close up of some of the tulips

My hands are objecting to  the work, so I can only do about half an hour at a time, but it is so incredibly satisfying.  I already have several ideas for future projects I want to do.