Can not believe that so much time has past since my last post.  I had a very bad cold and just could not focus with all the sneezing, coughing and blow of the nose!   However it seems to have finally moved on so I was back in the studio today.

All the background tress are quilted.  I then began work on constructing the two barns I wanted to add to the scene.  I have quilted the grey one but still need to quilt the red one.  Once it is quilted I will add the windows. 

There is a lot more to come!

 Finished quilting these two turkeys and then stepped back to see how I was liking the scene.

 Decided the original placement of the other turkeys was not as good as adding a few more and moving them around.   Sketches are only that ...... once you begin you can see better layouts and perhaps the need for more trees and more turkeys. 

I had just enough time to quilt down the left hand side trees...the right hand side ones will have to stay loose until the turkeys go in.....and that is for another day!

The journey making this quilt was very enjoyable for me.  I wanted this quilt to be ready to sell to more of a broad based client so kept the theme more traditional and appealing to most.  I had debated over the boarder on whether to frame with a wooden frame or not but decided to do a neutral fused border and binding instead.  Part of the reason for this was cost.  I plan on selling this piece and by framing it, I would have to increase the cost of it by quite a bit so decided I will allow the buyer to make that decision.    Hope you enjoyed the journey making this with me. 

Now on to another exciting piece.

Sometimes working late at night is not a good thing.  I got up this morning and looked at this piece and could see mistakes made.  It was immediate.   Funny how that works.  You feel good the night before and then when looking at it with fresh eyes, it seems so obvious.  So I made the corrections.  It was the two new trees.  If you look at my previous post you will see the difference.  They needed to be perfectly vertical like the others and the furthest one needed to go off the top of the quilt.  Now it is so much better and I will quilt it and add needles and snow and then my blue jay will be added. 

What a difference a day makes.

More small additions have been added to the scene.  I placed a tree to the left of the yellow house.
Then a second addition is the fence in the foreground.  Right now it is scraps of fabric just placed on there to audition how I wanted it to travel across the quilt.  Now that I like the layout I will replace these with the real ones and fuse them down.

Still more details to come....so stay tuned.

 Above you will see I added a fence...it is green but you can not see that in this photo....lighting in studio today is bad due to very cloudy day.

 I want to add some fir trees so loosely sketched them on a piece of fused fabric.

Here is the fabric choice I used...sometimes you find fabric that you plan on using on water or a prairie and it works well in many other uses.

 Once cut out I place them on the hilside........and then

 Quilt!   Here is one finished, the other unfinished.   I love YLI Forest 24V 40wt Cotton thread for doing evergreens. It is a variegated thread that is wonderful for needles on pines.

Once the pines were finished I added the foreground trees that go in front of them.    See how this is coming together fast.  Not bad for two days work.  Stay tuned though...more is to come.

 Well like it or not....winter is approaching so I thought I would stray away from my waterlily scenes and do a winter scene.  This will be much more simplistic so stay tuned as it will be a pretty fast composition.  Well, that is if I do not get distracted part way through it.

Above is the background....I immediately did not like the slope of the hill in the foreground.

 So I fused some more white onto the drop off point and extended it out to the edge.   Much better.
Then I quilted it using organic lines....I prefer the quilting to take second place to the composition...the art.   So I do not do a lot of fancy machine quilting which I prefer to see on treaditional quilts as opposed to art quilts.

Here is a close up to the quilted surface.   Now it is ready for the fun.  I always quilt the entire background first.  It prevents all the stopping and starting you have to do once all the objects are added and becomes the background canvass for the magic to happen on. 

 Okay, what happened to us only getting an inch or two?   This lake effect excuse is not working for me anymore.
 The porch does not look too inviting right now.

The pathway for the dogs, who are too small to make it through this much snow is running out of room to pile this up.  What happened to all the rumors this was going to be a mild winter?

PS:  I do think rumor spelled like the English spell it as rumour seems correct but spell check wants it Americanized.

We now have over a foot of snow and it has just started again with round two.  The wind is supposed to pick up now and then it will be blizzard conditions tonight.  Did I wish for a white Christmas?   Someone was definitely listening!

Woke up this morning to a bit of snow.  It is already gone at 10AM.  Had to reflect that in my new art piece.  Put in the foreground as well.  Now come the details.