From start to finish..

I finished the quilt with the Tumbleweed in it and for the first time, I documented the process of making an art quilt...I have been asked how I do it, and it is hard to explain...I thought about it and took lots of pictures....What I wanted to do, was make a background for the quilted little trailer to sit on. First I cut a piece of cotton duck to put the background on. I knew I wanted this quilt to be big..Way bigger for an art quilt than I normally do, so I cut it 25"wide by 36" long..Why, I don't know, it just looked right...Then I dug through my scraps of fabric looking for pieces that look like scenery fabric. I knew I wanted a woodsy type scene and also wanted some of it to look like fields. I love how they look like patchwork quilts in the distance...I also wanted some kind of road meandering up to the top...I started cutting and laying pieces of fabric down until I was happy..Then I use a temporary spray adhesive to adhere it all down so I can move it around until I sew it...Here is what it looks like...( you can click on all these pictures to make it bigger...)
The next step was to start sewing..The hardest part of the sewing was the big tree...I kind of penciled it in on the fabric, dropped the feed dogs and sewed..Then I decided to add some Neocolor twos to add some color. It didn't work and muddied it up. I then threw some alcohol inks on it, just letting the drops hit it and then I went in with red and fuchsia threads and did loops to look like fall foliage..The rest of the fabrics I just really tried to follow the lines and put some curves in. When I do this much thread work, I don't put a fabric back on...I do it at the end. So what I am quilting on is the fabric laid down on the cotton duck and batting on the back...This is what it looked like when I was done with all the stitching..
and here is what it looks like from the back.../>
I then sewed down the 3d trailer piece that I showed in the previous post and decided it needed something else...I decided to put Coopers head somewhere on the bottom of the quilt...I traced it on a piece of yellow wool felt and free motioned the details..then I cut it out and added the red scarf which I thought looked cute hanging over the edge..Then I cut another piece of cotton duck for the back, used spray adhesive to stick it and then did a 2 and a quarter inch binding....All in all, this is way more sewing than I usually do! I think I put six or seven real hours in doing this quilt...Here is the finished project..What do you think? I am calling it "lets camp"....