the journey to Wisdom

sometimes where a piece starts off to go is not where it ends up

this one for example

as I wrote earlier, this is the photo that I began with as my inspiration

I intended to try to capture the stark, dark outline of that bare tree against the bright blue of the sky and it's reflection in the lake below

however, as I got into the weeds of the design work, I found that to create the "look" I wanted, the piece would have to be about twice as big as our 30x40 size (YIKES!!!)

so I went back to the drawing board --- or more correctly back to the research stage, where I learned more about cottonwood trees, which took my piece in a different direction

for one thing, I decided to put the whole piece into a sunset (and I took this opportunity to create the sky in a whole different way than I had done previous pieces, which was a lot of fun)

and then there are the trees

these two in particular are drawn on the silk organza layer with ink based Copic markers which was then heat set

I have done one line of machine stitching along each color in the sky to stabilize the organza, and I'm working of doing hand stitching to highlight each of these two trees

there is still a big fused tree to be done and then of course the quilting, but I'm pleased with how this is moving along