3 Studios Art Quilt Challenge 2010 - Reflection

The theme word for the past two months was "reflection".  I sort of knew what I wanted to do, from the beginning, but I also knew that I'd be traveling quite a bit between July and August and so decided to wait until the end of August to make the quilt.

I decided to use a photo for this quilt that I had taken while on a hike this summer.  This one was taken from the summit of  Mt. Garfield, and shows the entire Franconia Range from left to right:  Mts. Flume, Liberty, Haystack, Lincoln and Lafayette.  The reason I chose this particular photo was because I had hiked the entire ridge that day and it was interesting to look back and reflect on the journey I had taken up Mt. Flume, all the way across to Mt. Lafayette and then over to Mt. Garfield.  This was very much about reflecting where I had been and where I was headed.  I also liked the reflection of the sky in the little puddle on the rock.

I kept this quilt very simple, only framing the printed fabric (using Bubble Jet Set) with a few pieces of coordinating fabric. Only one of the three fabric selections is commercially dyed;  the blue along the top was something I dyed, and the black is from a piece dyed by Vicki Welsh (who also sells her unique hand dyed fabrics in her Etsy shop). 

Thread selection was pretty easy - I didn't need too many colors in this quilt:

I chose to give the quilt texture via trapunto, layering more batting layers under the rocks of Mt. Garfield in the foreground and less batting under Franconia ridge and only a single layer under the sky.  It is hard to get a good photo of the texture and dimension created, but here it is:

To finish the piece, I added just a bit of thicker sparkly thread around the photo itself:

The piece is bound to the back, leaving the edges clean and simple. I liked the green back, because it reminded me of the color of the forested portion of the mountains in the summer.

Parting Shot:  Nap?!?  Really?  I can't put anything down without a cat wanting to lay down on it.  I didn't have the unfinished quilt on the ledge for more than 5 minutes when Wellie decided to claim it.