Good morning!  Happy Sunday!  I decided to sleep in a bit this morning, so here it is, 7:45 and I haven't done a thing but make my breakfast! 
     This is the second posting to my new blog, Quilt Seeds.  It's going to be fun saying hi to everyone each day!

                      As many people know, I've been busy filling my shop with all sorts of quilting goodies!  So be sure to pop on by there or stop by my Facebook Page, Quilty Things, to see what new goodies I've managed to cook up.

      I've been working on developing some applique patterns for the shop.  I'm working with vintage botanical (and bird!) illustrations for my inspiration.

  After picking up the basic lines of these beautiful compositions, I'm REcoloring the parts with Prismacolor Colored pencils on paper.  Then I'm scanning the images and printing them onto white fabric.  Once that's done, I press them to my paper-backed adhesive, cut them out, and form my composition.  After that, it's just a matter of embroidering the stems and highlights into the piece.

 

 

     So far, I've been able to get the very first composition to the embroidery step, so that's my next relaxation-time project. 

 (A. K. A. TV time project!) 

   It's my plan to get these things into kit form and offer the printed sheet of units (on fabric and paper-backed adhesive) along with a layout sheet and an instruction sheet.  This way, the parts can be cut out either on the lines for raw edge applique, or with a 1/4" edge for turned edge applique. 

 

    To backpedal a bit here.........I attempted to do the composition with the parts cut from various shades of the appropriate fabrics (several shades of green for the leaves, several for the apple, etc.)  I found I was unhappy with the look of this, especially the apple, which, because of it's multi-layers of pink and red looked more like a target than an apple!  Even when I skewed the elements, I was still unhappy with the "patchy" look of it.  Which surprised me, actually.  I've seen some breathtakingly beautiful applique done in that fashion, and the artist always seems to make it all fit together and look....well, CERTAINLY not like targets! 

      In the back of my mind I was considering the process I'm working on right now, but I was sort of pushing it aside for several reasons.  One, I love to dabble in colored pencil at every opportunity, but I DO NOT consider myself a master of it at all!  So the thought of taking vintage illustrations and recoloring them, when the master creators had already done a far better job than I, was a little intimidating, to say the least.  But it just didn't seem right to simply take the work and call it my own.  I knew all I needed was the basic lines of the composition and I could muddle my way through some sort of colorization.

    The other thing that made me push the idea away for awhile was the daunting and time-consuming task of the coloring.  Colored pencil is not like painting with acrylic or watercolor.  It's a very slow process.  Okay, so I have several of these----peaches, a pear, cherries, pomegranates, etc. to do.  I want them to be a series that can be incorporated into a quilt/wall hanging, so different mediums wouldn't be as nice as having them all done with the same media.  But......hours and hours in the coloring process!  *GASP* 

     In the end, I've decided to do it.  So the vintage apple is on it's way.

 

     Meantime, I'm working on several other projects.  For years and years, ever since I "discovered" colored pencils, I've taken them with me on every camping trip and goteen some very UNdistracted drawing time in.  There's nothing like creating artwork at a moring picnic table in the mottled shade of evergreens,  listening to squirrels and birds and feeling a gentle breeze in your hair! 

     But over the years, the stuff I've done has piled up in my portfolio and several years ago I began to consider how it could be used.  I know, art is art....for the sake of art.  But so many people I knew had used their art to create greeting cards and other useful things---why shouldn't I??

 

   So, with that in mind, I began to explore what I could DO with my art.  Putting it on fabric was a natural....so it's on fabric...now what?  Quilting!  My dear love!  How to incorporate it into quilting?

So........this is what I'm beginning on today....

  This is the first step:  I've taken my Large Oak Leaf Poem and put it on TAP (transfer artist paper) and onto basic white muslin.  Today I will be in

considering what to surround it with to make it into a small wall hanging.  I want to pick up the green shades of the leaf, and I'd like to add some acorns.  OH NOoooooo...........I feel a trip to the fabric store coming on!  they don't open until noon today, so that gives me a bit of time for a few loads of laundry, and tidying up after last nights company.  I could also sweep the kitchen floor and make the bed......ooorrrrr.........I could go browse the bookstore until the fabric shop opened.  What do you think is the best route..........I thought so, my quilty friends!