One More Hand-Made Gift

Here is the last of the projects that you glimpsed in my "teaser" post about what I was making.  It's the one I started in October 2010 and misplaced until I was making Christmas bookmarks with my embellishing machine this year.






Peak Creek in Autumn, 2011

This piece began with a piece of batting, over which I arranged fabric, fibers, silk and wool roving until I built up the colors and depth and luminosity that I wanted.  Then I added additional batting and backing and quilted it on my longarm.  That may have been overkill, since this piece is only about 10" x 11".    But I find I can "draw" much better with the hand-guided machine.



 Of course, this piece was inspired by our favorite place, our mountain retreat.  It represents the view from our bridge over Peak Creek, looking downstream.  Each afternoon, the sun quickly disappears over the mountain, but the last rays will light up the water and one side of the creek bank.  The next photo is the view upstream from the bridge, looking toward the dam.

For that reason, I chose this piece as my study for Chiaroscuro, or Dark and Light, for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge 49.  One of the group members issues a challenge each month, and you are supposed to create a piece in one week or less.  I guess fourteen months to completion is not fast, but I really spent less than a week on it!