Into Nature Challenge

I’ve been reading the magazines I got at the bookshop at the show, and many of them are Quilting Arts. I signed up for their emails, and recently they had a reader challenge. It was called Into Nature. Here is the challenge “Create a small art quilt (6” x 9”, vertical orientation) that reflects your personal connection to the natural world. Explore nature-related themes—leaves, stems, roots, flowers, spores, seeds, or growth cycles—as inspiration for this challenge. Your ideas might come from a specific place, a fleeting moment outdoors, a beloved garden, or abstract responses to nature’s forms and systems.” I had an idea immediately as the concept of Shinrinyoku popped into my head. Shinrinyoku is a Japanese word conveying the feeling of being connected to the natural world, of the restorative effect of being in the light coming through the trees, literally taking a “forest bath”. I have the good fortune to be able to do this almost every day right on our property.

The vision in my head was to use browns and greens to create a forest, then use a shimmery gold organza I knew was in the stash for sunbeams. I dug around in the greens until I found a print with just leaves in shades of green. Then I found three browns so the trees would have variety and the lighter brown would recede a bit to create a feeling of depth.

I fused heat and bond to the back of the browns and cut tree shapes. The raw edge organza strips are pinned on the edges to hold them in place.

Fusing was a challenge in itself, as the iron would be too hot for the organza. So, I pressed the piece from the back. This fused the tree shapes in place. Then I ran a stitching line around the edge to hold the organza in place.

I cut individual leaves from the print to fuse on top of the tree branches.

Fusing these were tricky, as I had to use just the point of the iron. I added them in layers, overlapping the organza and each other.

The top was layered with the same leaf print for backing and a layer of batting. The quilting was done by outlining the tree shapes, and edge stitching the sunbeams.

I did the stitching using three colors of thread – gold for the sunbeams, brown for the trees and a bit of green to keep the leaves in place.

I embroidered the label for the back.

The piece was bound in the usual manner with stitching to the front, turning to the back and finishing by hand. A paper fern was added to the lower left corner to give a bit more interest in the forest floor as well as add another material for a mixed media piece.

I submitted the photographs to the magazine challenge, but it was not selected as a finalist. Still, I love this piece, and I think I will embellish it a bit more with some beading for entry into the fair this fall.