A Rural Farmscape..

As a daughter of two very talented art teachers, I grew up watching both of them make beautiful creations and passing their love of art to the next generations.  Both had areas that they loved; my mom made the neatest ceramics and my dad painted many oil paintings.  Many of these paintings centered around a specific theme, rural scenes and many round barns. So my quilt, "Farmscape", was my gift to him one year for his birthday.  Once again I knew what I wanted to do but really didn't have a plan on how to put it all together.  Not that it stopped me from jumping right in, of course.

Farmscape Quilt with a Round Barn

I built the background of the quilt in three sections.  The top portion of the sky was put together by sewing horizontal strips together.  Then the middle section of the sky and mountains was made by squares and half-square triangles.  The land is a series of vertical strips sewn together and then was attached to the middle section using a blanket stitch.  

The lake and the tree trunk were drawn onto some fusible interfacing and attached to the tree fabric.  Once the paper was removed from the back, they were positioned onto the background and then blanked stitched all around.  The leaves were applied in the same manner, using different greens and sizes of leaves to add dimension.  The barn and tractor were assembled together and then attached to the background with a blanket stitch.  Once all of the pieces were attached, I embroidered the grass around the structures.

The quilt was assembled and quilted with swirling circles in the sky and some 'grass-like' stitches in the  lawn.  The border fabric was an awesome find and around the edges I quilted the name of the quilt 'Farmscape' all around the edge of the quilt.

It took me about 6 months to finish this quilt,  but it was an awesome challenge and I definitely learned a lot on this one.