The Garden Composite

Webster says – Garden (GAHR-nd) n. ground for growing flower, fruit, or vegetables – v. cultivate garden.

When I read the challenge for July my first reaction was, “Wow! I’m going to see someone do ‘fried green tomatoes' or at least, ‘home grow’d t’maiders [sic]’” Oh well! I added the vegetable garden myself to make sure we were all-inclusive in our endeavors. There is a hamburger joint in Fort Worth that serves fried leeks that will stop your heart. Now that’s gardening.

This composite came together with ease. I usually do all the “tweaking” first. Then, sit back and study the page and see if my imagination can visualize how they interact. Or, at least, which one will make a good middle of the page image. In a photo, just above center at the one-third line is often where we try to put a point of interest – such as the eye line of a portrait. That’s where I put the composite's “center.” Another photo trick is to put something in the image that will “lead” your eye to other points of interest – like Judy’s butterfly wings. They are right in the middle, but notice how they lead your eye to upper left and upper right, top row, and Alice and Carolyn’s quilts nicely frame Tricia’s garden.

The reds of Nedra’s and Jane’s quilts also frame the butterflies and the sweep of the quilting leads your eyes back to the middle.

Karen, we all know the importance of bees to any garden, be[no pun intended] it flower, fruit, vegetable, or field crop. It’s great you added one of the most significant insects in the 6-legged world to the collection.  [Did you know there are over 200,000 different kind of animals that act as pollinators?]

To start the description of the last row with “and that leaves” Andrea and Kathy” would seem to demean their quilts. Absolutely not! They both fit perfectly in that space, both in color and size to balance the corner and leave room for the label.

Thank you for letting me be a part of such a talented and creative group.

Randy

Tricia's Garden

Here is my stitched garden.

Judy's Butterfly Garden

 

It is such a delight to see a butterfly flitting around the yard. I don’t have a lot of flowers in my yard, but the other day my 3 year old grandson and I were blessed to see a beautiful butterfly swoop by us. It was in a hurray, but we both saw it and enjoyed that little spot of color fly by us.

The large butterfly is a leftover from a mandala quilt I am working on. It didn’t turn out perfect for that quilt, but it works fine for this one. The way I made it was to use freezer paper for my template and cut out the sections of the butterfly. I thought about putting silk, satin, or lace under the cutouts, but I looked up from where I was sitting and saw a bag of Angelina fibers. I played with laying out the different colors on top of each other so that there are gold fibers, holographic ones, and some darker ones to give it interest. Once I had the fibers laid out I fused them together into a large sheet. From there I chose where I would get the prettiest look on the butterfly and cut that out to fuse onto the back of the butterfly.

I had another piece of fabric that had the other butterflies on them which made it easy to fuse and cut them out. 

The flowers were hours of struggle. I took down my box of fused fabric and just started cutting up slivers of fabric. Boy, was that ugly! Then I went back to my fun petal shapes and the flowers were more like the summer time flowers I grew up with. I tried different colored fabrics and on this small piece it was too much, so I used the same fabric on all three flowers. I truly only had a small piece of it that fabric and it has been a favorite for many years. Now that fabric is all gone, but it is in some of my favorite quilts.

The grass blades are slivers from a hand dyed piece I made many years ago. The background is an ombre fabric made by Caryl Bryer Fallert  called “Essentials” for Benartex.

I read this quote and thought it was a good reminder for us during this pandemic. We are definitely going through a change that we didn't choose. "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." ---Maya Angelou

Kathy's "GARDEN" Quilt

This "Garden" quilt started with a toddler's "T-Shirt" that says "One of a Kind."  As soon as I saw the shirt, I knew it was going to become the focal point of my quilt.

I carefully cut the T-shirt, then used "Misty Fuse" to mount the front of the shirt to the white fabric that has a floral motif in the background.  I "Free Motion" quilted the background to add texture.  The trim around the sides of the quilt was hand stitched, and the heart shape and rectangular "Hot Fix" embellishments were affixed to the fabric with a special (very hot) heating tool.

I took the picture of my "Garden" quilt in our back yard.  The background is a small view of one of the 5 gardens we have that surround our home.    I'm very happy with this Little Quilt, and I hope all of you enjoyed your journey through "The Garden!"

Peace and blessings,   Kathy

Carolyn's Garden Quilt: Every Garden Deserves a Touch of Blue

I believe every garden needs a touch of blue.  But blue is also the hardest flower color to find.  For several years I have relied on a lesser-known flower, scaevola, to add a splash of color to my gardens.  It is commonly called “fan flower” for its left-handed, one-side blooms that resemble a fan.  Native to Australia, fan flower is a prolific bloomer, loves the heat, requires no dead-heading, and little or no fertilizer.  These features make it an almost perfect flower.  It is equally lovely as a well-behaved ground cover in front of plants or in pots trailing down the side of other plants.  It can be found in many colors - light blue, brilliant bluish/purple, pink and white.

My quilt is a representation of the very top of a blue scaevola plant using varying colors of solid 100% cotton fabric.  I first made a photo of my daughter’s fan flowers.  Then I cut out each piece of the flower, using copies of the photo as my patterns. The pieces were raw-edge fused onto the green background.  The quilting was done using multiple colors of Ricky Tims Art Studio threads.

I hope you will begin adding this little-known flower to your garden.  I promise it will bring you much joy.

Below are photos of this little-known flower!

[Alice posted for Carolyn who was having computer problems!]

Karen's Bee Skep

Started a while ago for a class sample, dug out and enhanced with more flowers for the Maven's.

Flowers are made from torn, knotted or stitched scraps of batik fabric.

To make the skep, I drew out the shape, cut it into 5 sections. I free hand cut skinny strips of batik and stitched and flipped them onto muslin. Using the 5 sections as a pattern I cut my shapes out the stitch and flipped muslin and sewed them together. 

The bees are needle felted

Bee trails are stitched in using metallic thread.

(I am posting for Karen- Tricia)