I was reading my good friend, Mary Huey's blog (she can be found at MaryHueyQuilts.blogspot.com) and she is participating in an online trunk show. I thought that was a great idea, and I wanted to be part of it. So here goes!
I thought I would post my tree quilts. Years ago, I read a book about being a successful, selling artist. In that book, the author stated that for people who are not established art collectors, realism is an easier choice than abstraction. Okay, great. But I am not a drawer. I know, I know. I don't draw well because I don't draw. But I don't draw, because I don't draw well. Circular logic I know. But even if I were a good drawer, fabric is a hard medium for anything with a lot of detail. But I thought, "Trees! I could do trees!" And because I don't draw, I walked around my neighborhood and took pictures of interesting looking trees, and then went through a complicated process to put those tree images onto my quilts. Yeah, it would have been easier to just draw the silly things, but whatever! I now have a collection, call it a series! of tree quilts. And here they are for your consideration.
I pretreated the fabrics so that I could run them through my inkjet printer. I know the text is a little difficult to read in small sizes and in certain light, and while it is a story that is personal to me (and my sibs), I think it is a reminder to any parent, grandparent, or aunt, uncle, or friend that precious memories aren't just the big trips to Disney. They are about the time spent together doing something fun. And fun for kids is defined more simply than we adults tend to think.
This is the tree quilt that seems to get the most buzz. I know it has been pinned on a number of Pinterest boards. It was my 10th tree quilt, and so I named it Tree X. Not a glamorous name, but when you see it in person, it's pretty nice to look at. :-)
About this time I started to add more text to my quilts, and I was reminded by a funny story told by Zig Ziglar about cutting the end off of a ham before it was baked. When the question was asked as to why this was done. The woman said it was because that's what her mother had done. When her mother was asked why, she responded that she did it because that's what her mother had done. And when Grandma was asked, she said it was because her pan was too small to get the whole ham in. Grandma had a reason. I think quite often we do things because that's how they've always been done, or we aren't allowed to do new things because, "we've never done it that way before!" Gasp. A lot of things come down to style and are not worth fighting over. But core convictions are worth standing your ground on.
For this quilt I was working a value exercise using 7 values of green. And I thought I would like to try a little more abstraction.
There are other tree quilts on my web site, but right now I'm having technical issues about adding another picture. So go to Marshamade.com and view all (okay, almost all!) of the tree quilts I have made!
Until next time.
Until next time.