Don't Fear the Trees Journal Quilt

It's always quite hard to get back into the swing of things after an exhibition but in this case I was helped by the fact that a new theme for October was announced on the Sketchbook Challenge site not long before the show was over. This meant I could start thinking about what I wanted to do for that theme which was Trees. In fact last month's Journal Quilt would also have covered that theme but I wanted to do something completely different for this month both in execution and colour.

Photo taken by Lenna Andrews

I then remembered this photograph taken by Lenna when she was here, during our visit to Jupiter Artland. John and I had been several times before but had never noticed that we had missed out on seeing one particular piece of art. Lenna did notice and we then hunted it out. She deserves all the credit for discovering where to get to it. The art is called Coppice Wood and is by Andy Goldsworthy. It consists of: "Limbs coppiced from Badger Wood suspended together in a room". A very dark room! Above you can see how I ventured inside where it was almost impossible to see anything. A strange sensation although not a bad one.

I set to interpreting this in fabric. I used a autumn coloured fabric with leaves, for the background fabric which was layered up with a transparent fabric, also with leaves and machine stitched in straight lines with a variety of threads. Then I made the trees for the background using a dark coloured batik fabric which was layered with wadding and hand stitched, then cut to strips and machine appliquéd onto the background. The large tree in the foreground was also made separately using another batik fabric and a hand dyed turban cotton, layered with wadding and seed stitched by hand. I also added gold foiling. This piece was made into a tube and stuffed with filler. I needed someone in among the trees,  and although I thought about adding myself I decided I wanted to see more of the person I put in there. So I used an image from a Alphastamps collage sheet.

You can see just how 3 dimensional the large tree is above.  The title of the piece comes from a quotation by Richelle E. Goodrich. It reads as follows: "Life is a walk through the forest. Don't fear the trees; fear what lurks behind them".

The final step was to go back to the transparent fabric with the leaves, add Bondaweb to the back and cut out individual leaves and add them to the journal quilt and  then hand stitch the veins. And there you have my contribution for this monthe. Unusually dark for me but it still has sparkle!