Birds on a Tin Tile Print

Through a Garden Fence

After attending a fantastic plein aire class on tin tile printing given by Teresa Shippy, I came right home and used a tin tile to make four prints using Setacolor fabric paint.  At another time I will post the process for this printing.  I then sashed each printed square with hand dyed purple fabric, backed each of the four center squares with batting so that I could make them dimensional, and then applied batting to the back of the entire top.  On the center stashing pieces I machine appliqued free form leaf shapes and auditioned petals for a middle medallion shape.

Life and other quilting deadlines intervened and almost 3 years passed before I revisited this creation.

While straightening up my studio in anticipation of a friend who will be visiting to quilt with me for a week, I came upon the Through a Garden Fence that I had started a few years back.  I had always envisioned putting birds on this quilt, so I dug out some white cotton fabric and painted birds on it.  After the painting was complete I pulled out tear away stabilizer and embroidery hoop and set about free motion machine "painting" a few birds.  I'm not certain exactly where they will be placed yet, but I may place one at each of the points where the four leaf shapes converge upon the center of the quilt.  Here are the birds...

There are a few deadlines that I need to meet in the next few months so I don't know when I will have the time to return to this work to actually quilt the work and to applique the birds, but I'm hoping to have it completed this year.  

Always remember, never fear to experiment.  

Sometimes wonderful things happen.

© Linda Friedman 2016.  All rights reserved

Salvaging an Idea - Bird and Leaves

After screen printing a large image of an iron gate I had the bright idea of adding a free motion embroidered bird and skeletal leaf forms to the image.  After a few days of off and on stitching of these forms, it was time to audition them on the gate image.  Much to my chagrin, the bird was "lost" amid the intricacy of the screen printed image and the leaves cast a ghastly shadow that merely served to make the image seem as if the edges were blurred.  Ach, what a waste of time, I thought; however, as I was placing these stitched figures on a white background to photograph them as documentation of a flop, magic happened.  The bird looks very alive and vibrant against a background of the leaves.

Here is the Bird

Here are the Leaves

Waa laa!  The Bird Comes to Life on the Leaves

and a New Project is Begun