“The Big Sky”-I started a new art project yesterday and it has given me a lot of food for thought. First thing is that I can’t decide on the name of this art quilt. Is it “The Big Sky” or maybe “Home Sweet Home” and then there is “Where have all the farm lands gone?” It reminds me a little like the grapes of wrath. Usually I name my project in the first stages of the design and that is what I stick with but this art quilt is different. Lately I have been thinking about how to get your eye to go from the front to back in my designs.
“Expectantly Waiting” is a quilt where I was practicing this concept. For this art quilt I knew I wanted the sky to take up at least half of the fabric. So I hung the fabric on the design wall and started painting from top to bottom spraying it with a water letting the paint run down as I went. 
Using my blow dryer to heat set it became a real labor intensive process so I repeated took it to the ironing table several times to dry it out and get the final result. The horizon line is maybe three inches above the center of the quilt and so I painted the first green on the picture. Ok now what am I going to do. Something large in front? How about a windmill. 
It took me several tries to get the size I wanted by blowing it up and then reducing it using my copy machine. Same thing with the barn. At first the barn was facing to the left and it didn’t work so I reversed it by flipping it over and drawing it to face right and that seemed to fit better. I wanted the windmill to be the focal point so painting the barn a soft brown instead of red helped with that. Wow this is looking more like a farm and it needed crop rows to help tell the story. 
Of course it isn’t a barn until it has a flag so that came along. At this point I didn’t think it needed anymore elements and just the windmill, barn and rows tells the story.
There is two different ways to look at this art quilt. Starting at the top and following the dark clouds that are raining on the fields then you notice the farm.
The second version is looking at the windmill then to the barn, rows and then to the powerful big sky! When I quilted this art quilt it was fun creating the rain falling onto the horizon. The back fabric is a wonderful wheat color representing america’s bread basket. I enjoyed making this quilt so much that I drew out another design similar to it and it is ready to transfer to fabric and paint. Hope you enjoy…..The Big Sky!
