Anne’s Creative Threads

At the beginning of this month I started work on a new rain forest art quilt design and this time I decided to work on a slightly bigger scale than usual. To create the rain forest background I foundation pieced 48 4 inch blocks in greens and browns. I used two different foundation blocks and then reversed some of them too create greater variety of pattern.

foundation pieced background

 I used as many different fabrics as I could to convey the impression of the colours of the forest floor and the foliage, with darker greens in the area where the undergrowth meets the ground. Normally I wouldn’t add the borders at this stage but when I add the details I want dome of them to spill over into the borders.

Detail of foundation piecing

The next stage is to add the trees and I used several different commercial striped batik fabrics for this.

fabrics for trees

Using various different fabrics for the trees gives greater depth to the design.

trees added

In the picture above I have started adding the trees. I have also applied some small snippets of fabric along the line where the green blocks meet the brown in order to blend the area where the two meet and avoid having too distinctive a line.

Let sleeping cats lie

The danger of leaving fabrics out on my table!