The Endeavourers Nature Reveal

The exciting day has arrived!
The Endeavourers, a new online art quilt group has its first quilt reveal for its members!
Our group of 14 international quilters were charged to interpret the theme of NATURE and make a quilt based on it. You can read our mission statement HERE.

I was not the only member who had ideas churning in my head for nearly two months. Nature can be defined in many ways such as the essence of something, human nature or that of Mother Nature. I chose to focus on the definition of nature as "the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations." 

I continued to look at photos I had taken in the last few years on my walks and travels--that showed how I interpreted the theme of nature. I could not decide on a single photo that told my story, so I selected 24 of my favorites. I chose to collage them. Below is my completed quilt (22.5 inches by 21.5 inches) I call

NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY.

I challenged myself to move out of my comfortable piecing techniques. The idea of film negatives (from bygone times, when I was a kid and a young mom) where we took photos and didn't discover the results until they were returned from developing and printing. It is so much easier now, delete the photo that does not meet our expectations, save those we want on a hard drive, CD, memory stick--or, the Cloud! To be printed when we desire and how we desire.

I have printed photos to fabric a number of times in the past. I have used many brands of printable inkjet fabric sheets, but the EQ Premium Cotton Lawn are by far my favorite. (I am not paid for product review.)

I like the finish and feel of the 240 thread count fabric. They take ink well and hold up well to washing. The plastic sheet on the back is so easy to pull off! They are well worth the cost per sheet. I buy the 25 sheet pack since it is a value for the money.

I cropped the photos to 3 inches square using Photoshop Elements. In Word, I organized 6 photos to a sheet (allowing space between the photos to cut a 1/4 inch border of white around each print for a seam allowance. These were to be sewn and finish at 3" and the white borders, I thought, would make it easy to keep the 1/4 inch seam. When I sewed the photos to the black strips, some of them showed a bit of the white that didn't get caught in the seam allowance.

Unless one gets very close to the quilt, it is not noticeable. But, next time I will crop the photos to 3.5 inches to include the 1/4 inch seams in the photos.

I worked diligently trying to get the proper proportions for the black and white film strip sections. I tried using my EQ7 program but it didn't help; and then I just sewed trial by error until the measurements worked.  I still don't know how I got them all to work out, but they did! The black strips were cut 1 inch wide and the white strips were 1.5 inches wide. I sewed strips together and sub-cut, pressed toward the black, and then sewed sets together. I added long 1.5 inch strips along the railroad tracks of the black and white sections.

I quilted with my walking foot and lots of pins. I started in the middle of the quilt sewing within the black strips. I smoothed the layers and repinned before moving on to the next set of photo strips. It was a long process, but I am thoroughly thrilled with it. It looks lovely hanging on the wall in our living room.

Visit the other members of the group to see what they made for their Nature quilts!

The Endeavourers 

Catherine

Janine

Nancy (me)

Carol

Barbara

Ruth

Gwen

Martha

Julie

Maureen

Tonia

Soma

Kay

Fiona