A quilt for Oregon

I started working on a new piece today and put in quite a few hours. It is for a show of quilts about the state of Oregon.

I have kind of a history with using Douglas Fir tree images. It is the state tree of Oregon and they are just everywhere you look in this part of the state. They grow very, very tall and straight and have a very distinctive cone with little tassels on them. Several years ago I made a small piece with a cone for a friend that was moving away. Recently, my latest 12 x 12 piece has a Douglas fir in the foreground.

I decided to make a piece featuring a big, huge Douglas Fir cone. The real cones are about 3" long. My fabric version is a little more than 2' long. I made myself a big pattern, then traced pieces and parts onto fabric, which I painted and rubbed pattern onto. The rubbing is done by putting something with texture under the fabric and rubbing with a watercolor crayon. In this case I used a piece of plastic, gridded needlepoint canvas. It made a nice sort of cross-hatchy pattern.

These little pieces don't look like much, so I was eager to get to a point where I could start fusing them onto a dark background to see if this scheme was going to work.

Here I have gotten a lot of the cone fused. I think I like where this is going. There will be a lot of fusing of small pieces as I intend to add branches with lots of needles on them. I feel good about today. I got a lot done.

My back is really aching after working on this all day. I wish I could work sitting down. I got myself a nice tall stool, and have a good high table to work on, but it is just so much better to stand than sit. I think a good night's sleep will help and I will be ready to get back to it again tomorrow.