Recently I started working on a new art quilt. It’s theme will be Idaho birds. At my house, we are blessed with an abundance of wild life, especially birds. There are several species depending on the seasons. Just now a very young squirrel tried to get into the sun room via our large picture window. Lot’s of art inspiration to say the least.
Here is how this new art quilt design is developing. At first I thought it would be great to take my own pictures of our Idaho birds, but soon found out my hands are a little too shaky to get a clear shot. Last spring when the ducks swam down the river, I was outside with my 35mm attached to the tripod waiting patiently. As they swam by guess what? Only one of those pictures came out well enough to use. I then turned to the internet to solve that problem. You will see, on my story board, several assembled colored pictures to help me think about the colors and positions. As usual I look for pictures that have clear outlines to use on the light box later.
There is quite a few pictures represented here and I probably won’t use all of them for this art quilt. I wan to have plenty just in case. Next I printed them out in black and white and drew around them to make my outline pictures. You will notice I do this on tracing paper and here is the brand of tracing paper that I am using at the moment.
I selected one of the quail pictures and then using my rule of thirds grid on top of my light box. Quickly realizing that it might be too small.
This is when I realized that I needed to work on the largest bird first. If I use an eagle or blue heron then these birds need to appear large than the killdeer’s. This can sometimes be very challenging. With some of my past art quilts I didn’t pay attention to this part of the design. Then after painting all the blocks, I would have to go back and redesign one of the blocks because it was dominating the whole design.
I have taken a couple of days to think about the overall design of my new art quilt. It came to me how awesome it would look if the whole quilt was the shape of Idaho. I drew a rough sketch of the new idea. ( design one) My husband had a great idea for (design two).
Drawing one would consist of nine or ten blocks each with it’s own bird and then finished making nine or so individual little quilts. My thought is to attach them with thread bridges to make the shape of the Idaho. I think about 1/2″ to 1″ space between the pieces would be very cool.
The second idea would be more of a whole cloth concept with Idaho in the middle and the other birds surrounding it. The blue bird would reside on Boise, the capitol, representing the state bird.
We will see how this art quilt design progresses, it is certainly a great diversion waiting for spring to show up……