May Interpret This

Spring Dreams

16 x 14

I went very literal this month; I'm not sure why that seemed the best thing to do, but it also worked into my tight schedule since I didn't change my mind several times.

Everything is simple and straight forward except for the tree, where I wanted to add a texture to suggest the softness of the blossoms and change the color a bit.   I wet the fabric, twisted it until it doubled back on itself into a ball, put rubber bands around it, and then stuffed the ball into the toe of an old nylon footie until it dried; drying takes about a week. ( I guess this is a kind of dye-less shibori.)  I did this about the first day of the month, which was fortunate, because when I came home from my unplanned trip, the fabric was dry. 

Then I opened it, smoothed it a little and fused it to a piece of light weight interfacing.

Stitching at random back and forth adds texture and holds the wrinkles in place.  Lots of different decorative stitches, threads, and couched fibers can be used, but I kept it simple here.  Then I pressed a freezer paper pattern to the textured fabric, stitched around it to keep the edges flat,  and cut out the tree shape.

Since I wanted to do the branches with reverse applique, I marked their outline on the freezer paper and stitched around that too; then when the tree was in place I stitched again around the branch outline, and cut to reveal the branch fabric I'd placed underneath.

Since the tree fabric already had lots of stitching, I just quilted in a circular pattern to emphasize the design in the fabric, then added the beads for more texture.