Art for Max

So, my step-sister Pam had a baby recently, a real cutie named Max. Talking to her on the phone shortly after he was born, she could tell I was hinting around at what I should make him and she asked for something to put on his wall. I know she likes the kind of stuff I’ve been doing lately, but still, so many possibilities…

One thing I really like is assembling a larger piece of art out of smaller pieces (if you couldn’t tell), but I was kind of drifting around waiting for inspiration when a PB catalog came, with this image inside – bingo! Love that idea! I’ve also been working with some abstract pieces where I do fun, not necessarily lifelike quilted designs in leaves:

SO, knowing that I get stressed when I’m making a surprise, I decided that it wouldn’t be a surprise – I had Pam & Tommy take a look at all these images and asked them if they’d like this sort of thing – YES, was their answer! Phew! Also, we knew the baby was a boy, and his room is painted a creamy yellow, so that sort of provides some more boundaries. Off I go!

I worked up a general design in EQ6 and printed off the pattern and placed it on my design wall (ahh! lots of tape was involved getting those 30 some pages together!):

I dyed some dark brown, light blue & lots of differnt greens:

Then I traced each tree branch onto some Wonder Under release paper and used an iron to fuse the lines to the back of

brown fabric (this is a great tip I learned from Frieda Andersen). I cut out the branches and pieces of blue fabric 5″ larger than each size rectangle I needed, then folded a 2 1/2″ margin around each blue piece (this part is for wrapping around the stretcher bar). I then lay this all out on my cutting table:

After fusing the branches on, made the quilt sandwich and “sketchy-quilt” outlined the branches. I put the fabric rectangles on my working wall and went to town cutting out & placing leaves. I also made another smaller piece to try out this concept before I began on the large pieces:

I’m so glad I did that, because I realized that doing complex & differnt designs in each leaf for the whole tree would be TOO MUCH! So, I added a little red apple (I quilted Max’s name here), a little red bird for another bit of zing, quilted Pam/ Tommy & Max’s birthdate on 3 of the leaves and the rest I just did some more sketchy outlines.

I LOVED the little birdie I put in the tree, so I made some more little guys to try out differnt quilting styles before getting the one chance to do it on Max’s tree:

Anyway, just got a voice mail from Pam & Max – they love his tree – YAY! Hopefully we’ll have a picture of it installed along with Mr Max himself before not too long!