Using Photos as Inspiration…

I use photos as inspiration for a variety of quilts that I make.  Sometimes I use the whole photo, sometimes just a part of a group of photos.  Since I live in a terrific area to get photographs of birds I make a lot of bird quilts.

Here is a green heron photo and a quilt featuring another green heron.  These are smaller birds than the great blue herons and more compact.  They like to fish in the canals here in Florida and they hide from the fish by ducking their heads and by standing very still.  Like all herons here, they also eat small lizards.





I will be giving my Using Photographs as Inspiration for Quilters Lecture to the West Pasco Quilters in Hudson, FL on November 21^st. 

The following day I will be teaching a workshop based on one of the quilts in my book called Harvest Moon.  See photo below. 

Check out the West Pasco Quilters here.

See you there!

Happy quilting,

Leigh

On My Design Wall…



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. 



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.



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