Thursday, October 10, 2013

On My Design Wall…


copyright Leigh McDonald
Deciding on placement of Egret

I’ve been working on this landscape quilt featuring an egret in flight on and off again for a year now.  I have hand appliquéd most of the egret…yes I said HAND appliqué.  I got stalled out on the piece when it came to painting the tree trunks.  My inspiration is a combination of the photos below.

 

We get lots of photos of egrets standing in water and fishing…no movement.  To get the egret to fly my husband Bill stood near it and suddenly flapped his arms while moving toward it!!  Wish I had two cameras, one to shoot the bird and one to shoot my husband!  What would I do without him!

A photo of cypress trees inspired the tree trunks that border the right side of my quilt.  I used undyed silk noil as the base for my trees, thinking rough bark.  I then totally ruined that rough effect by painting wonder under and applying it to the noil, making it a smooth surface.  I then applied painted papers, fabrics and I am currently hand embroidering the surface to add texture. 


copyright Leigh McDonald
Tree trunks ready to
add to background


This will be a long term project!!  The background photo of the blog is a close-up of the embroidery on the tree trunk.



copyright Leigh McDonald
Spider Lily

This photo is inspiration for the foreground of the piece.  I have a drawing and fabric pulled for this and that is all.

I will return to this piece after it is farther along so you can see how it is turning out!

Happy quilting,

Leigh


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