Sewdreamy

This quilt is inspired by a wonderful painting by Joel Christopher Payne, a Disney artist, from whom I bought the rights for making one show quilt.  I loved his painting, but it was darker and did not have much of the Spanish Moss.  So it is not a copy of his painting, but an inspiration from it.  I had made a collection of wood print commercial fabrics over the years and used every one of them in the making of this quilt.  The cabin and the houseboat are made by cutting "planks" of wood and "building these two homes with stitched, raw-edge applique.  The big trees are made by using a variety of wood-bark fabrics and are turned-edge machine stitched appliques.  The limbs of the trees and the weeds and bushes in the water are free-motion couched on wool yarn of various colors. I then free-motion embroidered the Spanish moss using Aurifil's 12 weight wool thread.  I had to make small straight marks to keep the direction of the moss hanging properly.  The fireflies are made with a back drop of Neon Nights UV Fabric black light paint and topped with tiny hot fix tangerine and yellow crystals.  The reflective water is made with raw edged applique that has been overpainted to blend into the water background, and top painted to highlight the ripply look.  This was great fun to make and I expect to make more landscape quilts using some of the same techniques.